Page 81 of The Lake of Lost Girls

“God, Mom, that’s so unhealthy. Didn’t you think it was odd that Dad and Jess excluded everyone else?” I demanded, forgetting for a moment that Lieutenant Higgins was in the room.

Mom frowned. “What do you mean?”

“It’s strange, Mom. You have to see that. Why would you want us to have a relationship like that?” I swallowed, feeling sick. It was all too much. My heart felt like it was going to collapse under the weight of each new revelation. My mind swirled with thoughts of the file Sergeant O’Neil had given me. The copy of the transcript of my dad’s interview from 1999. The pictures of his car and the contents that had been found inside.

He had cheated on my mom with a girl Jess’s age. You couldn’t even describe it as an affair, given the age gap and power difference. He had preyed on her, plain and simple. Had there been more?

The Lieutenant opened the folder in front of her and pulled out some photographs. She laid them out in front of us.

Mom touched a photo of Jess with a shaking finger. These were pictures of a Jess that she didn’t know. I couldn’t tell her I had seen similar photos before—in the hiding place in my sister’s closet.

In one of the pictures, Jess was propped against a wall, a dazed smile on her face. She was obviously drunk. In another she stood next to a keg holding a red Solo cup, a joint pinched between her fingers.

Mom flipped through the photos, making noises that sounded like whimpers. I wondered what she was thinking as she faced the reality of who her daughter had really been.

There was a picture of Jess and another girl with long golden brown hair in a dorm room hugging and smiling at the camera.

“That’s Daisy Molina,” Mom said to me. “That was Jessica’s roommate.”

“And that’s the blanket?” Lieutenant Higgins asked, pointing at the bed in the background where a blue and green plaid throw was draped haphazardly.

Mom’s eyes once again welled with tears. “Yes, that’s Jessica’s blanket.”

“Okay, one more thing, Mrs. Fadley, can you tell me about this ring?” Lieutenant Higgins pointed to a barely noticeable band of silver on Jess’s right ring finger.

Mom leaned closer, squinting at the photograph before looking up. “Ben gave Jessica that ring for her sixteenth birthday.”

“Did it have any sort of engraving on it?” the detective pressed.

My mother sniffed, wiping her wet cheeks. “Yes it did. It was a swirling pattern. Ben picked it out because it looked like the curlicues on the cover of a book he used to read to her every night when she was a girl. And he had her initials engraved on the inside, if I remember correctly. Cost us an arm and a leg. It was from Tiffany’s. But Ben insisted.”

Lieutenant Higgins leafed through the file and pulled out another photograph and placed it on the table. “Did it look like this?”

Mom glanced at the picture briefly before covering her mouth with her hand and closing her eyes. She nodded and Lieutenant Higgins put the photograph away.

“Where did that ring come from? Is it Jess’s?” I asked.

Lieutenant Higgins closed the file, her expression grim.

“We found this ring on the hand of another woman recovered from Baneberry Lake. The one we have in evidence also has initials carved on the inside,” the detective explained.

“JAF?” Mom whispered.

“Yes, JAF,” the detective confirmed solemnly.

“We compared dental records, and now have the DNA results from the state crime lab so I can say the body the ring was found on wasnotJessica’s.”

Mom was shaking, her teeth practically chattering.

“First her blanket, now her ring?” Mom rasped, her voice barely audible. She lifted her face, her eyes meeting mine. “What’s going on? Where’s my baby?”

I stared at the lieutenant, but she gave nothing away.

“Can you tell us who you found?” I had to ask, though deep down, I already knew.

The lieutenant’s face was somber as she answered. “It’s the third missing girl. Meghan Lambert.”

After seeing the pictures, Lieutenant Higgins asked us a few more questions. She asked Mom if Jess had ever said the blanket or the ring had gone missing. Mom stated that she had no idea the blanket had been missing, but the ring—Jess admitted to losing it before she disappeared.

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