She picked up the stack of Polaroids and rifled through them again. “I wonder if…”

“What is it?” Andrea turned to stare at her sister when Hannah stopped speaking abruptly.

“It’s this one.” Hannah pointed to the picture. “There’s a gold chain around her neck and that pendant…I know I’ve seen it before.”

Andrea grabbed the photo for a second look. “You’re right. I’ve seen it, too. It’s a Celtic cross, isn’t it?”

“That’s right!” Hannah’s eyes widened as she recognized the subject of the photograph. “Norman didn’t take these pictures, Andrea.”

“He didn’t?”

“He couldn’t have taken them. That’s Miss McNally, our seventh-grade math teacher. And she left Lake Eden to get married three years ago.”

Andrea stared down at the photo in shock. “Miss McNally is the only one who ever wore a cross like that. Norman’s father must have taken these pictures. What are we going to do?”

Hannah’s brain shifted gears. “First, we’re not going to tell anybody about them. Norman’s father is dead. It’s too late to do anything to him now. Making this public would just mortify his mother and embarrass the women. “

“That makes sense,” Andrea agreed quickly. “Do you suppose Norman knows what his father did?”

“I don’t know. Where did you find these pictures?”

“They were in the storeroom. I found them in a little box under a stack of old X-rays. It was filthy back there, Hannah. There must have been an inch of dust on those X-rays and…” Andrea stopped, realizing what she’d just said. “Norman doesn’t know about them, Hannah. There was just too much dust. I’m almost positive that stack of X-rays hadn’t been touched in at least a year.”

Hannah breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Do you think you got all of the photos?”

“I think so. I dumped the box in that envelope and I spent at least five minutes looking for more.” Andrea reached out to gather up the photos and turned them facedown. “What are we going to do with them, Hannah?”

“We’re going to destroy them. I’ll throw them in my fireplace tonight.”

“You can’t do that,” Andrea objected. “You’ve got a gas log. You’re not supposed to burn anything in your fireplace. Maybe we should shred them. I’d do it at work, but Al would ask me what I was shredding.”

“Let’s try industrial-strength stain remover,” Hannah suggested as she slid off her stool. “I used it to clean the rust stains off my bathroom sink and I’ve got some left in the bottle. It’s supposed to take anything off anything.”

Andrea followed Hannah to the sink and watched as she poured several inches of stain remover into the bottom of her stainless-steel sink. They dropped in one of the photos and Hannah moved it around with the handle of one of her long mixing spoons. It took a minute or so, but eventually the photo bleached out to white.

“It works!” Andrea sounded surprised. “How did you know to do that?”