Page 77 of Her Dying Secret

Baskets of toys and stuffed animals dotted the room. A corkboard stood near a small table filled with all kinds of crafting supplies. It was lined with a child’s drawings. Each one had a set of initials drawn in the bottom right-hand corner.

R.L.

Rosie Lee. Not Summers. In the house of Deirdre, the girl would use Seth’s last name. How Deirdre must have resented Mira. What better way to get back at her and claim the family she had always wanted with Seth than to make a home here for Rosie? Josie wondered if, every time Seth seemed to drift back to Mira, taking Rosie with him, Deirdre manipulated him into returning so that she could keep the child she always wanted.

The child who was still out there somewhere with her real mother. Were they still alive?

Josie turned back toward Gretchen and Noah. Now Turner stood behind them. “Pretty creepy, huh, sweetheart?”

“We have to find them,” Josie said.

FIFTY-SEVEN

For what felt like the hundredth time, Josie stood in front of the corkboard in the great room, staring at Rosie Summers’s drawing. Behind her, Noah, Gretchen, and Turner sat quietly at their desks. Even Turner was still for once. No tapping fingers, no missed baskets. They were waiting for her to come up with some brilliant idea.

So was she.

Turner’s voice was nasally from the broken nose Seth Lee had given him. He had at least gone home to change into a fresh suit. “If that’s a map, it’s not a map of that creepy furniture place.”

Maybe she had been too focused on the idea that Rosie and April had always been in the same place. She had just assumed that wherever Seth went, so did April and Rosie, that he’d been carting April around like a piece of cargo.

Gretchen said, “Noah, did you get in touch with the attorney for Seth and Deirdre?”

“Yep. The DA talked to him as well. Offered them both the possibility of lesser charges for what they did to April if they told us where to find Rosie and Mira. Their lawyer strongly advised them to do it, but they’re not talking.”

Josie heard Turner shift the ice pack on his knee. “The kid is ten years old. What a couple of garbage humans.”

Josie stepped forward and took down the photos of Seth and April as well as the registration document for the box truck, uncovering the pin marking the produce stand. If Josie was right, Mira Summers had been meeting Seth there so she could visit with Rosie. Mira’s prints were all over the drawing that Rosie had made. The girl had given her mother a map. Not to find April—the sweet pea was nowhere on the drawing—but to find her. If Rosie was being kept at Furnished Finds, she could have just told Mira that.

Gretchen said, “There are a lot of garbage humans out there, Turner.”

“Whoa, did you just call me Turner instead of jackass?”

Gretchen’s chair creaked. “Don’t get used to it, jackass.”

Josie took down the photos of Mira and Rosie. She had their faces memorized.

If Rosie wasn’t staying at Furnished Finds, that meant she was always with Seth—outdoors. If he was telling the truth about not knowing the full extent of April’s condition because he had left her with Deirdre, was it possible that he had discovered how badly Deirdre had been treating April and then took her from there? Had he taken her to wherever he was keeping Rosie outdoors? Was that why she’d had mud and grass in her stomach at the time of her death? That had to be the reason she was covered in American burnweed flowers.

Josie removed the photo of the Post-it note April had given Mira and then the picture of the American burnweed fluff. Now only the drawing and the large map of Tranquil Trails remained. She took a few steps back, her eye catching on the pin marking where Mira had stopped after the stabbings.

Why did she stop for twenty-two minutes?

Josie traced a line from the pin—where she had pulled onto the side of the road—into the meadow and across until the map stopped at the riverbank. Shane Foster’s body had been found about a mile upriver. Even if he’d been buried right on the side of the road, he couldn’t possibly be the reason she stopped. Not for so long after she and April had both just been stabbed. Josie’s finger trailed along the river toward the pin that marked the location of his remains.

She stopped halfway.

Her heart started hammering. She glanced from her finger to the drawing. The river. The drawing. She unpinned the drawing and brought it to the other side of the board, spinning it so it stood vertically.

Noah was beside her. “What do you see?”

Josie shook her head. “It was right here the entire time.”

Gretchen’s chair creaked and then she was on Josie’s other side. Turner wheeled up behind them in his chair, balancing the bag of ice on his swollen knee. Noah stepped to the side so he could see the corkboard. Josie pointed to a place along the river bank opposite the Tranquil Trails property. “The river bends sharply here. Look at the bank.”

It was a wide, flat area filled with trees. A small black square peeked out from the canopy. No bigger than a garden shed.

“This is all gone now,” Josie said. “This shed is demolished. These trees are gone. I saw it from across the river when we were following Luke and Blue.” She tapped the small light brown circles on the drawing. “These are the tree stumps. This weird gray thing that looks like a square teardrop? That’s this shed.”

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