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Chapter Twenty-Seven

The following morning,after Diablo made Fallon promise to call him before she left the apartment, she sat at the kitchen counter and unwrapped theAlina Post. One of her favorite things to do in the mornings was read the local paper while she sipped on a big mug of coffee laced with hazelnut creamer. As she sipped, her eyes scanned the headline “Skeletal Remains found in Mesa County.” She skimmed the article, then stared at the computerized images under the caption “Do you know this man and woman?” Her breath caught in her throat as she stared at the woman’s image.

All of a sudden, the room became hotter and stuffier, and it was like she was going to choke. She went over to the sliding door and opened it, a welcomed rush of air calmed her down. The scent of crisp apples, firewood, and earth wafted around her as she watched the red, yellow, and gold leaves shiver in the wind. After taking in the cool air for several minutes, she went back to the counter and looked at the images in the paper. The computerized rendition of the man and woman haunted her, especially the woman’s. There was something familiar about her, something tugging at the back corners of her mind.

She looked at the next set of pictures, which were the clothing and some items found near the bones. When her eyes landed on a gold locket with a Victorian floral pattern on it, she covered her mouth, gasping. Her skin tingled as a clear image of her mother wearing the locket popped into her mind. “Oh my God,” she cried aloud.

Her mother had bought a locket very similar to the one in the paper at an antique shop in Durango. Fallon remembered it clearly because her dad had been out of town and her mother had decided that they’d have an adventure. For some reason—she really didn’t know why—her mother had sworn her to secrecy. She hadn’t wanted Charlie to know they left Tula. Fallon recalled that it had been a wonderful day and that her mom had fallen in love with the locket. She’d bought it and when they’d returned home, she promptly placed Fallon’s picture in it.

Fallon’s heart lurched as she remembered that day, and she stared at the picture in the paper. She couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, but the minute she’d seen it, it’d jogged a lost memory. Clutching her arms to her chest, she rocked back and forth, the monotony of the movement calming her. Then she remembered the pictures she’d taken from her home. The pictures she’d kept hidden for years, too afraid to look at them for fear her father would find out she had them and take them away from her.

She went into her walk-in closet and pulled out a shoebox. Sitting on the floor, she opened the box and stared at the images piled on top of one another before dumping them out on the floor and sifting through them. They were all mixed up: pictures of her mother when she was a teenager, when she was a little girl, when she first had Fallon, older pictures of them as a family. Fallon didn’t know a lot of the people in the pictures, though she guessed some of them must’ve been her grandmother and grandfather. They were in a lot of the pictures of her mother when she was a teenager.

Then she found the pictures of her mother wearing the locket. In many of the photos, she had it on.

She grabbed those photos and went to the kitchen, comparing the locket and her mother to the pictures in the paper. Her pulse pounded as the blood rushed to her head, the room spinning.This woman is Mom. Oh God. Someone killed Mom.The thought was surreal, and in an instant, Fallon’s world had been turned topsy-turvy. She glanced at the man.Is this Rich?She couldn’t really remember what he looked like.

Picking up her phone, she plugged in the phone number listed in the article.

“Detective Contreras.”

“Uh… I’m calling about the article in theAlina Post.The one about the bodies you found.”

“Do you have any information about them?”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I think it’s my mother.” Her voice cracked.

“What’s your mother’s name?”

“Joanna Richardson.”

“How long has your mother been missing?” he asked.

“We thought she ran away with Rich. That was about twelve years ago. I recognized the locket. The article didn’t say if there was a picture in it. My mom had a photo of me in it. Does the locket you found have a picture of a little girl?”

“It does. We didn’t release that information because we wanted to be sure that anyone who called wasn’t just an attention-seeker.”

“So someone killed my mother?”

“I’m afraid so. I’m so sorry. I need to talk with you. When can we meet?”

“Anytime. All this time I thought she left me behind. I should’ve known better. I knew she loved me even though my dad kept telling me she didn’t. How did she die?”

“The results indicate a blow to the head.”

A small whimper escaped through her parted lips. “Why would someone kill my mom? Everyone loved her. She was such a loving, nice person. I don’t understand this.”

“We’ll have to do a positive identification. Do you remember the name of your mother’s dentist?”

“Dr. McClure. He retired a few years ago. I think he’s still in Tula. I can’t believe any of this.”

At the end of the conversation, Fallon had made arrangements to meet with Detective Contreras, give a sample of her DNA, and give a statement. He’d asked a lot of questions about her father.

When she put the phone down, numbness prevented her from doing anything, even thinking. She sat staring out the sliding glass door to the maple trees, the cloudless blue sky, and the mountain’s craggy peaks that already had a white dusting on them. Snapshots of her life with her mother whipped through her mind like a fast-paced slideshow.

In one morning, her reality had changed. What she’d believed for more than a decade had been proven false. The enormity of it was too much to comprehend. When she’d thought her mother had run off, hope had always been there, nudging her that one day her mother would make contact with her. Hope was now dashed forever. Her mother would never contact her. Her mother was dead. It was so final.

She wished she never would’ve opened the paper. Hope was better than knowing the truth.