It wasn’t that she didn’t think he deserved to die for the reprehensible things he had done. She could scarcely comprehend that the man she had been married to, the father of her beautiful daughter, had conducted such a vile, secret life and successfully hidden it from her and the rest of the world for almost a decade.
The full extent of his crimes had sent shock waves through their close-knit community. As it turned out, Katie Lambert wasn’t the only girl he had abducted. The police had found three additional drivers’ licenses in his cabin belonging to missing girls from as far away as Pennsylvania, triggering a full-blown investigation by the FBI. A massive search of the area had been underway for months, but the most they could realistically hope to recover at this point were remains.
The doorbell rang, and her mother called to her from the family room, “Sonia! Ray and Henry are here. I’ll get the door.”
She turned down the gas ring to simmer and hurriedly wiped her hands on her linen apron just as Henry burst into the kitchen. “I made this for you,” he announced, waving a drawing of a smiling woman with elongated fingers dancing in a field of flowers beneath a cheery sun. “I had to color you purple because the puppy ate my brown crayon and my dad said we didn’t have time to go to the store to buy any more.”
“I love it!” Sonia exclaimed, beaming at Henry as she embraced him. My dad. He said it with such pride that it melted Sonia’s heart. He’d blossomed into quite the little talker over the past few weeks—even Jessica was finding it hard to get a word in edgewise. Henry was still pale from years of captivity, and small for his age, but Evelyn was doing her level best to fatten him up with an endless supply of casseroles and baked goods, which he eagerly devoured. He looked and acted like a completely different kid with his new haircut and chirpy demeanor. Even his big, brown eyes, so like his young mother’s, had lost their air of sadness.
Only from his profile could Sonia detect any resemblance at all to Finn—not enough for anyone to pick up on. That would remain her and Ray’s secret, at least until Henry was grown. Ray had kept Katie’s sketchbook, in case he decided to tell Henry the truth one day. It was evidence that should probably have been turned over to the police, but with Finn dead, it hardly mattered.
“Jessica’s waiting for you in her room. She has a new Lego set she wants you to help her with,” Sonia said, ruffling Henry’s hair affectionately before releasing him to run off down the hallway. A part of her wished Celia could have met him—the grandchild she’d always wanted—but it would have been disingenuous to have kept the truth of his real parentage from her. It was hard enough keeping it from her own mother, but Evelyn couldn’t be trusted not to let it slip.
The consequences of CPS getting involved in the situation didn’t bear thinking about. Henry needed a father, and Ray needed a family—an equation with a simple solution as far as Sonia was concerned. Ray had run from love for far too long. Now he would discover just how much love he had to give. Her instincts about him had been right—he was a good man. He would be a great father, sensitive and caring, and able to understand Henry’s needs in a way few others could.
“I can’t believe the change in Henry in a few short months,” Sonia said, when Ray appeared in the kitchen with Evelyn’s arm tucked into his.
“He talks non-stop from the minute he gets up in the morning,” Ray said, peering into the pot on the stove. “That sure smells good.”
“It’s a chicken chowder recipe from my childhood,” Sonia replied. “Mom always made the best chowder.”
“We’re going old-fashioned all the way today—apple pie and homemade vanilla ice cream for dessert,” Evelyn chimed in, dragging him over to show him the freshly baked pie she had left cooling on the counter. “The quickest way to a man’s heart is my pie crust,” she added, with a wink. “I’ll leave you two to catch up. I’m going to check on the kids.”
Sonia caught Ray’s eye and gave a wry grin, shaking her head as she set a pitcher of lemonade on the table. It was no secret Evelyn had done a one-eighty and was now on a mission to marry off her daughter to the eligible bachelor-next-door. Unfortunately for Evelyn, she was barking up the wrong tree. Ray was planning to put the house up for sale and move back to Virginia with Henry.
He was ready to put this chapter of his life with its haunting memories behind him now that he’d fully recovered from his accident—an accident the police were now looking at as suspicious given Finn’s attempts to get his hands on Celia’s money.
Ray’s friends and neighbors back in Richmond were eager to meet Henry—purportedly a nephew he was in the process of adopting. It would be a fresh start for Henry in a Kindergarten class where no one knew his history. The further he was from Booneville, the less chance of anyone discovering the truth.
Sonia harbored some measure of regret at not being able to tell Jessica that she really did have the little brother she’d always longed for. But Jessica and Henry, more than anyone, had to be protected from the awful truth. It was more than they could handle at their impressionable ages. That was something she and Ray agreed on. It still turned her stomach to think of what Henry had suffered through—the bunker he had lived in, and the terrible things he’d been forced to witness: Finn choking his mother, tethering her to an iron ring like an animal—the never tell them things.
“How did the
