Eleanor held Margaret’s gaze.
“Who?”
Margaret drew in a shaky breath.
“Me,” she said.
“Would you tell the jury about that?”
“I was at the Food Lion one mornin’,” she said. “There was a flyer right by the entrance. Caroline’s picture. Davie was still a baby, but he knew faces. He pointed at it and said, ‘Mama.’”
Her voice wavered.
“I just… reached up and yanked it off that board,” she said. “Folded it so fast I tore the corner clean through her smile. Stuck it in my purse like that would fix somethin’.”
She blinked hard.
“He was too little to understand where she’d gone, but he knew her face,” she said. “And I thought… if he keeps seein’ that, if everybody keeps seein’ that, he’s never gonna be ‘Davie’to them. He’s always gonna be ‘that poor boy whose mama disappeared.’”
“More than one?”
“At first,” she said. “But then I saw another. At the pharmacy. At the bulletin board at the hardware. I started takin’ those too. Only the ones in places we went all the time. Where Davie’d see ’em. Where David had to walk in and feel everyone lookin’ at him.”
“Did you tell David you were doing that?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I knew he’d fuss at me. Tell me to put ’em back. He… he wanted answers. I wanted… a little peace. For him. For the boy.”
“Did you take down every missing-person poster for Caroline in Jackson County?”
She shook her head.
“No. Just some. Felt like there were always more. But if I saw one where I knew Davie’d be…” She shrugged helplessly. “I couldn’t stand it.”
“Mrs. Mercer,” Eleanor said, “did anyone from law enforcement ever ask you, back then, whether you’d taken those posters down?”
“No.”
“Did you ever volunteer that information to the sheriff’s office?”
“No,” she whispered. “I thought it’d just make things worse. Thought they’d say I was hinderin’ somethin’. I was just… I was tryin’ to protect my family.”
“Did David ever tell you to interfere with the search for Caroline in any way?”
“No.”
“Did he ever tell you he wanted the posters gone?”
“No. Never.”
Eleanor let the jurors see Margaret’s face for a long heartbeat—grief and shame and fierce, misguided love all tangled together.
“Mrs. Mercer,” she said finally, “looking back now, do you regret taking those posters down?”
“Yes,” Margaret said, voice breaking. “If they think it means my boy did somethin’—yes. I’d put ’em all back if I could. I… I couldn’t bear seein’ her face and knowin’ we’d lost her, and seein’ the way folks treated him. And Davie.”
She wiped at her cheek with the edge of her knuckle.
“But he didn’t take ’em down,” she said. “That was me.”
