Page 83 of Her Dying Secret

Josie turned and studied them. Mira was sitting upright on the gurney. Somehow, Rosie had managed to fit her body onto the bed as well. Rosie gazed up at her mother with adoration and fear. “What does that mean? Accountable?”

Mira stroked her hair out of her face. “It means that when you do something bad, like break a law, you have to face the consequences—the things that happen when you break laws.”

Rosie whispered, “Like go to prison?”

A tear rolled down Mira’s face. “Yes, honey. I’m so sorry. But you will be safe. I promise. There is someone I have in mind to take care of you, and you’ll love her.”

Rosie clutched at Mira’s waist. “No. I don’t want someone else. I want you.”

Mira squeezed the girl and stroked her hair until Rosie fell asleep, the events of the day too much for her.

Josie walked over and stood at the back doors. “We’re going to get you out of here soon.”

Mira nodded. “Will you call Rebecca? See if she’ll speak with me? With both me and Seth in prison, she’s the closest family. I don’t want my mother involved in Rosie’s life. Not that she would agree to it.”

Josie had a feeling that in spite of Rebecca’s strong negative feelings toward Seth, she wouldn’t hesitate to take in Rosie. “Of course.”

She started to walk away. Noah was almost to the bank.

Mira said, “I’m sorry for all this. You probably want to know?—”

Turning, Josie held up a hand. “Mira, we’re going to need to talk to you at some point to close out our investigation, but it doesn’t have to be now.”

“But I?—”

“I’ll need to read your Miranda rights,” Josie said.

Although Mira was a victim, Josie was guessing that the District Attorney would want to press charges against her for not telling the police about Seth right away. Then there was the Shane Foster matter, but that was out of Josie’s jurisdiction.

Mira squeezed Rosie more tightly against her body, like she might never get a chance to hold her again. “Go ahead.”

Josie recited her Miranda rights. When she asked Mira if she understood them, Mira answered yes. Then she sighed. “Everything I said back there was true. I was practically a baby when I met Seth. I fell hard for him. By the time I got pregnant with Ryan, I started noticing that he would act strangely sometimes, become fixated on odd things. I went along with it because I loved him. I loved him so much, and we were having this baby. But his suspicions got so much worse. He was convinced that some authorities somewhere were tracking him, and they were going to take Ryan.”

“Those were delusions,” Josie said. “From what I understand.”

Mira nodded. “I didn’t understand at the time. I honestly thought we could have a real family life. Maybe we could have. I always wanted the opposite of what my parents had, and we might have been able to do it except that then he disappeared with Ryan. I saw him again when he was about five years old but then I didn’t see him again until he was ten years old. By that time, I had Rosie and I was so afraid he’d take her from me, too. Permanently.”

“You didn’t talk with police?” asked Josie. “Try to petition for custody?”

Tears streamed down Mira’s battered face. “I wanted to but I was broke and terrified. I had no support system. My parents were horrible. Once, I went to the police station and talked to the officer at the front desk, trying to explain to him that Seth had taken my son and I couldn’t find them. He never even wrote anything down. Said it was a matter for the courts, not the police, because we were both on Ryan’s birth certificate and there was no custody order in effect for the police to enforce.”

Sadly, Josie knew this was true. Technically, Seth hadn’t done anything wrong by leaving with Ryan. Had Mira sued him for custody later, the fact that he had disappeared and kept Ryan from her would have counted against him, but that would have been of no help to her when she was trying to locate them.

Mira sucked in a shaky breath and continued. “There was a time that I threatened to sue Seth for custody. I wasn’t sure how I’d do it, but I thought I’d figure it out. The next time he came back without Ryan, I threatened him. That was the first time he ever laid a hand on me in anger. It was terrifying. He said I would never see Ryan or him again if I tried anything like that. Then he kept Ryan from me for five years. I was in so deep I couldn’t see a way out. I was completely focused on just trying to keep Seth with me as much as possible and hope that he would let me see Ryan again. I never knew where he kept him. There were times I tried to follow him but eventually I’d lose him. Then one day he caught me. He beat me badly that time. Then he said that if I ever tried to follow him again, I wouldn’t see my son for the rest of my life. Sometimes—” She broke off, stifling a sob. Rosie stirred in her arms but didn’t wake. “Sometimes I worried he was dead.”

“He was with Deirdre Velis,” Josie said. “Here in Denton. Seth’s ex-girlfriend.”

“When I finally got to see Ryan again—when he was ten—he told me that I wasn’t his mother. A woman he called Dee was his mother. Neither he nor Seth would tell me anything about her. All I knew was that her name was Dee. Seth swore they weren’t in a romantic relationship but now, looking back, I think Deirdre and I were always in a battle for Seth, and for Ryan, without ever having met.”

“Rosie never met her?” Josie asked. She took a quick glance over her shoulder. Noah was on the bank now, talking with Gretchen.

“If she did, she was too young to remember,” Mira said. “Or she hasn’t told me. I don’t know. But Rosie is all mine.” She looked down at Rosie’s sleeping face and touched her cheek.

“Seth gave you access to Rosie?” asked Josie.

“I was with her almost all the time until she went to school. I couldn’t believe that I got Seth to agree to put her in school. April helped with that, and I promised to make sure she only ate things he approved. He took her away a few times when she was a toddler but never for more than a few weeks. I lived in absolute terror that he would take her away completely like he did with Ryan.”

Josie’s ankle started to throb from standing on it so long. She knew it wasn’t broken but it was going to take a week or two for it to stop hurting. “After April called DHS, that’s what he did, didn’t he?”

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