Nearly three years ago, the man who had murdered Greg had made good on his lingering threat to return to kill the rest of Greg’s family. In the process, he had abducted Timmy and tried to shoot Laurie before being killed by police.
“This isn’t about me. I just want to help.” She told him what she’d learned from Wyatt, the boy on the beach. “At least it’s a possible explanation for the skim board being in the water. It sounds like the kids were all sharing it, and may have left it where the tide pulled it out.”
“Better than bad news at least. Honestly, I think Marcy could use anything to give her hope right now. Can you go tell her? She’s in their room. Andrew’s pulling the car around for me. We’re going to the copy shop to print out some fliers with Johnny’s picture. The police already put us in contact with a pilot who can fly over the east end with a missing child banner.”
“That’s a good idea. How are the twins?”
“Ramon took them down to the lobby to get a soda.”
“They don’t know yet?”
He shook his head. “What are you going to tell Timmy?”
“I’m about to talk to him now. I’ll make sure he knows not to say anything to the twins, but I have to tell him. You know Timmy.”
“Of course. He’s got your and your dad’s ability to sense when something’s wrong. If you don’t shoot straight with him, his imagination might come up with something even worse.”
Laurie was beginning to wonder if fiction could be any worse than their reality.
* * *
Marcy pulled Laurie into a quick hug when she walked into their suite.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Marcy said tonelessly. “I hate to say this, but I feel like you’re the only one who really understands what I’m going through right now. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have even said that.”
Laurie pulled Marcy toward the sofa so they could take a seat. Laurie understood the point she was making. In one sense, Laurie had experienced a worse tragedy, losing her husband to a violent crime and living for five years under a threat of more harm to come to her and Timmy. On the other hand, Laurie’s loss was in the past, while Marcy still didn’t know the extent of hers.
“How are the girls?” Laurie asked.
“Too smart for what I can handle right now,” Marcy said. “Ramon’s watching them, but I’m not sure how long I can keep them at bay.”
“I told Timmy.”
“Is he all right?”
“I can’t tell. But he at least knows. He’s in our room and was planning to say a prayer for Johnny.”
“I know this sounds crazy,” Marcy said, “but I think at some level I was always expecting something like this to happen. Like he was never completely mine. We always thought of Johnny as our miracle child.”
Laurie had never pried about the details surrounding Andrew and Marcy’s decision to adopt their first child, but she empathized with the situation. She and Greg had tried for more than two years after they married to become pregnant with Timmy. In the back of her mind, she had been wondering if she and Alex might face similar hurdles once they began trying to add to their family.
“By the time Andrew proposed to me,” Marcy said, “I had already accepted what I had been told by my doctors—that I would never be able to conceive. We simply assumed it would be just the two of us. Plenty of couples opt not to have children.”
“And yet now you have three.”
“Funny how that works,” Marcy said. “We adopted Johnny as a newborn, and two and a half years later, he started saying he wanted a sibling. And not just any sibling. He was very specific: two baby sisters. Obviously, he was too young to understand why that was impossible, but nine weeks later, I found out I was pregnant. Then a few weeks after that, we learned we were having two twin girls. It’s as if Johnny predicted the family’s future.”
Laurie had not only been raised by a police detective, but also had been investigating true crime cases as a journalist for years. She couldn’t remember a single case where the principal suspect wasn’t someone with some kind of connection to the victim. Because Johnny was only seven years old, they had been assuming that the explanation was either a tragic accident in the water or a sociopath who had targeted Johnny at random. But now that Marcy was recounting Johnny’s backstory, Laurie realized there was another possible explanation.
“How is it that you ended up adopting Johnny, by the way?” she asked.
“We didn’t even plan for it,” Marcy said. “The priest in our parish was aware of our desire to be parents, despite the fertility issues. Out of nowhere, he asked if we were willing to take in a boy who was only days from being born. It was only seven years ago. I still remember the words he used. A young woman was ‘in trouble.’ The poor girl didn’t even know who the father was and was trying to find a family willing to adopt the baby.”
“No wonder you call him the miracle.”
“Johnny still doesn’t know,” Marcy said, choking back a sob. Laurie could tell she was fighting to keep her composure. “When you got together with Alex, it was such an added blessing that you and Timmy sort of resemble Johnny. He never had the experience of looking like anyone in his family.”
Marcy’s shoulders began to shake, and this time she could not stop herself from breaking into tears. Laurie rubbed Marcy’s back and did her best to comfort her.
“I’m so sorry, Marcy. I didn’t mean to upset you by asking about the adoption. I brought it up for a reason.”
As Marcy sniffled and slowly regained control over her breathing, Laurie could tell that she was eager to focus on what Laurie had to say.
“A random crime is every parent’s nightmare,” Laurie said, “but it’s extremely rare. You know how I follow all the true-crime message boards looking for cases for the show?”
Marcy nodded, her tears beginning to ebb.
“Last year, a child who had been missing from Missouri for more than six years was found in Toronto. It turned out that her parents had adopted her. The birth mother had regrets years later and managed to track down the adoptive family. She lured the girl away by telling her she was adopted and that she was the ‘real’ mother. She even pointed out that they had the same eye and hair color.”
When Marcy spoke, her voice was distant. “His light hair and eyes,” she said. “He knows he doesn’t look like the rest of us.”
“Do you know how to get hold of the biological mother?” Laurie asked.
“No, but Father Horrigan might. I’ll call him right now.”
Chapter 10
For half a moment, Marcy’s spirits brightened at the sound of Father Horrigan’s Irish lilt. “Marcy, what a wonderful surprise to hear from you. I thought you and Andrew were hobnobbing with the rich and famous this week in the Hamptons.”
She never ceased to marvel at his ability to commit to memory every last detail about the lives of his parishioners. Oh, how she wished this could just be a friendly call to fill him in on the wonderful memories they were forming on their trip.