Deputies found Mr. Foster in an upstairs bedroom with a fatal and self-inflicted gunshot wound. Investigators said no note was left at the scene.
The authorities would not speculate on a motive but said Mrs. Foster had applied for a restraining order against her husband in 2003, saying Mr. Foster had beaten her and had broken furniture in their home.
She later dropped the complaint.
From the back seat Blythe stared out the window as the four of them—herself, Gabriel, Ed, and Gigi—drove to White Plains, New York, to question Zane Dryer, Cassandra’s ex-husband. Zane, an investment broker, had agreed to meet them at his office that afternoon. They hadn’t told him much on the phone, only that they were friends of Cassandra’s and that they were concerned about her well-being.
Blythe looked down at the page once again and brought it closer to her face, squinting as she once more examined the family photograph the newspaper had published. There was no question in her mind that Amelia was Addison. She and Shannon were obviously identical twins, and if Addison and Amelia were one and the same, Addison would be only twenty-seven now. Blythe closed the folder and leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes. She hoped they would get the answers they were seeking when they met with Cassandra’s ex-husband, Zane. He might hold the key to the truth.
“When did the detective say they were divorced?” Gigi asked, shifting in her seat on the passenger side to look back at Blythe.
Blythe opened her eyes. “Almost ten years ago.”
Ed scoffed, looking from the driver’s seat into the rearview mirror at Blythe. “Impossible. I don’t care what Julian said, I knew there was no way Addison was close to forty.”
“Of course she’s not. This must be her. Julian is hiding something. I think he’s tricked her . . . and all of us . . . somehow,” Gabriel said.
“Well, we’ll know soon enough,” Blythe said.
They pulled into the parking lot of Soundview Investments at three. The receptionist in Zane’s office took their names and picked up her phone to announce them.
Moments later a trim man with sandy hair and wire-rimmed glasses approached them, holding out a hand. “Zane Dryer.”
Blythe estimated that he was in his early forties, a friendly-seeming guy. He led the group down the hall to his spacious office.
“Thank you for agreeing to see us,” Blythe said, getting right to the point. “As I told you on the phone, we live in Philadelphia, where we knew your ex-wife as Addison, though she was forthright that it wasn’t really her name. She’d had amnesia for the previous two years and was unable to remember her real name.”
“Very strange. The last time I spoke with her was around four years ago,” Zane told her. “We hadn’t exactly stayed in touch.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want to get divorced. I thought we were happy enough, even though we’d struggled to have children. But she accused me of some horrible things, then essentially ghosted me and had me served.”
Gabriel leaned forward. “What kind of things?”
Zane threaded his hand through his hair. “Look, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, so let me back up. She was in therapy to deal with depression. She’d had three miscarriages and was grieving deeply over them. Instead of helping her, her therapist convinced her that I’d caused the miscarriages by hurting her.”
Watching her son, Blythe saw the color rise to his face. “Hurting her how?” he asked, his tone aggressive.
Zane threw his hands up. “Hold on. He was lying. He’s a specialist in post-traumatic stress disorders. He started her doing hypnosis, some sort of treatment thing to get rid of traumatic memories.” He sighed. “Cassandra grew up in foster care, and she’d had some very bad experiences there. At first he seemed to be helping her, but then she started to change.”
“In what way?” Blythe asked.
“Pushing me away, spending a lot more time in therapy sessions. She was going every day—it seemed like overkill. The next thing I knew, she told me that she’d moved in with him, and she had her attorney send me divorce papers.”
“She moved in with her therapist? Doesn’t that violate every professional standard?” Blythe asked, indignation in her voice.
Zane looked straight at Blythe, and before the words left his lips, she knew what he was going to say. “Her therapist was Julian Hunter.”
Gabriel sprang up from his seat. “I knew that guy was full of shit. Didn’t you have any recourse? Couldn’t she be deprogrammed?”