Page 28 of Husband Missing

Roe Hoyt. Josie knew the name.

Dropping to her knees, she shuffled through some of the pages until she found something familiar enough to jog her memory. For Trinity’s benefit, she tried to push out some sort of explanation but the only words she uttered were, “Lila Jensen.”

As if Noah being abducted wasn’t enough, now reminders of the worst parts of her past were thrust into her face.

“Did you just say Lila Jensen?” Trinity said. “That file is abouther? As in evil, psychotic, conniving, kidnapping, murdering, child-abusing, demon arsonist bitch, Lila Jensen?”

Josie quickly shuffled the contents of the file back into the folder and placed a palm over it, holding it closed. “That’s the only Lila I ever knew, yes.”

“I don’t understand.”

A memory burst across Josie’s mind: visiting Lila in prison after she’d finally been made to pay for at least a fraction of her crimes. Josie had only gone because she hoped Lila would name some of her accomplices, specifically the ones she’d employed to harass Josie. It was a fool’s errand. Josie could have offered Lila freedom and lifetime immunity, and she wouldn’t have given Josie what she wanted, just out of spite. Lila had always been an Olympic champion when it came to spite.

She hadn’t given Josie the name of a single accomplice. Instead, from the other side of the inches-thick glass partition in the prison waiting room, Lila had offered one tiny scrap of information, scribbling it in the condensation her breath left on the glass.

An inmate number.

“When I saw Lila in prison,” Josie said, “not when she was dying. Before that. She was mad I had had a part in putting her there. Of course she blamed me. I was the cause of every bad thing that ever happened to her. I think I blasted her about what she’d done to me. Taking me from you guys. Since everything was always about her, she turned it around, implying her childhood was worse than mine.”

Ithadbeen worse than Josie’s. Exponentially worse. Lila had been put into foster care at the age of five. Although she’d blackmailed a judge into destroying her foster care file, there was a social worker who had remembered most of what it said. Because all the things that happened to Lila were so horrific andso disturbing, that information had stuck with the woman for decades.

Trinity folded her arms over her chest. “Lots of people have awful childhoods. That’s no excuse for what she did to…well, every person she met!”

“I wanted to know where she came from,” Josie said softly. “Where does someone that cruel, that evil, come from?”

“The bowels of hell,” Trinity answered even though it was a rhetorical question. “That’s where she came from.”

“Lila had found out the identity of her biological mother,” Josie said. “Roe Hoyt.”

It was Roe Hoyt’s inmate number Lila had drawn onto the partition glass. Gretchen had tracked down a copy of the case file and given it to Josie, in the event that one day, Josie might be ready to read it. Though Josie had gotten the broad strokes from Gretchen, she’d never actually read the file, never even cracked it open, instead tucking it away in the bottom of some storage bin.

Now, here it was, forcing her to see inside it. She still didn’t know why she’d kept it.

“And Roe Hoyt was the Bride of Satan?” Trinity asked.

Josie nodded sadly. “You saw the photos. Roe Hoyt had five babies besides Lila, and she killed them all.”

“Oh God.” Trinity got down next to Josie and slowly slid the file out from under Josie’s hand. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to be reminded of all this right now.”

Trinity stood and lifted the lid of Colette’s bin just enough to slide the file inside. Then she closed it with an audible click. It was enough to settle some of the nausea in Josie’s stomach.

But the file wouldn’t be the only thing related to Lila they found today.

Josie leaned forward, pawing through the small heap in front of her. Clearing away more Christmas decorations, she sawan old wooden box, flung open, face down. Like the kind her grandmother had used for storing her fancy silverware.

“What’s that?” Trinity peered over Josie’s shoulder. “Flatware?”

“No, not exactly.”

Josie turned the box over. As expected, it wasn’t silverware that had spilled from inside. It was decades’ worth of Lila Jensen’s trophies. Mementos she had kept from the multitude of lives she’d ruined.

TWENTY

The scar along the side of Josie’s face tingled. She hadn’t thought about this box in years. Not since she buried it on a shelf in the basement. Noah had been the one to move it from there to here after the flood. Naturally, this abomination had survived, taking on no water damage. Even Lila’s relics were untouchable. Josie wasn’t sure why she’d kept it all this time. Maybe because it had meant something to Lila and having control over something that mattered to that unholy bitch made Josie feel a little powerful. Or maybe it was a physical reminder of the pain she still carried from Lila’s abuse that she just wasn’t ready to part with because, despite all the therapy, all the “work” she had done over the years to erase the effects of her Lila-inflicted trauma, Josie still wasn’t free of it. Maybe her psyche was waiting for the day that this horrid box didn’t matter anymore.

“What the hell is all that?” Trinity asked.

The inside of the box was lined with a worn dark red velvet. The fabric along the lid had come loose along one of the edges, revealing a small gap. Had there been something hidden in there? “This is Lila’s stuff.”

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