Page 58 of Her Dying Secret

“Yeah,” came Turner’s mumble. “Can’t close that can once it’s opened. I’ve seen cases where the parents take the kids and poof! they’re never seen again. Or you find them living in some other state twenty years later, all grown up.”

Josie looked back at the television. WYEP flashed Rosie’s photo again. By now it was nearly four years old. She’d be ten. How much had she changed? With a sigh, Josie turned her attention back to Turner’s ass. “Mira probably hoped that getting Rosie enrolled into a school where she was employed would give Seth a reason to keep her in one place. Settle down. Mira must have used her connection to April—as sisters—to try to put Seth at ease with the whole thing.”

“Until April turned on him,” Gretchen added.

“You mean until she realized what a certifiable nutcase he really was and decided to report him to DHS for starving his fucking kid?” Turner called. “Where in the hell is this ball? It’s like a dimensional vortex under here. I think I just saw the back entrance to Narnia, for godssake.”

Suddenly, Gretchen startled. Her chair creaked as she leaned forward, plucking something from the floor. With a triumphant grin, she held up the tiny foam basketball.

Turner’s desk jerked as he banged his head. “Son of a bitch. That hurt. Hold on, I think I see it.” His feet extended back, toward Josie, as he lowered himself to his stomach. “Okay so the sister—April—reports this guy and then he takes little Rosie and rolls. Did DHS even do any investigating?’

“I talked with someone in their office this morning,” Gretchen said. “They claim they couldn’t find Seth or Mira at the time the call was made.”

“Convenient,” Turner said in a strained voice. “We’re assuming he brought her up this way since his brother’s here. Next thing anyone knows, Mira Summers is living here too, and going to his brother’s stables every week. If she didn’t know where he was taking Rosie, how’d she know to go to Tranquil Trails?”

He’s here. We have to tell.

“April told her. She figured it out somehow. It wouldn’t have taken much. A background check on Seth using a paid service probably would have shown Jon Lee as his brother.”

Gretchen squeezed the ball tightly in her hand, crushing it until it was the size of a marble. Then she opened her palm and let it expand again. “I can’t quite figure out the sequence of events, but I don’t think that April moving to Newsham a year after Seth disappeared with Rosie, and Mira moved to Denton, is a coincidence.”

“You think April was looking for the kid?” Turner said, voice muffled again. “On her own?”

“Rosie was April’s niece,” Josie said. “During the argument that Teryn Bailey overheard between April and Mira, April used the phrase, ‘my family too.’ Rosie wasn’t just some student, she was April’s family.”

“Somehow, Seth figured out that April tried to follow him,” Gretchen said. “I have no idea how but he found out she was in Newsham. He started vandalizing her house. The ‘stay away’ message was from him. He wanted her to stay away from Rosie, specifically.”

Why hadn’t April gone to the police once she had some idea where he might be? Josie could see why Mira might not have gone to the authorities to report that Seth had taken their daughter to parts unknown and might be starving her. After decades of being indoctrinated by Seth and trained to shape her life around his delusions, turning Seth in to the authorities was the last thing that Mira would do.

But why wouldn’t April? In addition, why had she bothered to report him breaking into her Newsham home and vandalizing it but not told the police that Seth was behind it?

They were still missing something.

“So then what?” Turner said, drawing up onto his knees again. “This guy just decides he’s going to kidnap April and keep her for a year? What in the hell does that accomplish? I’m telling you: looney tunes.”

WYEP cut to their new star reporter, Dallas Jones, standing in front of Mira’s town house, interviewing neighbors. Josie was surprised he hadn’t set up shop in front of Tranquil Trails. Then again, there wasn’t anyone to interview all the way out there, and Josie knew neither Rebecca nor Jon was going to speak with the press. As it was, the revelation that Seth and Mira had a child had rendered Rebecca speechless for almost a full five minutes. As a courtesy, and to stay on their good side in case she needed their help later, Josie had called the Lees late the night before to give them a heads-up before Rosie’s face got splashed all over the internet.

Josie took another long sip of her latte. Gretchen was still peering at the basketball as if trying to decide what to do with it.

Finally, Turner wiggled backward and out from under the desk. His curls tumbled down over his forehead. A cobweb wrapped across the back of his head. From his knees, he looked across the desks at Gretchen. The ball had disappeared. He brushed dust from the shoulders of his suit jacket. He always dressed like he was testifying in court, no matter what. He reached out a hand to Josie. “Help me up, sweetheart.” It was a demand, not a request.

Josie put her latte down on his desk and folded her arms across her chest. “What’s my name?”

He looked at her as if he’d never seen her before. “Are you kidding me? You wanna know why my knee hurts, Paper Airplane?”

He didn’t get to do one thing and then be excused from his irritating behavior ever after. She still wasn’t over him flirting with Bobbi Thomas while she got strangled by Seth Lee. “What’s my name?”

His head swiveled in Gretchen’s direction. “Is she serious with this?”

“If you ever want to see your precious basketball again, you’ll answer her question,” Gretchen challenged.

Turner’s chin sank to his chest. Josie heard a distinct chuckle before he put one hand on the edge of his desk and hefted himself up.

Josie shook her head. “So stubborn. When will you learn, champ?”

He rose to his full height and looked down his nose at her. When she didn’t blink or step back, he did, his thighs bumping against the desk. He cleared his throat. “Learn what?”

“Manners.”

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