The Truth About Comfort Cove

“I’m not surprised.”

Tired of feeling like a fly under a microscope, she turned to Ramsey. “Tell me what Lori told you.”

There could still be some mistake. Her first course of action was to find it. And then she’d think about the world that was pressing at her mind.

“She meant to run Claire’s DNA against Frank’s, but she’d put his in her private database, the same place she had yours. She set the machine to look for a match and got a phone call. When she turned around she saw that she had a match for the Claire Sanderson DNA sample we got from Emma. But it wasn’t Frank, which made no sense to her, and then she saw that she’d set the search for the entire private database, not just Frank’s sample. She ran a second match with just the two specimens—yours, which you donated for your DNA lesson, and Claire’s, which we sent to her. She got an identical match a second time.”

“She’s sure it’s my DNA and not a second sample of Claire’s?”

“Yeah, she’s positive. And this also explains the DNA from the Buckley mansion that we thought was Claire’s. It was yours. From when you went there undercover.”

“The match that came through after we got Claire’s DNA from Emma.”

“Right. The original sample of Claire’s DNA from the Buckley home was taken from a piece of hair found in the box of hair ribbons.”

“Not on a hair ribbon.” She could focus on the case. That felt normal.

“Right.”

“I spent a bit of time in Gladys’s home. Amber had coached me. She wanted me to use my time there to do an unofficial sea

rch of the place, to see if I could find anything. I looked through those hair ribbons.”

“Our best guess is that when you were there undercover you shed a hair that made it to Lori’s lab with the rest of the evidence that was later recovered from the scene.”

“What are the chances of that?”

“There’s always that one small thing that ends up being the key to the truth.” Ramsey was talking to her the same way he always did. As if they were equals. Professionals.

“So she didn’t test my DNA sample against the one we sent of Claire’s from the ribbons Emma brought in? She only tested it against the sample we found of Claire’s DNA at the Buckley mansion?” It was her job to look at all the angles. To find the holes in logic that the D.A. would look for. Because the defense attorney would be sure to find it, too.

“No. She ran them both.”

“So according to my DNA, I’m Claire Sanderson.” She could say the words. She couldn’t fathom what they meant.

“Yes.”

She looked at Dr. Zimmerman. “What are my chances of coming out of this with my mind intact?”

“That depends on you,” the woman said, her expression serious. “Right now you’re coming out of a state of shock. That’s normal. The future depends on your ability to accept all of the emotions that will be coming at you as you go forward.”

“Accept them.”

“Let yourself feel them, Detective. Experience them and they’ll lose, at least in part, their ability to harm you. Push them away and you risk the chance of being emotionally displaced for the rest of your life.”

She couldn’t feel anything.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” the doctor said. “You’ve got a tough road ahead of you.”

Her whole life had been a tough road.

A fter spending about half an hour with Dr. Zimmerman, Lucy took the doctor’s card, and with Ramsey’s arm around her shielding her from the people milling about his squad room, they left the Comfort Cove police headquarters.

Stepping out into the day, sunlight blinded her. But she liked the feel of it on her skin. She wasn’t cold. But she wasn’t warm, either.

She didn’t know what she was. Or who.

Dr. Zimmerman had told her that questions were going to bombard her. She was to let them come. To take them one at a time. And some of them not at all. She was to let go of anything that was too overwhelming and visit it again later.