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“Why is that important to you finding the woman’s identity?” William asked.
Cassie met and held William’s gaze. “We found the body, dressed in a maternity dress, but there was no baby. Right or wrong, we guessed she’d had that baby before she…died.”
Amy turned her face into her husband’s chest and sobbed more.
Willam cleared his throat. “You don’t know that this body you found was our Beth.”
“No, we don’t,” Cassie said. “To make sure, I’d like to collect something of Beth’s that might have her DNA in it, like a hairbrush.”
Amy shook her head and looked at Cassie through red-rimmed eyes. “All I brought with me was this photo album.” She flipped it open to a page with a woman on it. The woman smiled, a hand resting on her swollen belly.
“That’s Beth a month before she disappeared. Everything was on track with the baby’s development. She was healthy and eager to meet her baby.
“Can you tell me something about the father?” Cassie asked.
William’s mouth set in a tight line. “Not much. The bastard knocked her up and left town.”
“Was he from around here?” Drake asked.
Amy shook her head. “Beth wouldn’t tell us his name. She had her own apartment and worked as a waitress at the truck stop diner. The pay was terrible, but the tips were great. She’d moved out as soon as she graduated high school.”
“We tried to get her to go to college, but she wanted nothing to do with it.”
“Until she’d worked several years as a waitress,” Amy added. “She was just finishing the last of her core courses when she met a man at the truck stop. She said he was a construction worker, but not just a construction worker. He had bigger dreams and was working toward them.”
William snorted. “He was a dreamer with no substance. He made our girl fall in love with him. We asked her to bring him home for dinner.”
Amy flipped another page in the photo album. “She said they had to work too many hours and wouldn’t have any time off until they’d completed the hotel they were building across from the truck stop where Beth worked.”
“Beth was happy enough for a while. We couldn’t tell her anything. Couldn’t warn her about men who use women. She was in love.” William’s lip curled into a sneer.
Amy stopped on a page with a picture of their daughter smiling while holding a fluffy puppy. “Then they finished the hotel, and he left.” She ran her fingers across the photo as if she could still feel her daughter. “Beth came home that night. She’d finished her shift at the truck stop. The hotel construction was complete across the way, with only a cleanup crew left behind. The rest of the men had packed up and gone. She went to her apartment, expecting to find Roland there. He’d taken all his belongings and disappeared.”
“He’d lied about his name and where he was from.” William stared at the photo of Beth smiling. “When she tried to find him, there was no Roland Sanders living in Lewiston, Washington.”
“Beth was heartbroken,” Amy said. “Then, two weeks after he’d left, she came to me crying. She hadn’t had her cycle in a month, so she’d purchased an early pregnancy test at the drug store.” Amy’s voice caught.
William continued in a flat tone, “Beth was pregnant.”
“We were going to be grandparents,” Amy whispered, the devastation in her expression crushing the soul out of Drake.
William patted his wife’s hand. “We wanted her to finish her degree and get a job that would support her and the baby. She agreed, gave up her apartment and moved back in with us.”
“Everything seemed to be heading in the right direction. She’d had a sonogram. The doctor said she was having a girl,” Amy smiled at the memory. “We set up the baby’s room in pastel pink and yellow, bought a new crib and all the things it takes to raise a baby today. Beth seemed to be happier. Then, two weeks from her due date, she got into her car and drove to work. Or so we thought.
“When she didn’t come home that night, we got worried and went to the truck stop. They said she’d handed in her resignation that morning. One of the waitresses said she’d told her that she was going to get the baby’s daddy to cough up some child support for her daughter. She didn’t say where she was going or how she’d found the man. She just got in her car and drove away.
“That was the last time anyone saw her,” her mother said. “She didn’t come back. We lost her that day and the granddaughter we were prepared to love as much as we loved Beth.”
Amy flipped a couple more pages in the photo album and stopped on one of Beth, wearing a maternity dress in a pink and yellow floral print. She smiled into the camera while cupping her hands around the baby still nestled snuggly in her huge belly.
“We took this picture the week before she left. She was wearing that same dress the day she disappeared.”
Drake’s heart slipped to the bottom of his gut. Cassie reached for his hand and held on tightly, her face pale, the fine lines around her lips and eyes digging deeper.
“Mrs. Anderson, who made that dress?” Cassie asked slowly, her words measured and clear.
“I had it handmade by a local fabric artist, Alice Carter. It’s one of a kind. Beth loved it so much. She was cool and comfortable in it, especially the further along she got.”
