‘Yes, sir. One day out of the blue, Helen called to tell me she’d had a baby, a little boy. I never even asked his name. It was less than a year after I left, and I guess it hit me the wrong way—’

‘What do you mean by the wrong way?’ Alyssa asked.

Mr. Greene’s chin bent toward his chest, putting his pink-tinged ears on full display. ‘I suppose it would be safe to say I got a tidge jealous. Anyhow, I got maudlin and nostalgic, ended up getting drunk, and so I poured my heart into a letter that would’ve made Hallmark proud and mailed it off. It wasn’t too long before I received a package with some pretty disturbing pictures printed off the computer. Things like a knife through a heart, dripping with blood, a decapitated animal, that type of thing. It was only the one time, and I’ve never gotten another thing.’

Alyssa sat up straighter. ‘Do you still have them?’

Alexander shook his head. ‘Nope. I actually took them to the police station one day to file a report, but they told me there was no way to prove they came from Alexandra and that, unless she did something overt, there wasn’t much they could do. I figured if she ever chose the overt route, I’d be dead, and by then it would be too late. Thought about calling Helen, but I’ll tell ya, I just wasn’t up for fighting that fruitless battle anymore. Maybe that makes me weak, but that’s the God’s honest truth.’

‘If you didn’t try to keep in touch after Helen remarried and had another child, how did you know she was divorced again?’ Alyssa asked.

Alexander’s eyes shifted to a mounted elk head on the wall. The long stretch of silence held more meaning than his words. ‘Helen called one night, weeping like she’d lost everything. It’s pretty shameful that my immediate thought was that our daughter had done something horrible. But when I finally got Helen calmed down a bit, she explained that, like me, her new husband had packed up and moved out, but this time, he’d taken their baby. Turns out I wasn’t the only one who felt terrorized by Alexandra. But even after all that, Helen refused to seek help, but I don’t know if that had more to do with her fear of how she’d be judged or if she herself was terrified of Alexandra’s retaliation and didn’t want to admit it.’

The detective in Alyssa shook her head at a person’s ability to turn a blind eye to danger, but the mother in her understood that fierce drive to protect her child no matter the cost. ‘Mr. Greene, do you have any idea where Alexandra lives now?’