Page 43 of The Way Back Home
Eli shook his head slowly. “No, no one mentioned that. How do you know?”
“I went to school with her,” Kinsey said, shifting uncomfortably. “I didn’t know her well. I don’t thinkanyone did really. But after what happened and all …” A shadow passed over her face. “Well, I’d recognize her anywhere. Hard to forget those eyes once you’ve seen them. They kind of haunt you, you know? Made us all feel—I don’t know—guilty or something. Like we should have known what was going on and done something about it.” One hand smoothed over her extended belly protectively. “But she’s back now, so I guess everything worked out.”
“Kinsey, what the hell are you talking about?” Alex asked.
Kinsey shifted under the intensity of their attention, her eyes widening as the truth began to dawn on her. “You mean, you guys really don’t know?”
“Know what?” Adam said in exasperation.
“Oh, man, is that the time?” Kinsey pushed back from the table, abandoning her coffee and pastry. “I’d better call my parents and wish them a merry Christmas before I forget.” Kinsey beat a hasty retreat, leaving them speechless.
“Did you know anything about this?” Daniel asked Alex.
Alex shook his head. His fingers began flying across the keys. Funny how he’d been pondering the best way to find out more about his twin’s mystery woman only a few minutes ago.
“How old is Kinsey?”
“A year younger than Brandon, I think,” said Eli with growing interest. “So, twenty-six.”
“That means she must have graduated in … ah, here we go.” A couple more clicks, and Alex was paging through the online yearbook from Kinsey’s senior year of high school. “No Teagan listed in Kinsey’s class.”
“Maybe she didn’t graduate from Saughannock,” Adam suggested. “If Noah met her in Kentucky, her family might’ve moved before then.”
“Or maybe she wasn’t in the same grade,” Daniel supplied thoughtfully. “Kinsey said same school, not same class.”
Alex tapped a few more keys and found who he was looking for among the pictured juniors. A small girl in the front row with wavy black hair and those unmistakable eyes, nearly invisible among the others.
“Gotcha,” Alex murmured. His eyes roamed the names beneath the picture. “Teagan McKenna.”
“Why does the one side of her face look blurry, like the photo is smudged or something?” Adam asked, peering over Alex’s shoulder.
Alex’s eyes narrowed as he looked closer, zooming in and digitally enhancing that section. “Looks like bruises.”
Adam leaned closer and pointed. A blur of white extended from beneath her sleeve and wrapped around her hand. “Looks like something’s wrong with her wrist too.”
“Maybe she was in an accident or something,” Eli suggested.
Alex’s jaw flexed. His gut told him those injuries weren’t the accidental kind.
Opening a new window, he did a search with the keywordsTeagan,McKenna, andSaughannock, and was rewarded with several pages of hits.
He started with the oldest link, which took him to an archived obituary for Margaret “Maggie” McKenna. The picture showed a stunningly beautiful woman with the same large, blue eyes as Teagan. According to the write-up, Maggie had been twenty-three when she died, the result of a tragic accident, and listed Teagan as her only surviving child, five years old.
The next link showed a grainy photo of a little girl standing alone at a burial. She stood apart from the crowd, looking lost and scared, while everyone else’s eyes were focused elsewhere.
Alex peered more closely. Her feet were bare, yet from the picture and the heavy coats everyone was wearing, it was winter. Bandages covered the little girl’s legs, just barely visible beneath … was that a hospital gown?
“What does it say?” Daniel asked, straining to read the print.
Adam, who was closer, scanned the words quickly. “It says that Teagan sneaked out of the hospital to be at her mother’s funeral.”
“She was five!” Adam said in amazement. “How does a five-year-old do that?”
“According to this, she overheard the nurses talking about the burial service and slipped out.”
“Why was she in the hospital? Does it say?” That was from Eli.
“Injuries sustained from a two-story fall from a barn loft,” Alex quoted. He didn’t believe it for a minute.
