Cassie shook her head. “I don’t know if it’s because she’s not worried or if it’s because she didn’t want me to worry. But she seemed normal.”
Laura narrowed her eyes. “What else happened?”
“Why do you think something else happened?”
“Because I’m recognizing that introspective look on your face that comes whenever you have an encounter.”
“That makes it sound like I talk to aliens.”
Laura rolled her eyes. “Because talking to ghosts is way more normal.”
“Fair point.” Cassie shrugged. “This little boy came up to me in the waiting room. He was there with his father. They were both alive, by the way.”
“Good to know. Continue.”
“He asked me to play with Sebastian.”
“Whoa.” Laura sat back. “He could see him?”
“It’s weirder than that. He could see him and I couldn’t. I think Sebastian is sometimes here, but I can’t tell. It kind of freaks me out.”
“Good. Now you understand how the rest of us feel.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Cassie gestured to Laura’s phone. “What’d you find?”
“Unfortunately, not much.” Laura sat upright now, grabbing her phone and flipping through a few different screens. “Sebastian Thomas, age nine. Kidnapped from the park. No witnesses. No connection that I can find to Sarah or the man they arrested who they thought had something to do with her disappearance. His name is Henry Fitzpatrick, by the way. Hank to his friends, if he even had any of those. Sebastian’s parents waited two years before they held a funeral for him. They never found a body.”
As though they’d summoned him, Sebastian materialized in the corner of the room. He looked from Cassie to Laura with eyes a shade brighter than the last time she’d seen him this close. He didn’t have the ghost train in his hand, and Cassie wondered where it went when he wasn’t playing with it.
“Hi, Sebastian.”
Laura looked up at her. “He’s here?”
She nodded. He was staring at both of them, but he didn’t speak. “Did you learn anything else?”
“His was a pretty high-profile case. Other kids had already gone missing, but the idea someone could take a child from a busy playground in broad daylight freaked out a lot of parents. He became the poster child for making sure you always had one eye on your kid.”
“Did they have any suspects?”
“They didn’t release anything publicly.” Laura cast her gaze around the room, and Cassie got the distinct impression she was trying to see if she could spot him. “No one was named.”
“He’s in the corner.” She pointed to him, and he looked at her finger as if she caught him stealing cookies from the cookie jar. She dropped it. “What about the parents? The babysitter?”
“Sebastian’s father died when he was two. His mom was a single parent working two jobs. The one job vouched for her. She was working when he went missing.”
“So, she had an alibi.”
“Yep.”
“And the babysitter?”
Laura sighed and stared into the corner Sebastian occupied. “She was eighteen when he went missing. The police grilled her, and the public hung her out to dry, saying she’d been irresponsible. That she was the reason he died. Some of them even said she was in on it. They wanted to blame someone, so it might as well be the person who let him get kidnapped.”
“That’s awful.”
“It gets worse.” She pulled up an article on her phone. “Exactly a year after he disappeared, she killed herself. She wrote a note and apologized to Sebastian’s mother, but she maintained her innocence.”
“I hope all those conspiracy theorists felt horrible about what they did.”
“Some of them might’ve. Others probably thought they were still right. But there’s no evidence she did anything. She was wrecked when she found out he went missing, and when they never found him. It haunted her.”
“What I’d like to know is why he’s haunting me.”
Sebastian blinked, and Cassie imagined him saying, C’mon, you’re so close. Just a little further.
“I still have no idea.” Laura threw her phone back on the bed. “Like I said, I can’t find any connection between him and Sarah Lennox. I don’t recognize the face at all. Dad said he remembers when he went missing and how afraid everyone was.”
Cassie whipped her head around. “You asked Dad?”
“Yeah. I figured he’d remember, having two young kids at a time when a bunch were getting kidnapped.” She scrunched up her face. “Why? Did you not want me to say anything?”
“Not really.”
“Even if it could help us find the answer faster?”
Cassie wasn’t sure what to say. Of course, she wanted to help Sebastian as soon as possible, but a part of her wanted to keep it a secret for as long as possible. She hadn’t wanted to tell Laura because she didn’t want to get her involved, to put her in danger. But with her parents, it was different. She wasn’t quite ready to broach the subject of her abilities.
It’d have to happen eventually.
“He mentioned Sarah Lennox. Said she went missing around the same time but couldn’t remember exactly when.”
“Did he say anything else about her?”
“Nope, that was it.”
“And he didn’t ask why you were curious?”
“You know Dad. He lets you come to him on your own terms. He doesn’t press the issue. I just told him we found the paper in a box upstairs and were curious. He left it at that.”
“Okay.” Cassie wasn’t sure why her heart was pounding so much. She looked around the room for a distraction and spotted a small memory box on the corner of the desk across from them. It was covered in stickers. “What’s that?”
Laura followed her gaze to the box. “A bunch of pictures from when we were kids. I saw a couple of Sarah in them. I thought you’d want to look through them. Or maybe they’d help bring back some memories.”
“Oh. Yeah, good point.”
But Cassie didn’t move. She wanted to solve the mystery of Sarah Lennox’s disappearance, but she knew she wouldn’t like the answer. No matter how it shaped up, her childhood best friend was dead. Even if it wasn’t
