Chapters (46)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- thirteen
- fourteen
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- twenty-one
- twenty-two
- twenty-three
- twenty-four
- twenty-five
- twenty-six
- twenty-seven
- twenty-eight
- twenty-nine
- thirty
- thirty-one
- thirty-two
- thirty-three
- thirty-four
- thirty-five
- thirty-six
- thirty-seven
- thirty-eight
- thirty-nine
- forty
- forty-one
- forty-two
Kayla nodded. “That’s when she told Mom she’d take me, but Mom said it didn’t matter because I’d still be around. She’d still have a kid.”
If I’d worked up any empathy for Ginny Thompson, it died at that moment. Hearing that your mother wanted you not just out of the house, but out of her life ...
There were some parallels between me and Kayla—never knew our dads, mothers who weren’t exactly PTA material. But whatever my mother’s faults, I’d been the center of her universe.
Even when I’d gone to live with Paige, as overwhelmed as Paige had been, she’d loved and protected me. She’d risked and lost everything to keep me. I could not even begin to fathom Kayla’s experience. I only thanked God she had her own Paige now in Paula.
“Then Mom and Cody broke up.”
That startled me out of my thoughts. According to everything I’d heard, they’d still been dating at the time of Ginny’s death.
“When did that happen?” I asked.
“About a week before she died.”
“But they got back together?”
She shook her head. “Cody hadn’t come over to our place all week and I heard Mom telling Brandi that he wasn’t answering her text messages. Brandi gave Mom all these ideas for getting him back. She said Mom had to get Cody back.”
“Did you tell Chief Bruyn this after the murders?”
“I did, but Cody said I was lying, and Grandma said maybe I misunderstood. But I didn’t. Cody was the liar.”
If Cody had dumped Ginny and she’d desperately wanted him back, she might have threatened his family. Or threatened to expose his underground business. Either was a motive for murder.
nineteen
nineteen
Kayla and I talked a bit more after that. I asked her if she had anything to share on the case��any tidbits she’d picked up in her detective work. She liked that and gave me information that offered a fascinating glimpse into Columbus and what a child can hear when no one’s paying attention to her.
I learned that the grocer, Mrs. Dean, was planning to leave her husband when their last child, Rob, went off to college. I learned that Mr. Martin told his wife he was looking for work, when really, he was just driving around, knowing there were no jobs for a fifty-year-old mill worker. I learned that Emily Rossi was sneaking into empty buildings to meet Rob Dean, though her parents told her she wasn’t supposed to see him anymore, and they were planning to run away after they graduated high school. All very interesting, even if it didn’t add anything to my investigation.