“Trust me, she did,” Agatha called. “She has to spread the calories around, otherwise she eats the whole thing in one sitting and drags me out to shop for new dresses a size up.”
“You’re one to talk!” Sally fired back. “How many biscotti did you eat after dinner last night? Seventeen?”
“They’re a digestif!”
“Keep telling yourself that.” Sally looked back at me. “Next she’ll be saying tiramisu is a well-balanced breakfast food.”
I grinned, but it slipped somewhat as I held her gaze. “While you’re here, can I ask you something?”
“Sure, sugar.”
“Yesterday, when we were talking about Annie Thurman, I wanted to ask but… It didn’t feel right. Not with Georgia sitting there.”
“Poor woman,” Agatha muttered.
“She’s being very strong. Still, I can’t imagine how she gets herself out of bed in the morning.” Sally’s fingers tapped the top of the Tupperware in her hands. “She’s my next stop. Figured she and her boy could use a little pick-me-up.”
“That’s nice of you.”
Sally’s lips curved up. “It’s the very least I can do.”
“That said, we’d like to get there before the sun sets,” Agatha cut in. “So, if you’ve got something to ask…”
“Right.” I blinked. “Um… I guess I just wanted to know what happened to Annie after she came back home.”
Sally’s expression darkened. “Oh...”
So did Agatha’s. “Oh.”
My stomach flipped. “What? What is it?”
“Her parents… well, like we told you yesterday, the Thurmans were a prominent family in town. Big reputations even before the case threw them into the spotlight,” Sally explained. “I guess it got to be too much for them. The whispers about Annie’s condition. The suspicion that blew back on them. They didn’t handle it well when all their money failed to fix their daughter. They picked up and moved not long after.”
“They didn’t justmove.” Agatha laughed bitterly. “Those folks started a new life somewhere else, where no one knew about what happened. Popped out another child. A fresh start, that’s what they called it. But we all knew they just couldn’t stand their perfect family no longer looking like a page ripped out ofCoastal Livingmagazine.”
My stomach flipped again. “And Annie? What about her?”
Agatha’s voice got even more bitter. “They threw her in the looney bin.”
Surely that couldn’t be true. “What?”
Sally exhaled sharply. “Ag, they don’t call it the looney bin anymore.”
“A mental asylum, then,” Agatha amended.
“They don’t call it that either, Ag.Psychiatric ward.That’s the term.”
“I don’t care what they call it, Sal! The fact remains, they tossed that girl away like garbage.”
“Is that true?” I asked Sally, eyes wide. An unpleasant feeling snaked its way through me, coiling in my gut. “It can’t be true.”
Sally’s eyes were a bit misty. “I wish it weren’t. But yes, last I heard, her family put her in a long-term care facility for treatment. She’s spent most of her life there at Oak Grove, over in Danvers.”
My words came out as a hiss of outrage. “How could they just leave her?”
“Can’t rightly say. Though, I suspect that whole experience changed them just as much as it changed their daughter. I don’t pretend to know what living through something like that does to a person. I pray I never know.” Sally’s lips flattened into a frown. “In the meantime, I hold my grandbabies as close as I can every time I get the chance. There are no guarantees in this life.”
I gripped the edge of the counter for support. I’d already been walloped this week by everything that had happened with the search, the visions, the emotional roller coaster that was my relationship with Cade… Hearing about Annie Thurman’s sad fate was yet another crushing blow. I couldn’t help worrying Rory’s story would end the same way. Even if we found him, there was a strong possibility he’d never be the same.