Jo felt Nessa’s arm slip around her. “It’s over,” Nessa told her. “You found the bodies when the rest of us couldn’t. You got our story out. Who knows how many lives you may have saved? You’re a hero, Jo Levison. You’ve done Lucy proud.”
Jo threw her arms around Nessa and buried her face in her friend’s shoulder. For two days, she’d been fighting back the tears. Now they came flowing out all at once. Never before had she felt so terrified. But with Spencer Harding dead, her family could come home. There was nothing on earth that she wanted more—but the things she’d been willing to do to bring them back had surprised even her.
“Hey,” Nessa nudged her. “Looks like Harriett just showed up.”
“Harriett?” Jo wiped her eyes on her sleeve and glanced out the window. A barefoot woman in a burlap sack was walking down Woodland Drive toward Nessa’s house. The crowd parted for her as she made her way to the front door, the reporters struck dumb by the sight.
Downstairs, the doorbell rang, and Nessa hurried to answer it with Jo on her heels.
“It’s a little early for a lawn party, don’t you think?” Harriett said when Nessa opened the door.
“Come in, come in,” Nessa quickly ushered Harriett through the door as cameras flashed behind her. “Did you hear? Spencer Harding is dead. It’s over.”
“Spencer may be dead,” Harriett said, “but it’s far from over.”
Jo felt her heart sink. “What do you mean?”
“You think Spencer Harding put the girls in those lobster traps and rowed them out to sea? There had to be other people involved.”
Jo must have looked crushed.
“I didn’t mean to upset you.” Harriett sounded serious and sober for once. “No one’s going to tip their hand by coming after us right now. We’re safe for the moment. You can bring darling Lucy home.”
“What should we do about the others?”
“Those who deserve punishment will receive it,” Harriett assured her.
“I’m getting pretty sick of waiting for justice,” Jo said.
“Justice may be relentless, as Franklin says, but she’s also hobbled by rules,” Harriett noted. “That’s why I choose vengeance. She’s the only mistress I serve.”
At the beginning of July, they buried Mandy Welsh. The Hereford County medical examiner had not been able to determine her cause of death. Mandy’s father was the only family police had been able to locate, and he gave Nessa permission to arrange the service and to have his daughter interred beside the girl in blue. With two years left on his sentence at Sing Sing, he wouldn’t be allowed to attend the funeral. Since the Welshes hadn’t gone to church, Nessa held the service at hers. Over a thousand people attended. She’d asked for all seats to be reserved for members of the community, but to her consternation, there appeared to be reporters in the pews.
As soon as the pastor finished his prayers, Nessa rose from her seat between her two daughters and made her way down the aisle. She’d attended her share of funerals over the years, but she had never given a eulogy before. When Jonathan died, she’d been too grief-stricken to speak. When her parents passed, Breanna and Jordan had spoken for the family. At the girl in blue’s funeral, she’d felt it wasn’t her place to say anything. But now she knew she’d been wrong. This time, she planned to stand before the whole town and speak for Mandy Welsh, whose family wasn’t there to see her off.
When Nessa looked out over the podium, her fear vanished. Not only was it gone, she couldn’t imagine how it had ever weighed her down. Nessa adjusted the microphone, which the pastor had positioned too high. Then she scanned the somber crowd, cleared her throat, and began.
“Let me make something clear,” she told those sitting in the pews and clustered in the aisles. “We have not gathered here to talk about the man who killed Mandy Welsh. You will not hear me say his name today, and I ask that you all avoid his name, too. We are here to talk about Mandy. I’ve spoken with dozens of people who knew her—you’ll hear from some of them later—and they all told me the same thing. This was a good girl. The kind of girl who started taking care of her brothers when she was barely more than a baby herself. A girl who, despite having nothing, always had love and kindness to share. Mandy may have been sweet and soft-spoken, but this girl was strong—so strong. Mandy crammed more work into each of her days than most of us could bear in a week. The afternoon she was abducted, she was walking five miles out to Culling Pointe to interview for a job that could help her family make ends meet. Mandy had just turned sixteen, but she was already supporting three little kids.