Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn #6)- Lisa Regan Page 0,118

“I did. She lived in an apartment in a run-down part of the city with her mother. Single mom. Habitual drug user. Apparently, Penny’s dad was never in the picture. He’s not even listed on her birth certificate. Her mother used to send her to the corner grocery store to buy food when she was too messed up to go herself. One afternoon she sends Penny down to the store for some eggs and milk. Penny never made it to the store and never came home. Mother didn’t report it for almost two days.”

“Two days?” Josie exclaimed.

“She thought Penny had gone to stay with friends and would just come home, but when she didn’t, the mom reported her missing. Police could find no evidence of any foul play.”

“They thought she was a runaway? At eleven?” Josie asked incredulously.

“They couldn’t make a determination one way or another. They carried out a pretty extensive investigation and the mother stayed on them to keep looking until she overdosed in 1996.”

“Penny—or Amy—would have been seventeen then. She didn’t have any other relatives?”

“None that she or her mother were close to. Apparently, the mother’s family didn’t have much to do with her on account of her drug use,” Lamay said. “So, whether Penny ran away or someone took her, once her mother died, she didn’t have a home to return to.”

“The year Penny turned eighteen was the year Amy Walsh died,” Josie said. She remembered how cryptic Amy had been about her past, saying she didn’t remember who she really was or what her name had been. That Tessa Lendhardt was a fiction. Because it was an identity that Martin Lendhardt had given her after he took her. Once she escaped him, she shed that identity. It had never really existed in the first place.

“My God,” said Josie.

“Are you going to tell them?” Lamay asked.

“Yes,” Josie said. “They need to know. But not tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll talk to Amy and Colin.”

Seventy-Two

Four days later, Josie stopped outside the door to Amy Ross’s hospital room, peeking through the tiny crack in the door and listening as Lucy told her mother a story about a real luna moth she had seen in the woods when she was away with the “bad people”. She was seated cross-legged next to her mother, her tiny frame squeezed in between the guardrail and Amy’s side. As she spoke, Amy stroked her blonde hair and stared at her, a look of pure wonder on her face. Josie listened as Amy asked her questions, and listened carefully to her answers. Not for the first time, Josie felt a tremendous wave of relief and gratitude wash over her. The Ross family had lost a lot. They’d been traumatized. Amy’s secrets had been laid bare. Lucy would likely need years of therapy after the things she had witnessed while with Natalie and Gideon. They would forever mourn the loss of Jaclyn, who had been like family to them. Josie also knew that Amy carried around a lifetime’s worth of guilt over the death of Wendy Kaplan. But they were all alive, and from the looks of it, Amy’s secrets hadn’t driven her husband away. Lucy’s family unit was still intact.

“You can go right in, you know,” Colin said, appearing behind her.

Josie jumped and then laughed, turning toward him. “I didn’t want to interrupt,” she said.

In his hands was a hot tea and a milkshake. He stepped past her and nudged the door open with his elbow. “You’re not interrupting. Please. Lucy would love to see you. She was disappointed when she found out you’d been here earlier this week to talk to us without her—although I’m glad you did because she doesn’t need to know about Amy’s past. Not yet.”

Josie nodded and stepped through the door.

Lucy hopped down from the bed when they entered and ran into Josie’s arms. “Josie! I didn’t think you would come back.”

Josie touched Lucy’s cheek and smiled at her. “I just wanted to check on you and see how you and your mom were doing. How are you feeling?”

Lucy’s lips twisted. “I can’t sleep. I have bad dreams.”

Josie knelt and looked Lucy directly in the eye. “I understand. I used to have nightmares, too.”

“You did?”

“Sure,” Josie said. “I knew some bad people when I was a kid, too.”

Lucy lowered her voice. “Are they in jail?”

“Yes,” Josie said. “Yes, they are.”

“I might want to grow up to be a police officer like you,” Lucy told her. “So I can put bad people