He stood for a long moment while snow gathered on both their shoulders. Then he sighed. “I’m going to check on Mettner.”
She watched him go until the squalls of snow swallowed him. Hopping back into the ambulance, she stomped the snow off her feet and sat down again. Sawyer was on his computer and Amber’s eyes were closed. She opened them when she heard Josie. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s a mess.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?” Josie said. “Or one of us? We could have helped you.”
Amber shook her head. “What we did was wrong. Illegal.”
“You were kids,” Josie said. “Your father made you do it. He was the one who did the blackmailing.”
A tear rolled down Amber’s face. “Dr. Rafferty is dead because of me, because of what my father made me do. He was a good man. He didn’t deserve that. I’ve lived with that shame my entire life. I never wanted to tell anyone.”
Josie was silent for a long moment. Then she said, “What about the baby?”
With a heavy sigh, Amber said, “When Eden got pregnant, she wanted to keep the baby. My parents said absolutely not. That was supposed to be a short con, just like mine was with Dr. Rafferty. Eden would go to Thatcher Toland’s church for a while, arrange to be alone with him a few times, make up some terrible accusations, and Dad would blackmail him. End of story. And that’s what happened. The cons my dad ran were always small. The trick was, he said, to only blackmail these guys for enough that they would be able to pay it, but not so much that they would rather go to the police than pay. It worked. It worked on Dr. Rafferty and on Toland. Except that a few months after Toland paid, Eden couldn’t hide the pregnancy anymore. It turns out her ‘accusations’ weren’t actually false.”
“Was Thatcher already married to Vivian at that point?” Josie asked.
Amber shook her head. “Not yet, but Vivian was running the long con on Thatcher by then. She had watched my aunt, mom, and dad run these marriage scams on unsuspecting men year after year, accumulating wealth. When Thatcher came to the real estate agency looking for a new place, she saw an opportunity. She took a page out of my mom’s book. Thatcher wasn’t that old, but he was wealthy. Marrying him would be more lucrative than real estate. That’s what I heard her tell my dad, anyway. She was all set to marry Thatcher. They had a date set and everything. The baby would have ruined that completely. Eden hadn’t even gotten pregnant when Vivian found out what was going on. She had seen Thatcher and Eden together at the church. Instead of saying something to Thatcher or Eden, Vivian confronted my dad about it privately. I was pretty sick during that time, home with mononucleosis, so I was home for a long time. I overheard the entire thing. She showed up at our house one morning after Eden and Gabe had left for school. She was furious with him for trying to run some small-time scam on her ‘mark.’ She told him to stop immediately, but he convinced her that getting fifty thousand dollars out of Toland wouldn’t put her con in jeopardy at all.”
“So your dad went through with it? Eden made accusations against Thatcher, your dad blackmailed him, and he paid?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell Eden about Vivian confronting your dad?”
“No,” said Amber. “She was already stressed out about things with Thatcher. I didn’t want to put more stress on her.”
“Eden got pregnant. You said she started to show? That’s when people found out?”
“Yes,” Amber said. “Eden kept going back to the church. I think she wanted to tell Thatcher. She never went inside, but she’d ride her bike past it and hang out in the courtyard outside or the park across the street. That’s where Vivian saw her. The next day, she came to the house. Eden and Gabe were at school. I was still home sick. Eavesdropping. Vivian asked dad if Eden was pregnant with Thatcher’s child. Dad didn’t deny it. At that point, my parents hadn’t decided what they were going to do about the pregnancy. Dad called Mom and she had to come home from playing ‘wife’ with her latest elderly rich husband. Vivian threatened to go to the police with everything she knew about my parents and Aunt Nadine unless my parents got rid of the baby. When Eden came home, they told her that they had finally decided that she could not keep the baby and that she had to go to Aunt Nadine’s house until the baby was born, and that Aunt Nadine would ‘handle things’ from there. Aunt Nadine made it very clear that she would ‘dispose’ of the baby when it was born. I went with Eden so she wouldn’t be alone.”
“She was every bit as cruel as everyone said,” Josie remarked.
“And then some. Eden and I were terrified. She made me promise I’d help the baby when it came. I had no idea how I was going to do that. Then I read about Pennsylvania’s Safe Haven law where you could leave a baby at a hospital or police station and face no charges. When Eden’s daughter arrived, I snuck her out of the house before Nadine even knew, and I left her at a hospital. Towanda Hospital.”
“What did you tell Nadine?” Josie asked.
Amber glanced at Sawyer, but if he was paying attention, he didn’t show it. “That Eden and I had ‘taken care of it’ and that the baby was no longer an issue. She believed us and that was that. No one was the wiser until Thatcher released his book and went on his apology tour to Eden. She was so taken with him and his desire to atone that she told him about the baby. I know that because she called me right after to tell me. She was really sorry, she said, but she had to tell him.”
Josie said, “And that set off the entire chain of events.”
“Gabriel took me because Eden had told Thatcher who told Vivian that I was the only one who knew where the baby was—well, a child now. The trouble was that I don’t know what happened to that child. I only know she was safe when I left her at the hospital.”
Josie patted Amber’s leg. “Okay,” she said. “It’s okay.”
“Do you know what Thatcher is going to do?”
Josie shook her head. “No. But for tonight, you and I only need to worry about staying warm and getting home, okay?”
Forty-Nine
Two Weeks Later
It was snowing again. They still hadn’t gotten out from the two feet of snow that the Christmas Eve blizzard had dumped on them, and now more snow fell from the bruised clouds overhead. Josie navigated her vehicle through the hills north of the university toward Devon Rafferty’s house. In the passenger seat, Amber fidgeted with the strap of her purse. Josie kept glancing at her. She was still bruised in many places, and something about her seemed diminished from her experience, but she certainly looked healthier, and Josie was hopeful that one day she would be back to her old self, or at least as close as she could get after the trauma she had endured.
“You don’t have to do this,” Josie said. “I’ll turn the car around. Call Devon. Tell her we couldn’t make it because of the snow.”