The Nobody Girls (Kendra Dillon Cold Case Thriller Book 3), Rebecca Rane [best book club books of all time txt] 📗

“Ha, well, you must have a lot of material with Ewald. How many people did he kill, do they think?”

“Eight victims that they believe can be connected to his activities.”

“Hmm.” Barb lightly touched her eyebrows with her index fingers. She then ran it quickly down her cheeks and across her lower lip.

“What do you remember about your mother?”

“A lot, I had her for twelve years.”

“Can you share a memory with me?”

Barb Hawkins glanced at the ceiling. She brought her eyes to Kendra and cocked her head left and right. Kendra could see how hard this was. Talking about this wasn’t in her nature. This was what she’d moved beyond. Or had tried to.

“My mother liked to sing, how about that?”

“That’s nice.”

“She thought she was pretty good. She reminded me a lot that she had the lead in Annie Get Your Gun in high school.”

“That’s sweet,” Kendra said.

“I guess.”

“Did she sing to you?”

“She performed for us, all the time.”

The memories weren’t tinged with affection. There was an edge to them. An edge that wasn’t visible in Barb Hawkins Woodside until she started recalling her mother.

Kendra tried another line of conversation, the one that had first opened Barb up.

“Your Dad said she liked to sew, that she was quite the seamstress.”

“Liked it?” Barb bit her lip. The story from her perspective wasn’t the one Kendra had thought she was telling.

“Didn’t she? She made the curtains at your dad’s house and Halloween costumes. Your sister says he struggles with his memory, but he remembered that about your mom. I thought it was sweet.”

“Look, I don’t know what you want me to say. That does sound sweet.”

“But you don’t remember it that way?”

“No, I guess I don’t. My sister was a toddler, my dad was, well, gone then too, just back then it was voluntary.”

“Your memories of that time, of her, they’re important, to tell her story.”

“Just because a victim of a crime is a victim, doesn’t mean they were all perfect, and Julie Andrews before.”

“I get that.”

And Kendra did. She was supposed to have been a saintly child. A perfectly good student, and then she was snatched! As though her good behavior prior to the kidnapping meant she deserved it less. All kinds of people were victimized by all kinds of abusers, but none of it made it right.

“A crime is a crime,” Kendra said to Barb, “and your mother was a real person, not a character. It’s just that you’re one of the few people who can help me tell that part of the story. No one else remembers.”

With that, something broke free for a second in Barb Hawkins Woodside. A sob ripped out of her chest. A dam threatened to break. Kendra watched the woman collect herself. Sobs usually tumbled out of a person in huge ragged chunks. And once the thing that was caught in your throat escaped, it was hard to stop. Falling apart was not something that Barb Hawkins Woodside did. She would not do it now, either. She pulled it together. Kendra saw the woman steel herself.

And then she began to speak.

“I’ll tell you what I know, what I remember, and you can decide what to do with it. I did love my mother. I do. But the story, well, the story is different.”

“I’m not here to judge it, just tell it. There’s no right story.”

“So, yeah, my mother singing was a performance, it was her on stage, for an audience of one. She reminded me many times that her pregnancy with me killed her future.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, very nice, eh? She didn’t love motherhood or my dad. Though with my dad, I guess that was understandable. He worked all the time, went out after work with the boys, he’d say, and come home drunk. So here she was, not yet thirty, two kids, a husband like my dad, and frustrated by life. Cooped up. She sewed because my dad wouldn’t give her money for clothes for herself or us. She didn’t love it. It didn’t make her happy. It was just another thing she had to do. A chore. That said, she was very good at it. She may not have liked to sew, but she did it. She made our costumes, cute dresses, and kept herself looking damn good, now that I look back on that time. There’s a picture of her in 1981, in this cream suit. It was fancy. She wore it on Easter. She looked great.”

“Do you have that picture?”

“Yeah, up in the attic, in a box. I don’t unpack it, ever, you know?”

“I do know.”

“I am not sure if I should tell you the next part. This is the part that my sister didn’t want to hear. Maybe it shouldn’t be out there, but oh, hell with it. My mother was having an affair at the time she died. She didn’t disappear out of nowhere. She was off, meeting her boyfriend. How’s that for a Julie Andrews upbringing?”

“How do you know about the affair?”

“I saw her with the guy. I was waiting in the car, and she met him at the truck stop.”

It was Kendra’s turn to gasp.

“What?”

“Yeah, I only saw him the one time, but I’ll tell you, one hundred percent, that the man they’re showing on the news, he did it. He killed her, probably a lover’s quarrel or something disgusting.”

“You’re saying your mother knew Ewald, that he didn’t just randomly run into her on the road or at some restaurant?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Does the FBI know this?”

“You’re the only one who knows it, except my dad, who probably forgot, and my sister, who wouldn’t listen to me explain it. She’s under the impression that an angel sang her to sleep every night.”

“But that’s not the case.”

“Well, someone did sing her to sleep when she was a toddler, but that was me.”

Kendra wanted to cry for this woman, for the little girl she had been.

“You need to tell the FBI,” Kendra said. “This is the first direct link