Mary's Bones

TWENTY-TWO

I gnawed at my bottom lip and rolled my hands together. My eyes glared over the clock hands. 6:03 PM mocked me in the distance. I'd been urging time to move faster since John left this morning.

He should have been walking through those doors any minute now if today wasn't a late day. Gosh, I hoped it wasn't a late day. I pinched the edge of Cory's journal in my hand, grunting.

I hadn't had a chance to speak with him about what Tiffany told me yet. I wasn't sure how to approach that conversation either honestly. I didn't care though.

All I wanted was for him to walk through that door and comfort me like he'd been doing this morning. Anything would have been better than being in bed alone all day. I could have gone to work. Too bad Rosemary's had me hunched over the toilet nonstop since eight this morning. So, that was out of the plans.

I had been able to keep the contents of my stomach at bay. But how much longer would that last? I couldn't tell if this was an issue I should have been concerned with or not. It could've been another false alarm Doctor Welsh warned me about too. There hadn't been any complications in my pregnancy so far, so I didn't know what to think.

"Everyone's pregnancy is different, Angie. I wouldn't put too much thought into it, unless you start to sense something off—like an odd color in your vomit or you're vomiting blood—anything that isn't normal. Your father and I are here if you need anything." Those were my mother's vague words to me over the phone.

Her attempt to comfort me hadn't helped much. In other words, she had never experienced this, and she had no idea if I should have been vomiting as excessively as I was when I was nearly through with my second trimester.

I had tried sleeping off my worries, but my eyes refused to close. Whenever I laid down, bile would rise from my stomach to my throat. It felt as if Rosemary was repeatedly punching me in the gut. You're overworking yourself. You're too stressed. My own thoughts haunted me. Could this have been the cause of stress?

I inhaled sharply, allowing my back to hit the head of our bed. My only other option was to focus on finding who this mystery guy was. He was the centerpiece missing in my connections. But who could he have been? Jeremiah Adams was out of the question. Unfortunately. He may have been crazy, but he wasn't stupid.

Charles just might have been telling the truth after all. He clearly wasn't anywhere close to these girls. Tiffany hadn't spoken badly about him at all. So, I could knock him off the suspect list for good.

What other guys did that leave me with? Definitely not Harrold. It had to be someone close, but someone the Adams didn't know, who may have been close to any of the other families with children involved in the disappearances.

"Ugh, this is driving me crazy!" I slammed the journal down.

Hmm, I wondered if Cory had already talked with the family beforehand. Perhaps he had already added every suspect to his list from the party. It'd have probably made my life easier if she told me whose birthday party it was. I had forgotten to ask her though.

"Wait a second. Carmen's niece went missing too. That's it!" That completely slipped my mind. The niece I didn't even know was a part of the missing girls' profiles.

I bent forward, examining all the photos I had sprawled across the blanket. Mary Drake, Helena Byers, Vivian Thomas, and Holly Adams had been pushed to one side, while the others lay on the other side.

"Mary, where are you when I need you?" I grumbled.

She'd been quiet for a while now. I didn't understand it. She could've pointed me in the direction of the murderer and this could've all be solved. I wouldn't have had to occupy myself with this time-consuming case. That was probably narrow minded of me to think.

I'd have solved only one portion of the case: finding the murderer, but leaving the other girl's bones to deteriorate, because no one else would have been capable of finding them. Besides, she could have led me to the murderer. But I would have had no evidence to prove it was them.

My eyes roamed over their profiles once more from top to bottom. But nothing. A sign or something would have been helpful.

"Sheesh, I bet the answer is right here, and I'm thinking too much," I said to myself.

My father always told me that was a bad habit of mine that'd get me nowhere. It was the reason why Cory's test grades were always better. He didn't think too hard, just went with his gut. And most of the time, his gut was correct.

Me, on the other hand, I second guessed myself more than I should have. I was certain my determination emerged from doubt. I had doubted myself all my life. At this point, I was ready to give up.

My eyes fluttered closed as I breathed in through my nose. I then exhaled loudly, clicking my tongue against the roof of my mouth. "Okay, one more time; for your Mary." I scooped up Cory's journal, plopping it open on my lap.

"Jeremiah, Tiffany, Harrold, Lucinda, Edward, Fabian, Carmen Garc—" I paused mid-sentence. My eyebrows knitted together as I read the name over again. "Carmen Garcia?"

Carmen Byers. Carmen Garcia. Holy shit. Of course. Carmen had a spouse!

"Wow." I laughed hysterically.

I felt like a complete idiot. I'd been overlooking the fact Carmen was married all this time. She seemed to have been widowed now though. Her husband passed away in 2011, just when Helena was five. Garcia was her maiden name. That made so much more sense.

"Oh gosh, yes, that is perfect! There was a little girl with the last name Garcia in the pile," I cheered under my breath. My hands rummaged through the scatter of papers on our blankets. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

"There you are! Shayla Garcia! I am so fucking amazing." I clapped, retrieving the file in my hands. A small child was in the photo. Wow, she was a spitting image of Carmen. She looked more like Carmen, than her own child, Helena. But Shayla wasn't her child. It was weird.

"Let's see who your parents are. Hmm, Julio Garcia is your father. Oh wow, he's younger than Carmen. So, he must be her younger brother. Divorced, mother had full custody, Julio is also a drunk, just like his sister," I read her file to myself.

Geez, he had even shown up drunk to court. It was no wonder Shayla's mother had custody. But that was in 2015. He could have gotten better over the years. Cory didn't have many notes on him, but I'd have to check again, since I hadn't paid attention to his name much before.

"No siblings, was reported missing by her mother, August 17th, 2016. Wait, how does this help me at all?" I stopped myself.

None of this information pointed me in the direction of the mystery guy at the birthday party. Surely, if Tiffany knew Shayla, she knew of Carmen's brother. So, it couldn't have been him. What the hell was I doing this for then?

I rested my chin on my knees, hugging them to my chest. Now that I thought about it, the date was oddly familiar. Where had I seen it before? Or better yet, heard it.

"The search for little nine-year-old Helena Byers continues. She was last seen on August 17th, 2016 at a birthday party in West Greenbush park. . ."

Chills struck me. I remembered.

Matthew Turner's voice uttered those words from the radio, the day I found Helena's bones. Two girls from the same family disappeared on the same day from the same location. That meant there was a connection between the families. Someone on the inside who could get close enough.

I was wrong then. Maybe this could help me. It could help me more than I thought.