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

Kendra felt they’d help make a huge link. That there was something concrete that put Ewald with one of the victims, after all this time.

“Will it change the situation?” Barb asked. “He’s in prison, and from what I read, he’s going to die in there.”

“I think I have to tell this part of the story too.”

Kendra was conflicted, though. She didn’t want to be the cause of suffering, but what had emerged was a truer picture. And even more than that, Barb Hawkins had game-changing evidence in the case against Ewald. All of a sudden, there was the possibility of real evidence that he killed not only Cynthia Hawkins but the others.

“You do what you have to do. I said my part, and if the FBI calls, I’ll say it again. I was twelve. It was forty years ago. I’m not exactly airtight witness testimony. I guess it would be different if he was out there, but he’s not. He’s where he’s supposed to be.”

“But it could help. I don’t even know in what way, but it’s important.”

“Who does it help? Not my mom, not the other seven women that man killed.”

Kendra knew she’d have to report this. She’d have to report it all. And it was up to the authorities to decide if they were going to act on it. It was part of Cynthia Hawkins’ story, and it explained why she was out back in 1982. She was having an affair with Ned Wayne Ewald.

“I’m going to put your mother’s story together as best I can, your memories, your sisters, and your dad’s,” Kendra told Bard. “Is there anything else you want me to know about her?”

This time tears did escape. She didn’t try to will them away.

“My mother’s voice was pretty. She was pretty. She used to make the best snicker doodle cookies. I loved them. She claimed it was her unique recipe. She didn’t deserve what happened to her. She was trying to figure out life the best she could, I guess. I don’t agree with her choices, but maybe they weren’t choices for her. She didn’t have options, in her mind.”

“Tell me about the last time you saw your mother.”

Barb Hawkins Woodside clenched her jaw and then unclenched it. Kendra could see what Cynthia might have looked like if she had lived. They were both pretty women.

“She hustled us off to bed, early. I was mad about that. I hated going to bed before ten, especially then, and still now, I’m a night owl. Anyway, I sat up in bed, mad at her. She turned on a nightlight for my sister. That’s sweet, isn’t it? Turning on a nightlight. Anyway, she turned on the nightlight and closed the door on us. Left us in the room we shared. I knew she left. I didn’t see headlights or anything. I just felt that change in air pressure when a door opens in the house and then closes again. The door closed. That was it. That was the last time. Until they showed us the picture of her body when they figured out what they had at High Timbers.”

“Thank you. I appreciate you opening up to me, telling me this part of the story.”

Barb nodded. There wasn’t anything more to say, Kendra figured. And then, on a whim, she asked one more question.

“Do you remember what she sang to you?”

Barb looked away again and then back at Kendra.

“Moonshine Lullaby, from that show, Annie Get Your Gun. That was a favorite. And Barry Manilow, ‘Mandy.’ She named my sister after that song.”

“Thank you.”

A teenage boy, taller by almost a foot than his mother, bounced into the kitchen. His appearance was an entrance, like Kramer on Seinfeld. He immediately filled up space. His youth and energy were magnetic.

“Ooops, uh, where are the cookies you said you made?”

“It’s okay. We’re done here,” Barb said. “Did you hear me about the garbage cans? They need to be inside the garage, or it’s really only half the job.”

“I got it, rolled them in on my way in here, mother.” He emphasized ‘mother’ in that exasperated way only a teenager can.

Barb Hawkins’ expression changed. A smile played behind her eyes. She’d achieved her own happy ending in moments like this, Kendra was sure.

Barb walked over to the counter. She slid a Tupperware container across the surface to her son.

He grabbed two fistfuls and then turned to Kendra. “My friends and I love her cookies, like crack.”

Barb swatted her son’s shoulder, and he bounded back out of the kitchen. “He eats all the time and can’t put on weight. It must be nice, eh?”

Barb lifted the container of cookies and offered them to Kendra. She looked inside. Dozens of neatly displayed cookies, all uniform in size and carefully sprinkled with brown sugar, filled the Tupperware.

They were snicker doodles.

Chapter 24

Kendra wrote Cynthia Hawkins’ story as best and as balanced as she could. She used Mandy’s perspective, Barb’s, and then also a tiny snippet of Ewald’s denial. She had to since Barb had placed Ewald with her mother. This was the bombshell of this season.

It was a delicate episode to present. For a podcast that specialized in the horrific stories of crime victims, that was saying a lot.

But, when Kendra recorded the narration that she and Shoop wrote, she felt they’d done their best:

It appears a fair amount of the sweet things that Mandy Hawkins conveyed to me about her mother, a mother she was too young to remember, are because she had a big sister. Barb Hawkins sang songs to her baby sister. She watched over the toddler’s crib. She provided a story that was more fairytale than true to her young sister.

But that’s what small children need, and that was what a good big sister provided.

There is a strength in Barb Hawkins that is like steel, just under the surface of her yoga pants and a hooded sweatshirt. At the age of twelve, she stepped in as a mother