She told him that she was the one at fault for pulling out of the driveway without turning around to see what was wrong.
And that was how Teddy’s eye got cracked. Emma was the one who pointed out that it looked like a tear was coming out of the crack in the bear’s eye. It was really just a reflection from the plastic piece that was crooked now because of the crack.
Blinking, Cal swore to himself that he wouldn’t cry.
He wasn’t in Massachusetts anymore.
And he wasn’t seven anymore, either.
Teddy was much older, too.
And there was nothing comforting about the bear now. Hadn’t been for a long, long time.
Teddy was there, not because he belonged to Claire, or because Cal named him, or because part of him yearned to believe the pack of lies Rose Sanderson had told him the day that Teddy got hurt.
The bear was there because he was the reason that Frank Whittier had been the sole suspect in the disappearance of Claire Sanderson.
The morning Claire went missing, she’d had Teddy at the breakfast table with her. There’d been a bit of a scene when she was told to put her bear away.
Just a short time later, Cal had seen the toddler in the back of his father’s car. He’d told the police that, thinking they’d go to his father and find Claire. Dad always saved the day.
And Dad loved Emma and Claire as much as he loved Cal. He loved them as much as Cal did. It never dawned on him that anyone would think his father would ever, ever hurt the little girl who was like a daughter to him.
But Frank Whittier had told the police that he hadn’t seen Claire after he left the house that morning. Because of Cal’s testimony, they searched Frank’s car anyway.
There was no evidence of the toddler there.
They found Teddy instead.
DNA technology hadn’t been readily available back then. And law enforcement officials apparently hadn’t gone looking for Teddy to test him once the technology became available or they’d have known they didn’t have him.
Chances were good that whoever took Claire Sanderson hadn’t touched the bear, anyway, or they’d have disposed of him, instead of leaving him on the floor of the car, just under the back of the driver’s seat, where Claire had obviously thrown him.
But what if they had?
Twenty-five years had passed. Nothing was going to bring little Claire Sanderson back to them.
Even if she was still alive, she was an adult now, with a life of her own.
Still, if there was the slightest chance…
A rustle outside the door told Cal his father was up. Probably to take one of the sleeping pills his father relied on when the blessed relief of unconsciousness evaded him, the nights the demons attacked.
Resisting the urge to go out and talk to him—to offer some comfort to the man who’d sired him and sacrificed the rest of his life for him—Cal listened for the click of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. For the running water that would follow.
Frank Whittier took sleeping pills often. Cal never left his writing to go watch him take them. His father would wonder what was going on if Cal walked in on him now.
And so he listened as his old man shuffled back to his room.
Cal had no idea who had stolen the evidence Ramsey was after. Especially after a quarter of a century. But he had to find out.
A resurgence of suspicion would kill his father.
Not touching the bear, Cal quietly closed the lid on the box.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WHEN HER PHONE RANG at ten o’clock on Thursday night, Morgan almost didn’t answer it.