“Why would the date be wrong? Gina learned from her mother to always put the date on the back of the picture. Every photograph on this table has a date written on the back of it. Why would any of them be wrong?”

“But she’s obviously not pregnant.”

“Obviously not.”

“Wow.” Mendez shook his head as if he’d been dazed. “We’re busting our asses trying to find out who Haley’s father is. We don’t even know who her mother is.”

“Who’s the daddy?” Vince said, feeling a whiplash coming on. “Who’s the baby?”

Chapter 59

59

“When is my mommy going to stop being dead?”

Anne brought a bowl of tomato soup to the kitchen table and sat down next to Haley on the banquette. Haley had tossed the question out like she was asking the time of day. Matter-of-fact in the way of small children whose lives drift in and out of fantasy. Death was unreal, but a unicorn might live in the bushes outside the house.

“People don’t stop being dead, sweetheart,” Anne said quietly.

Engrossed in her coloring, Haley didn’t even look up. “Yes, they do. They turn into angels.”

“Oh. Well, yes,” Anne said, once again feeling out of her depth. She had no way of knowing what belief system Marissa Fordham had subscribed to or what she had instilled in her daughter. “Then what happens?”

“They go to heaven and fly around, and they come for Christmas, and whenever we need them.” She looked up at Anne then. Some of the blood had left the whites of her eyes, but the effect was still startling. “How come you don’t know that?”

“I do,” Anne said. “I was just testing you. Have some of your soup, sweetie. It’ll feel good on your throat.”

Haley knelt on the cushion of the banquette and leaned over her bowl, blowing on the soup to cool it.

Anne glanced at the paper she had been drawing on. Oddly shaped cats and kittens of all colors ran along the bottom third of the page. She wondered how Vince would feel about having a kitten in the house. Or two.

She reached over and brushed Haley’s hair back to keep the ends from dipping in the soup, and revealed the dark bruises that ringed her throat. They had faded to a mix of blue and yellow. She could almost feel Peter Crane’s hands close around her throat and had to swallow hard a couple of times to push the feeling away. She hadn’t been able to wear anything tight around her neck since, no turtlenecks, no scarves, no short necklaces.

“Where’s your mommy?” Haley asked. She scooped up a spoonful of soup and sipped at it, giving herself an instant tomato-soup mustache.

“She’s an angel in heaven,” Anne said.

“That’s good. Does she know my mommy?”

“Maybe.”

“Where’s your daddy?”