time, because children instinctively think of their parents as old. But in retrospect, he was all of forty-six at the time but reminiscing as if his best days were already past. Adrienne wasn’t Gabriella, he had said, but Adrienne was a good person. She was young. She brought a different energy into the house. She was fun. She made him feel happy again. They had been married four years by then, and she was still helping him learn how to be happy without Gabriella. “And,” he said, “she loves you and really wants to be a mother to you.”
But Ramona wasn’t done pouting. “She’s not my mother.”
And so her father told her that her mother hadn’t really been her mother either, not according to the DNA. They had tried. They kept a calendar. She took all the expensive drugs that were available. They tried one round of in vitro, but still nothing. Some of their friends resorted to surrogates and egg transplants, but Gabriella cared more about being a mother than about the biology. They called a lawyer. They arranged a private adoption. Gabriella had been the one to choose the name Ramona.
Adrienne wasn’t her mother, but neither was Gabriella.
And so just as the baby version of herself must have come to accept Gabriella as her first mother, she resolved to accept Adrienne as her new one. Now, five years after that episode with the earrings, she didn’t think of her as a stepmother. Or an adoptive mother. Adrienne was her mother. She had never again questioned the truth of that relationship, not only because she’d made a promise to her father, but because Adrienne had earned it.
Ramona returned her gaze to her mother’s computer screen, the browser open to the page that had appeared when she had typed in the password.
The website was called Second Acts: Confessions of a Former Victim and Current Survivor. And the page wasn’t the blog as it would appear to any casual reader. No, Ramona was looking at the administrative “dashboard” on a blog-hosting service called Social Circle. This was the place where the author of the blog could draft new posts, delete comments, and modify content.
Ramona was always so proud of the fact that, unlike her friends, she had a “real” relationship with her mother. But here she was-alone in her mother’s study, snooping around on her mother’s computer when she should have been in school, finally discovering why her mother had seemed so secretive lately.
Her mother was a sex abuse survivor. Her mother was the author of this blog.
And now, after all these years of being told that she had every reason to be angry, Ramona Langston was actually angry.
Someone was threatening her mother.
F ive miles south, at NYPD headquarters, Ellie and Rogan were also reading the “Second Act” blog, paying special attention to the threats that had been posted since Julia’s death.
“Can you tell if Julia accessed the blog anytime after that comment on Saturday night?” Rogan asked. They had evidence suggesting that Julia had been the one to post the first threatening comment on Saturday. Clearly she had not authored the threats written since Monday, but she was still alive on Sunday and may have checked in on the blog then.
“Nope,” Pettinato said, pivoting back and forth on his fitness ball. “Just the one hit the night before she died. But if I’m right and she was the one who posted the comment, she must have known the website well because she navigated through it so quickly. However, I have found no indication that she ever used this laptop to visit the website previously.”
They had more questions than answers.
“So how do we find out whose blog this is?” Ellie asked. “And what computer was used to post the more recent threats?”
“The blog was created with a hosting service called Social Circle. They should be able to give you the IP addresses. That stands for-”
“Internet protocol address,” Ellie said. She and Rogan had come up against these Internet situations before, where the bad guys cloaked themselves in anonymity. The IP address was like a computer’s numeric address on the Internet.
“Good luck getting it, though,” Pettinato warned. “Unless you’re working with some corporate behemoth, the dudes who run these webites usually won’t cooperate without a subpoena.”
She and Rogan were familiar with that world as well. Fortunately, she knew an assistant district attorney who liked her.
Her cell phone buzzed at her waist. She didn’t recognize the number.
“Hatcher.”
“Detective Hatcher? This is Ramona Langston. You came to my apartment last night to talk to me about my friend, Julia Whitmire? You gave me your card?”
“Sure, Ramona. What can I do for you?”
“It’s not about Julia. But, um-I’m not sure who I should call. It’s about a website?”
“What website?” Rogan and Pettinato both perked up on hearing her side of the conversation.
“Um, it’s at secondacts-dot-com. I’m pretty sure it’s my mom’s? And, it’s about stuff that happened to her when she was young. But, um, I think-well, someone’s basically threatening to kill her. Can the police find out who it is?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The city of New York is home to nearly nine million people. Within it sits the island of Manhattan, only twenty-three square miles of land, but with nearly two million residents, the most densely populated area in the United States. Two million people buzzing around on just twenty-three square miles of land bred a certain culture: efficiency in moving from point A to point B; no eye contact or small talk; no connection to the people one passed on the way. And along with that culture came a distinct feeling of anonymity.
But the sense of anonymity was not the same thing as actual privacy. Among the hundreds of people a busy Manhattanite buzzed past on a daily basis was the guy at the deli counter who poured the same large cup of coffee each morning, two sugars with nonfat milk; the pedicurist who feigned obliviousness to prolonged cell phone calls while she scraped away dead skin from her clients’ cracked feet; the clerk at Duane Reade who pretended not to notice when a husband purchased condoms six hours after his wife picked up her birth control pills.
The Manhattan economy was propped up by people whose very jobs depended on feeding the feeling of anonymity, even as they were entrusted with the most private secrets. And no one knew more about the lives of the seemingly anonymous than a New York City doorman.
The doorman stationed at the entry of the Langstons’ Upper East Side apartment building was the epitome of professionalism, with a neatly pressed navy blazer, perfect posture, and a prompt greeting. “Good afternoon. How may I help you?”
While she and Rogan displayed their shields, Ellie squinted at the name embroidered on the doorman’s jacket. “How are you doing today, Nelson?” The personal touch never hurt. “We’re here to see Mrs. Langston. We were here last night as well. It’s about a friend of Ramona: Julia Whitmire?”
If the name meant anything to Nelson, he certainly wasn’t showing it.
“Of course. Let me call up.” His expression was blank as he placed the call. “Good afternoon, ma’am. There are two detectives here to see you… Detectives Hatcher and Rogan… Yes, they are right here in the lobby now… Very good.” He hung up the phone and extended a white-gloved hand toward the elevator. “To the twenty-first floor.”
“They seem like a nice family,” Ellie offered.
“Very,” he said with a nod. He might have meant exactly what he said. Or he might have meant the Langstons were devil-worshiping cat torturers. His face revealed nothing.
“Do you remember Ramona’s friend, Julia?”
“We have many visitors in a large building like this.”
“My understanding is Julia spent a lot of nights here. I’d think you’d get to know the kids’ friends pretty well.”
“Sometimes, yes. We have very nice families here.”
“Was Julia Whitmire ‘very nice’? Did she seem to still be on good terms with Ramona and her parents?”
