Charlaine Harris - [Lily Bard 03] by Shakespeare's Christmas (V2.0)

Author:Shakespeare's Christmas (V2.0)
Language: eng
Format: epub

It was only nine by the time we got to my parents’ house, but it felt like midnight. I didn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone, and yet somehow my parents had to be told, had to be talked to. Luckily for me, Varena had regained her balance by the time she saw my mother, and though she cried a little, she managed to relate the horrible death of Meredith Osborn.

“Should I just cancel the wedding?” she asked tearfully.

I knew my mother would talk her out of it. I really couldn’t bear to be with people right now. I went to my room and shut the door firmly. My father came to stand outside in the hall; I knew his footsteps.

“Are you okay, pumpkin?” he called.

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“Yes.”

“Do you want to be alone?”

I clenched my fists until even my short fingernails bit into my palms. “Yes, please.”

“OK.” Off he went, God bless him.

I lay on the hard bed, hands clasped across my stomach, and thought.

I could not imagine how I could find out any more information about the three girls who might be Summer Dawn. But I was convinced that Meredith Osborn’s death had come about because she knew which girl was not who she seemed to be. I tried to picture Lou O’Shea or the Reverend O’Shea attacking Meredith in the freezing cold of her backyard, but I just could not. Still less could I imagine mild Dill Kingery stabbing Meredith into silence. Dill’s mother was certainly off-base, but I’d never seen any tendency to violence. Mrs. Kingery just seemed daffy.

I thought of Meredith Osborn taking care of Krista O’Shea and Anna Kingery. What could she have seen—or heard—that would lead her to think she knew that one of the girls had been born with a different identity?

I’d never had a baby, so I didn’t know what happened bureaucratically when you gave birth. Some hospitals, I knew, took little footprints—I’d seen them framed on the walls of the Althaus family when I cleaned for them. And of course there was the birth certificate. And pictures. A lot of hospitals took pictures, for the parents. To me, all babies pretty much looked the same, red and scrunch-faced, or brown and scrunch-faced. That some had hair and some didn’t was the only obvious distinction I could see.

I had learned, also from the much-birthed Carol Althaus, that the fingerprints police or volunteers sometimes took at mall booths were not helpful because often they were of poor quality. I didn’t know if that was true, but it sounded reasonable. I was willing to bet the same reasons would render any existing baby footprints of Summer Dawn unusable.

So fingerprints and footprints were a no go. DNA testing could prove Summer Dawn’s identity, I was sure, but of course you had to know whom to test. I couldn’t see Jack demanding that the three girls undergo DNA testing. Well, I could see him demanding it, but I could also see all three sets of parents turning him down cold.

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