The Truth About Comfort Cove

“Has Frank seen it?”

“No.”

“Is he here with you?”

“No. I came early because Emma and Chris have asked me to officiate their wedding and I had to get a single-use certification to do so. My father and Morgan are due in on Friday.”

“You said you showed the bear to Emma. Have you seen Rose, as well?”

The professor hadn’t visited his one-time almost-stepmother during his last visit to town. From what Emma had told Lucy, Cal hadn’t yet forgiven Rose for turning on his father.

“Not yet. We’re having dinner tonight.” Cal didn’t seem all that eager.

Because Rose had done him a great disservice? Or because, even now, he knew that his father had done the worst disservice to Rose?

“Will Sammie be coming with Frank and Morgan to the wedding?” Morgan’s ten-year-old son reportedly adored both Frank and Cal.

“No. He’s spending the weekend with his grandparents. With Frank and Rose seeing each other for the first time since we…left Comfort Cove…we just figured Frank deserved a bit of time to deal with things without having to keep up appearances for Sammie’s sake.”

Maybe Cal Whittier knew that there was a chance his fat

her would be arrested upon his return to Comfort Cove and he hadn’t wanted Sammie to witness that.

But Ramsey was beginning to believe that Cal really was what he seemed. A good man who only wanted to do what was right.

A man who’d been a seven-year-old child the day Claire Sanderson had been abducted. One who truly did not know if his father had anything to do with the little girl’s disappearance.

Had the older man played his son, just as he was playing the rest of them?

Thanking Cal for the package and telling him he looked forward to seeing him on a much happier occasion that weekend, Ramsey returned to the squad room with one thought in mind.

To get the bear to the lab for testing against the sample of water taken from the storm sewer near Claire Sanderson’s home. And to have it checked for prints, too. By most accounts, the bear had been in Claire’s possession when the kidnapper had grabbed her.

Ramsey could almost promise whose prints they’d find.

Of course, Frank Whittier would claim that his prints were on the bear because he’d lived with the little girl, had picked it up to tuck it into bed with her. Or some similar, logical explanation.

But Frank’s days of skating the law due to too little evidence were almost through.

Cal Whittier had delivered his father to the police twentyfive years before. And he might have just unwittingly done so again.

And this time, the police weren’t stopping short of a conviction.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

L ucy traced her finger over chubby rosy cheeks. Those big blue eyes…they held nothing but joy. Allison Elizabeth Hayes. That image had always been her strength, her drive. She felt that her sister had been calling out to her to take care of their mother and never to stop looking until she’d found Allie.

At home in her bedroom, she sat cross-legged on the floor with a small wooden box open in front of her. Inside were the only photos they had of Allie. Sandy had been poor and single, without close family, when she’d had Allie. Back in the day when people had to not only own a camera but pay to have film developed.

After the rape, Sandy had rid herself of everything that reminded her of the daughter she’d lost. She couldn’t cope with the reminders. Her doctor had suggested that she pack them away until the grief and anger passed. Sandy had given them away instead. Only these few photos had survived. They’d been in Lucy’s possession since she was four. She’d seen her mother going through the box and crying, with a fifth of liquor in her other hand. That night, after Sandy had passed out, she’d taken the box into her room and hidden it.

Sandy had never asked her about the box.

Lucy had never fessed up to what she’d done.

Ironically, here she was, twenty-some years later, sitting

on her own bedroom floor, just as Sandy had been that night, looking at the same pictures, with the same agony eating away at her.