Chapter 5 - The Girl at the Church Door
The church was preparing its Christmas pageant when Ortiz arrived. Children in cardboard angel wings chased one another around folding chairs. The minister, Reverend Paul Keene, looked startled by the detectives but ushered them into his office.
“Mia Saunders?” he repeated. “She volunteers here.”
“She’s a child,” Ortiz said.
“Seventeen now. She helps with the younger ones.”
Mia appeared carrying a box of paper stars. She froze when Thomas introduced himself.
“I know you,” she said.
“You knew Anna?”
“She brought us groceries.”
“Us?”
Mia set down the box. “There were six of us at the farmhouse when I lived there. Beverly said we were lucky because no one else wanted us.”
Ortiz asked whether Mia felt safe speaking. Reverend Keene offered a quiet room and stayed nearby at her request.
Mia explained that after her father’s death, Hearthstone offered temporary housing while her grandmother recovered from surgery. Beverly kept her phone, controlled her mail, and told her that her grandmother had stopped asking about her.
“When Anna came, she asked where my letters were,” Mia said. “Beverly told her I’d never written any.”
“Had you?” Thomas asked.
“Every week.”
Mia’s voice cracked. “Anna promised she’d get them out.”
“Did she?”
“She gave me a stamped envelope and said to hide it in the church donation basket. A week later she was dead.”
Thomas swallowed.
“Did you see her again?”
“No. But I got a Christmas card from her the following year.”
“That’s impossible.”
Mia opened her purse and removed a folded card, worn soft at the corners. Inside was Anna’s handwriting: Keep the bell. When you are ready, tell Thomas about the red ledger.
The postmark was dated eleven months after Anna’s funeral.
Grace examined it without touching the ink. “This may have been mailed later by someone else.”
Mia nodded. “I thought so too. But the card included a photograph taken after she died.”
The photograph showed a hospital hallway. Anna stood near a vending machine, thinner than Thomas remembered, wearing a knit cap.
Thomas sat down.
Rosie’s mother had died after a winter highway accident. He had identified her through personal effects because the injuries were severe. He had never seen her face in the hospital.
He had spent four years telling Rosie her mother was in heaven.
Now he did not know what to tell himself.
Ortiz asked Mia whether she knew who sent the card.
“A woman called June.”
“Last name?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
Mia remembered June’s silver hair and a scar across one knuckle. She had brought groceries to the church and quietly paid for Mia’s vocational classes.
Thomas knew a June. His former bookkeeper, June Mercer, had retired shortly after Anna’s accident.
He called her old number. Disconnected.
Grace found a recent property tax record in June’s name. A modest duplex in a neighboring town.
Before they left the church, Rosie called Thomas from Ellen’s phone.
“Daddy, I made a star for the tree.”
“That sounds beautiful.”
“Can you come see?”
“I’ll be there for dinner.”
She hesitated. “Promise?”
He looked at Mia’s photograph.
“I promise.”
Thomas kept it. He spent the evening at Ellen’s, helping Rosie frost cookies. She put so much icing on one that it slid off the plate.
For the first time since Christmas Eve, she laughed without looking toward a doorway first.
At bedtime, she asked, “If Mommy were here, would she like my star?”
“She would love it.”
“Meredith said Mommy left because I cried too much.”
Thomas sat beside her bed. “That was cruel and untrue.”
Rosie watched his face. “You know for sure?”
“Yes,” he said. He knew that much, whatever else remained uncertain.
After she slept, his phone rang from an unlisted number.
A woman said, “You found Mia.”
“June?”
“Don’t go to my house. Meredith’s people were here this morning.”
“Where is Anna?”
May you like
June began to cry.
“She’s been trying to come home.”
