“Where else would she go? She wouldn’t get sent to an orphanage or something, would she?”

“No, that won’t happen. First the authorities have to find out if she has any relatives.”

Wendy made a face. “That awful Mrs. Bordain. I pretended not to know her yesterday. She is such a word I’m not supposed to say.”

“You know her from Marissa?”

Wendy nodded. “But she doesn’t know me ’cause I’m just a kid and I might as well be a rock for all she could care.”

“She cares about Haley, though,” Anne said. “Haley is practically a granddaughter to her.”

“What-ever,” Wendy said. “She was always in Marissa’s face. ‘Do this, do that. Don’t do this. Don’t do that.’”

“Really?” Anne said, trying to reconcile what Wendy was saying with Milo Bordain’s portrayal of the grieving near-mother.

“I heard her yelling at Marissa once. She’s all, like, ‘I could take this all away from you!’” she said, doing a wicked impersonation of Milo Bordain. “And then Marissa was, like, ‘So could I, and you know it!’”

“I wonder what that meant,” Anne said.

Wendy shrugged. “I don’t know. Mrs. Bordain saw me then and yelled at me for eavesdropping.”

So could I, and you know it.

What could Marissa have taken away from her sponsor? Herself? Haley?

“How about some warm apple cider?” Anne suggested. “With cinnamon sticks. It’s such a nasty day.”

Anne got up and pulled her sweater around her as she went to the kitchen. The rest of the house was not enjoying the warmth of the fireplace in the family room.

She turned on just the light above the stove and moved around the room gathering what she needed. Even though it was still afternoon, the gloom outside was almost nightlike. The fog had never lifted all day, and the sky seemed only to get heavier and closer to the ground.

She wondered where Dennis was, if he had found a place out of the elements. The sheriff’s office was supposed to call her if they picked him up. How the hell was she supposed to help him now? Twelve or not, he would almost certainly be sent to a juvenile facility now until he was eighteen. She would try to get him sent to one with a good psychiatrist on staff ...

She turned and looked out the bank of windows, a chill going through her. She hated having the shades up when it was getting dark out. More often than not she felt like someone was out there looking in at her.

It didn’t occur to her as she lowered the blinds that someone actually was.

Chapter 77

77

“Did you know he wasn’t taking his medication?” Vince asked.

Nasser shook his head. “He’s very secretive about personal things. I picked up the prescriptions for him, but what happened after that was not my business.”