“Take your time. I’ll call some more of the local hospitals.” I planned to call the ME’s office, too, to be sure there weren’t any Jane Does, but there wasn’t any reason to tell Sandy that. “Can I ask you one last thing?”
“Yeah, sure,” Sandy said, looking like she was bracing for me to set fire to the bridge I’d so carefully built between us.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I said, leaning against the doorframe. “But did Hannah ever tell you who the father was?” It seemed unfair that he should be getting out of all of this scot-free, especially if he’d known that Hannah was pregnant.
“No.” She shook her head. “But I think maybe he was a college kid.”
“Why do you say that?”
Sandy shrugged. “Hannah always wanted to go to the Black Cat to study. Sometimes it was like she was waiting to see somebody. Looking out, you know.” She shook her head again, seemed almost angry. “Before it happened, she told me she was saving herself until marriage. But I think that was more what her mom wanted. She took classes on campus last year, too. Part of some super-smart-kid program she was in. Maybe she met him then.”
Shit. The Ridgedale University high school exchange program, supervised by Dean of Students Thomas Price.
“The night she had the baby—before she forgot it was her baby—she gave me all the stuff he’d given her, cards and whatever. In case her parents found out, I guess, and searched her room. I didn’t look at any of it, but I still have it.” Sandy motioned to her boxes, stacked along the wall in the guest room. “She never asked for it back. Maybe she forgot the guy when she forgot about it being her baby. I probably should have tried to shake her out of it. But I was afraid. You know how they tell you not to wake somebody who’s sleepwalking?”
“You did the right thing, Sandy,” I said without hesitating. “You did more than anyone could possibly have expected you to do.”
According to Sandy, Aidan had already checked for Jenna at the Ridgedale University Hospital, but, knowing Aidan, I called again, just in case. I had expected the process of inquiring there and at the four other nearby hospitals to take a while, with multiple transfers to the relevant parties, followed by long periods on hold while nurses referenced what their unidentified patients looked like. Matched them with my description of Jenna. But within ten minutes, I had established that only two of the hospitals had any unidentified patients at all—both male, both elderly. Apparently, actual Jane Does weren’t nearly as common as I’d assumed. When I called the ME’s office, they had no unidentified victims, either. Maybe it would have been different in New York City, but in Ridgedale, people evidently didn’t go unidentified for long, not even a baby. Soon everyone would know whom she belonged to.
When I ended the call with the last hospital, my eyes settled on Jenna’s journal, sitting on the edge of the dining room table. Sandy’s hand had lingered on it for such a long time before she left it for me. She said that I should read it, that there was a chance it would help us find Jenna. But I could tell that part of her also didn’t want me to. That she probably wished she’d never read it herself.
It didn’t take more than a couple pages to realize what would be the worst part of the story laid out in the journal: Jenna’s hope. By the time I’d finished, I knew why Sandy had picked that spot in the woods. And I knew that Harold, for all his obvious instability, had been right about what he’d seen. He’d just been wrong about the visions climbing out of the creek being the same young woman—a ghost separated by nearly twenty years. In fact, they’d been mother and daughter.
The bracelet I’d bartered from Harold. I’d forgotten all about it. Still in my coat pocket, I hoped. I was so glad I hadn’t thrown it out, which was all I’d wanted to do after I’d hung up with Steve in an embarrassed huff.
I went out to the coat rack near our living room door to dig in my pocket. Sure enough, the bracelet was still there—and there was that inscription: To J.M. Always, Tex.
“Um, hi.” When I looked up from the bracelet, there was Sandy wrapped in a towel, black hair wet and brushed back smoothly from her face. Standing there like that, she was even more striking than I’d realized. Truly beautiful. Her mother must have been, too. “Could I, um, borrow something to wear? I think I need to wash my clothes. If that’s okay.”
“Of course.” I jumped to my feet. Clothes: something tangible and straightforward. Simple. That was something I could help with. “Come to my room and we’ll see what might work.”
Sandy looked like any other affluent Ridgedale teenager in my expensive jeans and T-shirt as we drove to the public library in search of Ridgedale High School yearbooks. A yearbook seemed like our best chance—maybe our only chance—to figure out the actual names that corresponded with the nicknames mentioned in Jenna’s journal. It was a long shot, but it was the only one we had.
And I wanted something more before confronting Steve. I had promised Sandy I would ask him about Jenna’s necklace, and I was still planning on it. But I’d be implicitly accusing him of something. And while I was willing to stick my neck out for Sandy in that way, part of me was hoping I wouldn’t have to. That we’d figure out who those boys were in Jenna’s journal. That we’d find them, now grown men, and that they would somehow lead us to her without me having to ask Steve a thing.