AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Eddie had moved to the front room, where he was looking at a shelf of dusty old books. He bypassed the sparsely filled liquor cabinet and opened a cabinet door, peering in.
“Eddie, we need to leave,” I said.
“This will be fast.” He was still peering into the darkness of the cabinet. “We’ll just find Shannon’s things and go.”
“She left years ago. How do you know he still has her things?”
“Where else would they be?” He closed the cupboard and looked around the living room. “Nothing here, I think. Probably upstairs.”
“Eddie!” I tried to keep my voice low in case the neighbors could hear through the walls. But what could I do? He was already moving up the narrow stairs, taking them two at a time.
I looked around the living room, debating whether to follow him. There were no photos in here, either, no framed family pictures on the end tables or above the TV.
My eye caught on something—a cabinet below the TV, the door partly open. Inside I could see the thick pages of a photo album.
I crouched down, sliding the door open. The album had been pulled to the front of the cabinet, as if it had been taken out and carelessly put away. Despite the urge to run, I opened it.
There were loose photos inside the album, along with some stuck to the pages and covered with cling film. I picked up the top loose photo and looked at it.
The photo was of two young women of maybe twenty, their arms around each other’s shoulders. I immediately recognized Carla Moyer, though her hair was cropped just below her ears in the photo and her face was round, babyish, carefree.
The other girl had brown hair, worn past her shoulders. She was smiling widely at the camera, grinning in the sunshine, but I immediately went cold.
It was the Lost Girl. It was Shannon Haller.
I didn’t need Kal Syed’s evidence—dental records, DNA, blood tests. I already knew that the body on Atticus Line was Shannon’s because I’d seen her last night in Trish’s rearview mirror.
The album had been moved recently because Kal had just been here, talking to John Haller. He had probably asked him for a photo of Shannon, and John had picked one from this pile. Then he’d hastily put the album back.
I picked up the second photo. Shannon carried a small boy on her hip. She was pointing to the camera, trying to get him to smile at the lens. She wore a ringer tee, and she was too thin, her cheekbones sharper than in the other picture, faint shadows under her eyes. The boy had been caught as he turned his face away from the camera, and his features were blurred. He looked about four or five years old.
I stared at the picture for too long. I’d thought Shannon had a baby when she disappeared, not a little boy. Shannon had a baby she wanted to dry out for, Carla had said. But she hadn’t specified when that was, what year. I’d just assumed she was talking about the year Shannon had disappeared, and so had Eddie. The math doesn’t add up, Eddie had said. Shannon had a baby, not an eight-year-old in 1976. That was some other kid. Not me.
He was wrong. Shannon hadn’t just given birth when she disappeared. She had a little boy, who had been taken away from her and put in foster care. I squinted at the photo, but it was too blurry, and the little boy was turning away. I couldn’t see his face.
A muffled thump came from upstairs. I shoved the photo in my back pocket, pushed the album back, and closed the door. We’d been here too long. We had to get out of this house.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Upstairs, Eddie was in the main bedroom, looking in the closet. His footprints were clear on the old carpet, and the items in the closet had fallen on the floor.
“Eddie!” I grabbed his elbow, trying to pull him. “Get out of there now!”
“I found her things.” He had pulled the lid from an old banker’s box and was going through it. I looked over his shoulder and saw a small stuffed baby toy, a few child’s drawings. The things that John Haller still had left to remind him of his daughter.
The photo I’d found burned in my back pocket. What would Eddie think if he saw it? Would he have false hope? I didn’t understand why he was acting like this. At the same time, if it was possible that Shannon Haller was Eddie’s mother, we needed to know. And we wouldn’t be able to do anything if we were arrested for breaking and entering.
Eddie’s big hands were moving quickly, going through the items. There was a high school diploma, a small silver ring. “It’s here somewhere,” he said.
“What? What is?” I grabbed his shoulders from behind, trying to shake him. “Please, Eddie. Let’s go. Please.”
He paused. He held a small Nikon camera in his hands. He ran his fingers over it, turned it over.
“Eddie!” I cried, not bothering to be quiet anymore.
He touched a button, and the camera made a whirring sound as the film wound. Then he touched a button on the top of the camera, opening the back. He took out the roll of film.
He dropped the camera and everything else back in the box, put the lid on, and shoved it in the back of the closet. Then we ran.
