Page 70 of Welcome to Murder Week

“Oh. My. God.” Wyatt stands up.

“I don’t know if she’s dead or alive, but Polly told me years ago that the relatives who took her in over there in Indiana adopted her and gave her their own last name. She wasn’t a Crowley anymore.”

“What was her new last name?” Amity asks. “Maybe we could google her.”

“I’m so sorry, but I don’t remember.” Edwina says.

Is that it, then? The source of my mother’s stories was a girl named Sukie that she met in Indiana? Sukie gave her the Melling School book and told her stories about Willowthrop and the Peak District, a place she’d been torn away from after losing her mother? She must have wanted to keep the place alive by talking about it, sharing all the beautiful details—the bluebells, the swans in the river, the church with the crooked spire, the marshy moors, the grandeur of Stanage Edge. And my mother told the stories to me. But why did she hide all of this?

“Sanders!” Edwina shouts. “That’s the name. Sukie became Sukie Sanders.”

“That can’t be,” I say. “That’s not possible.”

“No, I’m sure that was it,” Edwina says, tapping her temple.

“Are you okay?” Wyatt asks me. “You’ve gone pale.”

“What is it?” Amity says.

“My mother’s maiden name was Sanders,” I say.

“Her family adopted Sukie Crowley?” Amity says.

“No,” I say. “I would have known about such a thing. My mother was an only child.”

“Did you have aunts or uncles? Cousins?” Amity says.

I shake my head, feeling like the answer is hovering around me, but I can’t grasp it.

“Why didn’t anyone ever tell me about Sukie?”

Wyatt crosses the room and crouches beside me. “Because, Watson,” he says gently. “Your mother wasn’t looking for Sukie Crowley. She was Sukie Crowley.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

“We must call Germaine,” Edwina says. “She’ll know how to find out more.”

Edwina dials the black rotary phone, which turns out to be real, and tells Germaine what we think we’ve figured out, though I still can’t believe it. We can hear Germaine’s voice, quickening and rising in pitch and volume.

“She’s going to close the shop and come right over,” Edwina says.

It doesn’t feel real. My mother has disappointed me so many times, but could she really have kept something like this from me? This isn’t just a white lie; it’s a lifelong betrayal. When was she going to tell me the truth? Before we left for England? On the plane somewhere over the Atlantic? Or was she going to wait until we were immersed in solving a fake murder that had nothing to do with why she’d wanted to come here?

“We’ve got to be right,” Wyatt says. “Susan Marie Crowley, nine-year-old Sukie, became Sukie Sanders.”

“Who took the name Skye?” Amity says. “It is close to Sukie.”

“My grandmother always thought it was a stupid name,” I say. “I never asked.”

“The magic arches, the crooked spire, the bluebells, the wayyour mother must have told you about Stanage Edge, they weren’t a story, they were memories,” Wyatt says.

Edwina takes a bottle of sherry from a cupboard and pours four little glasses.

“Are we celebrating?” Amity says.

“I’m not up for that,” I say.

“This is medicinal.” Edwina hands me a glass. “You’ve had a shock.”

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