Her Mother’s Grave

Chapter Eighty-One

Josie sat at a table in the back of Komorrah’s Koffee, her black hair tied in a ponytail and covered with a baseball cap. She had managed to evade the press, even though she wasn’t that far from the police station, where several reporters had taken up residence, hoping to catch someone coming or going who might have information about the sensational Lila Jensen case. It was going to take months for the fervor to die down.

Wind chimes positioned over the front door tinkled as Gretchen entered. Josie smiled and waved her over. Gretchen slid into the booth across from her and pulled a file from inside of her jacket.

“Did you get it?” Josie asked.

Gretchen pushed the file across the table. “Yeah, I got it. It’s all there.”

Josie’s fingers brushed the edge of the folder. “Did you read it?”

“I did.”

Josie flagged the waitress over and Gretchen ordered a large coffee. Josie had already purchased several pastries, and she pushed the plate across the table toward Gretchen, spinning it so that the pecan-crusted sweet roll was positioned just under Gretchen’s nose. Gretchen eyed the pastry as though she were sizing up an enemy. “We’re about to discuss toxic mothers,” Josie said. “You’re going to need it.”

Gretchen laughed and picked it up, taking a hearty bite. A small piece of pecan hung from her bottom lip. “You better have one too, because Lila Jensen’s mother is the mother of all toxic mothers.”

Josie selected a cheese Danish and ate it in three bites. Gretchen savored her roll more slowly, appraising Josie as she ate. “Have you cried yet?”

Josie shook her head. She wiped her hands on a napkin and sipped her latte.

“You’ll need to cry,” Gretchen said matter-of-factly. “I mean, just do it. You’ve got to release some of that pressure.”

Josie nodded.

“Did you meet with the Paynes?” Gretchen asked.

“Sort of. They came to the hospital. My grandmother suggested a dinner party. Them and my people. She thinks more of a party atmosphere will be easier for me.”

Josie had barely been out of surgery when Shannon and Christian Payne, together with their son, Patrick, had burst into her room. Shannon had gathered Josie up into her arms, holding her, crying and whispering things Josie couldn’t remember. Christian and Patrick had hung back, the teenager looking uncomfortable and awkward while his father stood stoically, silent tears streaming down his cheeks. Two days later, Trinity had shown up with a mail-in DNA test, and she and Josie had sat cross-legged on the hospital bed, spitting into tiny vials and laughing like teenagers.

Josie put a palm over the file. “Will you tell me what it says?”

“Of course,” Gretchen said. She sipped her coffee and then folded her hands on the edge of the table. “You were right. The clue that Lila gave you was an inmate number. Lila Jensen’s mother is serving five life terms in maximum security.”

Josie’s eyes widened. “Five life terms?”

“She’s listed as Roe Hoyt, but that’s just the name she was given after she was found.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Roe Hoyt lived alone in a shack in the woods high up in Sullivan County. No electricity or running water. The land was technically owned by the state, so she wasn’t living on any type of family land. They think the shack was an old game warden building—a place the wardens could stop and take shelter if they found themselves out that far. No one had been out there for years.”

Josie asked, “Who found her?”

“Hunters,” Gretchen said. “They were put off by her because she didn’t talk much except to make noises—one of which was the word roe, which is how she got her name. She was wild-looking, dirty, unkempt. They might have left her alone except she had a little girl.”

Josie felt a sinking feeling in her belly. “Lila.”

Gretchen nodded. “The hunters said she looked to be about five years old. She was running around the woods buck naked like a feral animal. They tried to take her with them, but she attacked them. So did Roe. So they went back to civilization and got the authorities. Police came and took them both into custody. When they searched the shack, they found the remains of five infants.”

“Jesus,” Josie said.

“Lila went into foster care. Her first foster mother named her Lila and gave her their last name—Jensen. She was delayed, had a lot of behavioral problems. The Jensens couldn’t handle her, so she was shuffled from foster home to foster home. This isn’t in that file. I got this from Alona Ortiz. She read Lila’s foster-care file before Malcolm Bowen destroyed it.”

“She told you?”

“The DA isn’t interested in prosecuting Ortiz. She made a deal to tell everything she knows and testify against Lila and Sophia. She was the one who helped Belinda, by the way, the first time she ran away from Maggie Lane’s house to have her baby. Bowen paid her off to give Belinda a place to stay until the baby came. Then he made arrangements for Andrew to go into the foster-care system and greased some more palms so he could adopt him. Anyway, everything bad you can imagine happening in a foster home happened to Lila Jensen.”

“My God,” Josie said.

She tried to picture Lila as a small child. Feral, forced into a world she didn’t understand filled with people she couldn’t trust. Had she even had a chance?

Gretchen tapped the file. “You can keep this. One day, you’ll be ready to open it.”

They each sampled another pastry, and the waitress refilled their coffees. Changing the subject, Gretchen asked, “Did Tara talk to you?”

“Yeah. She took me off leave and said that I could return to my post as chief when my medical leave was finished. I told her no.”

Gretchen choked on the Danish she’d just stuffed into her mouth. She coughed and spit into a napkin. “What?”

“I don’t want to be chief,” Josie said. “I never did. Tara only wants me back now so she doesn’t look bad for firing me after I found out my whole life is a lie. I told her to appoint another detective position, and I’ll go back to doing what I was doing before Chief Harris died.”

“What did she say?”

“I don’t know,” Josie said. “I stopped listening after ‘you’ve got some nerve.’”

Gretchen laughed. “She’ll come around.”