“Is it still, Dad? Does she know where she is?”
“Of course she knows. She gets a little lost sometimes. Especially when something reminds her of Diane…?.”
“Everything there reminds her of Diane.”
His slightly older sister had been the life of Vienna when she’d been in high school. She’d loved their little town. Had planned to get married and have enough babies to fill up the school.
Until she’d fallen in love with Ramsey’s friend from nearby Greer, Tom Cook. And Ramsey had broken a promise to his mother. And Diane had ended up dead.
“Our life is here,” Earl said. Just as he had every other time they’d had this conversation.
“I know. It’s been good talking to you, Dad.”
“You hear anything from Marsha?”
“Not since the divorce. Alimony was paid in full a couple of years ago so we have no connection at all anymore.”
“Jimmy Downs says he saw her over in Greer a couple of months back. Says she’s married to some banker there and has a couple of kids. Twins.”
Jimmy Downs, owner of the gas station in town—one of America’s last full-service stations—talked too much.
“I’m not surprised she moved back home,” Ramsey said. He was a cop. He knew exactly where she lived. He knew she’d remarried, too. And didn’t care. “She wasn’t happy in Massachusetts. Too cold for her.”
Comfort Cove’s frigid winters hadn’t bothered his ex nearly as much as the chilly atmosphere inside their home had. His fault, according to her.
“Think about Thanksgiving, will you?”
“Yeah.”
But they both knew he wouldn’t be home. Not for Thanksgiving. Or Christmas.
“Don’t let the next time you visit be for a funeral, Ramsey.”
“I have to go, Dad.”
“Take care, son. I love you.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
Ramsey dropped the phone on his desk, thinking about funerals. And Vienna. His father might be a simple man living a simple life, but he knew how to put the hook in his son.
Ramsey didn’t blame Earl.
He just wished things were different.
CHAPTER TWO
“You ready, Ms. Hayes?” Detective Amber Locken stood next to Sandy at the one-way glass. Watching from the back of the small room, about two feet behind her mother, Lucy bit her lip. Sandy was sober. And she was on the brink of a breakdown.
“I’m ready.” The tremor in her mother’s voice tore at Lucy. Sandy had been traumatized enough—too much for any woman to endure and find a way back to normal.
“Okay, as soon as I give the signal, the curtain is going to open and you’ll see five men standing on numbered spaces. I need you to tell me if you recognize any of them. Then I’m going to ask you which one or ones you recognize. You’ll give me the number of the space the man is standing on. And then I’ll ask you where you know him from. I need you to tell me, as precisely as you can, where you remember seeing him and what he was doing at the time, got it?” Amber Locken, the Aurora, Indiana, detective in charge of the Sloan Wakerby case, spoke gently.
With her hands clutched together, Lucy sank back against the far wall. She was an observer, not a participant. She couldn’t save Sandy this time. She needed to. She wanted to. But she couldn’t.
She’d be here, though, ready to pick up the pieces. Get through this, Mama. I’m right here.
Sandy’s trembling was visible from several feet away as