Chapter 8: What Gerald Knew
Patricia worked fast.
Within two hours she had contacted the county, requested an emergency review of Lily's intake file, and placed a formal preservation hold on all records connected to Gerald Marsh's surrender of the child.
She made three calls in Carol's kitchen while Ryan and I sat at the table and Carol made tea that nobody drank.
"The DNA process can be expedited given the circumstances," Patricia told us.
"Carol's cooperation removes the main obstacle.
We can have a sample collected today and results in forty-eight to seventy-two hours through the lab I use." She looked at Carol.
"With your permission."
"Yes," Carol said.
"Whatever she needs."
"She'll need to be told something," I said.
"Lily.
She's eleven.
She'll know something is happening."
"She already knows something is happening," Carol said quietly.
"She's known since you came to the door."
The sample was collected that afternoon by a technician Patricia arranged.
Lily sat very still in Carol's kitchen while it was done.
She kept looking at me.
Not with fear.
With something more complicated than fear.
When it was over and the technician had gone, Lily looked at Carol and said, "Is she my mom?"
Carol looked at me.
"We're trying to find out," I said carefully.
"Is that okay?"
Lily thought about it for a moment.
Then she said, "I used to dream about a woman who smelled like apples."
I had baked an apple pie that morning.
I had carried it across the street and held it while Carol answered the door.
I didn't say that.
I just nodded.
"Okay," Lily said.
And she went back upstairs.
Gerald Marsh was located the following morning.
Patricia had passed Ryan's account of the accident to a contact at the police department — a detective named Sousa who had worked traffic investigations for twelve years.
Detective Sousa pulled the original accident report and cross-referenced it with Gerald's vehicle registration.
The car Ryan had recognized was registered to Gerald.
It had been repainted six weeks after the accident.
The original color matched witness descriptions from the scene.
Gerald was brought in for questioning on a Tuesday.
Patricia called me while he was still in the interview room.
"He's talking," she said.
"What is he saying?"
"He's trying to make a deal.
Which means he knows enough to need one." A pause.
"He's asked for his attorney.
They're going to take a short break and then continue.
Sousa says he's scared."
"Good."
"There's something else." Patricia's voice shifted.
"Before he stopped talking, he said one thing that Sousa wanted me to pass to you directly." She paused.
"He said, 'The girl was never supposed to end up with my mother.
That wasn't the plan.'"
I stood very still in my kitchen.
"What was the plan?" I asked.
"That's what they're going to find out when they go back in."
Ryan came to stand beside me.
I put the call on speaker.
"Patricia," Ryan said.
"Who hired him?"
"He hasn't said yet.
But Sousa says the way he's talking — the way he's being careful around certain details — suggests he didn't act alone and the person above him has more to lose than he does."
"Someone paid him," I said.
"That's what it looks like."
Ryan and I looked at each other across the kitchen.
"Who would want Ava d*ad?" he said quietly.
It was the question we hadn't said out loud yet.
We'd been moving so fast — the necklace, Lily, the file, Gerald — that we'd stayed one step ahead of it.
But it was always there, waiting.
Who would want Ava d*ad?
And the answer that kept surfacing, the one I kept pushing back down because I didn't want it to be true, was this: whoever had taken Lily in the first place.
Because if Lily was our daughter — our firstborn, taken before Ava was even born — then someone had been watching our family for a very long time.
And when Ava had gotten old enough to start asking questions, or looking like Lily, or simply existing as proof that something had gone wrong —
Someone had decided she needed to be g*ne.
My phone buzzed.
A text from an unknown number.
May you like
*Stop asking questions.
You have one daughter left.*
