Grave Secret

Twenty-one

THE legal mess surrounding Gracie-the girl I’d always thought was my sister Gracie-may take some time to unravel. With both her natural parents dead, it’s not like her custody was in doubt. After all, Iona and Hank had legally adopted both girls. To them, it was irrelevant that one of the girls wasn’t exactly who they’d thought she was. Iona and Hank, after a few minutes of shocked surprise, made up their minds they’d keep Gracie, no matter what. After all, Iona told me, when God had told her to take on the raising of those girls, he hadn’t specified what their parentage was. If Gracie had really been the daughter of Rich Joyce, the complications would have been tremendous, and it was really just as well for Gracie that she wasn’t. At least, that’s what I thought.

Matthew went back to jail, though not for long enough. He hadn’t murdered his own baby; not that anyone could prove. The real Gracie’s tiny skeleton had vanished from the place where he said he’d buried her, in a public park off the interstate.

His story was that he’d set off to take Gracie to the hospital, but she’d died in the car on the way. He’d buried her and lied to us all about the ICU and the rest because he’d been afraid that my mom would go crazy if she knew Gracie was dead. (Since my mother had already been crazy for years by that time, I didn’t believe him.) He’s stayed away for a few days to give credence to his story that Gracie was in the hospital in ICU. When Chip called him, Matthew had been more than glad to take a baby whose dubious background he thought might come in handy someday; and of course, producing a healthy girl baby would also keep him from being accused of negligence. We’d expected to get Gracie back from the hospital. Only Cameron suspected that Matthew had sunk low enough to substitute another child.

Cameron’s throat was crushed; there was enough left in the trunk to determine her cause of death. Mark confessed that she had shown him the genetic chart she’d made that proved my brown-eyed mother and her brown-eyed husband couldn’t have a green-eyed daughter. Cameron hadn’t known whose baby “Gracie” was, but since she had started with the certainty the child wasn’t the same baby, Cameron’s realization had explained several puzzling things about Gracie’s different behavior since she’d come back “from the hospital.” After Mark killed Cameron, he’d taken her body to the freezer of the restaurant where he worked and put her in a box at the back of the shelf in the meat locker for a couple of days. Then he’d rented the storage unit in Dallas and driven over there with her in the blanket chest, at the height of the hubbub over her disappearance. There she’d stayed, and he’d tossed in the items from the trailer when he’d moved himself to Dallas. He’d watched over her bones ever since.

Poor Cameron. She’d trusted the wrong person. Mark was the oldest, and steady; it was natural she would turn to him. She’d underestimated his devotion to his father. But she’d been sharp enough to put together all the puzzling things about the green-eyed baby living in our trailer.

I had noticed some puzzling changes, too. After all, I’d taken daily care of Gracie. But it had literally never occurred to me that the baby I was tending to wasn’t my sister. I can only attribute that to the stress and strain caused by the lightning strike, and the fact that I couldn’t imagine that Matthew would do such a thing, even as low as he got. I do remember marveling at how much Gracie’s health had improved. It seems incredible now; I attributed it all to modern medicine.

Mark confessed-what choice did he have, after all. He’s doing time now, hard time. I don’t think I could stand to ever see him again.

Manfred got a load of free publicity, which I fed with as much fuel as I could. He got the offer of an appearance on one of those ghost-hunting shows, and he looked great on camera. He gets marriage proposals every week.

We never found out who the woman at the Texarkana mall had been. We didn’t recognize the voice on the police tape, either. At least from now on, we can ignore any Cameron “sightings.”

Tolliver and I went back to St. Louis and got his shoulder checked out by a doctor there, who found all was well. We were glad to see our apartment. We turned down a job offer or two so we could stay home for a while.

We got married.

The girls might be disappointed because they didn’t get to wear pretty dresses and pose in pictures, but we got married all by ourselves in front of a judge. I still call myself Harper Connelly, and Tolliver doesn’t seem to mind.

When Cameron’s remains were released, I brought them up to St. Louis to bury. We bought her a nice headstone. Oddly enough, that didn’t make me feel as wonderful as I thought it would. I visited her every day for a while, until I realized that for me, she’d be forever frozen in the moment of her death. I could not move on until I quit going to the grave. Still, at last I know what happened to her.

We’ll hit the road again, soon. After all, we have to make some money.

And they’re all out there waiting for me. All they want is to be found.