Desperation on Wildflower Island Read online

  Jeanette handed her the cup of water and the cloth. They did the trick. It took a few minutes, but Catherine began feeling better. Obviously, the shock of finding out that her daughter was still alive was overwhelming. It was something that she hadn’t even considered. Her quest was to find out what happened to her baby’s body, not to actually find her daughter alive.

  As soon as Catherine began feeling better, she stood up and wanted to continue her conversation with Jeanette. She didn’t see any reason to mince words, so she got right back into it.

  “You are lying to me, aren’t you? I can tell by the look on your face,” Catherine confronted her.

  “I’m not lying! You need to just leave us alone. You’re crazy. Now that you aren’t going to pass out on me, I’m leaving.”

  Jeanette turned and started to walk toward her car. She only got two steps away before Catherine grabbed her left arm and spun her around. Jeanette jerked her arm away with a rigid glare that caused Catherine to back up a bit.

  “Don’t touch me!” Jeanette yelled at her.

  “I want my daughter back,” Catherine said, taking a deep breath while trying to sound calm. She didn’t want to escalate the situation anymore than it had already been. That wasn’t going to help solve the problem at all.

  “I told you that she is not your daughter.”

  Jeanette stood her ground. Catherine had no proof. Everyone on the island had known them since they moved there right after Isabella was born. They were well liked in the community and she doubted that anyone would believe Catherine’s story.

  “Well, how about you and I go have a talk with the sheriff about it? Perhaps he can sort all of this mess out?” Catherine was not bluffing. She fully intended to follow through.

  “I know the sheriff and he won’t believe you.” Jeanette had a smug look on her face. “You’re gonna have to prove it.”

  “Really? You’ve heard of DNA right? You were a nurse after all.” Catherine was calling her bluff.

  “No one is going to make us do a DNA test without some sort of serious suspicion or proof first,” Jeanette explained. “The sheriff doesn’t just make people take DNA tests whenever someone makes a stupid claim like this one.”

  Jeanette knew she was right. No one could force her to do a DNA test. At least not quickly. They would move off the island by the time that happened.

  Catherine looked up to see several people in the cafe watching their exchange with interest, though she doubted anyone could hear what was going on. However, they were in the parking lot, and not too far out of earshot. It was an outdoor cafe and they were only a few feet away. Catherine lowered her voice just to be on the safe side.

  “I’m getting a lawyer. We’ll see what the courts have to say about that,” Catherine told her.

  “Yeah, why don’t you do that. It can take months or even years for anything to happen. We will be long gone by then. I’m not letting you put my daughter through all of that.”

  Jeanette was smug and crossed her arms for emphasis as she spoke. She knew what she was saying was true. They could disappear easily, and had done it before. They could be packed and off the island in a matter of a few short hours. It would take way too long for the courts to do anything. Even Sheriff Rex was not a man that got things done quickly. It would probably be days before he ever made his way to their house for questioning. He would find an empty house when he got there.

  Catherine stood there for a minute, thinking about what Jeanette had just said. She was probably right. Catherine couldn’t watch them 24 hours a day to make sure they didn’t leave. She needed to figure out a way to get answers quickly. She thought back to the day her baby was born and to the conversations she had had with Emily. An idea came to mind.

  “You remember me talking about my husband, Donny, right? About how he was in prison and that I know he killed two people?”

  “Yeah, so?” Jeanette still stood there with her arms folded across her chest and a fixed stare on her face. She wasn’t about to show any weakness.

  “Well, he’s out of prison now, and on his way here. We talked and he is coming to help me look for you. I plan to call him today to tell him about finding our daughter. Alive,” Catherine told her.

  She wasn’t sure if she would actually tell Donald or not. Catherine herself was afraid of him and had misgivings about telling him. She was just hoping that the threat of a killer being informed that Jeanette had stolen his child would scare her. That should be enough to scare anyone.

  “He’s going to be furious and he will come after you.” Catherine said that last part with emphasis. It was her intention to scare Jeanette.

  It worked. Jeanette looked down at her feet in shame. She was caught. She had gotten away with her ruse for ten years, but no more. She didn’t know anything about Donald, except for the few things Catherine had told her on the night Isabella was born, but she remembered the stories. That was why she took the baby in the first place, to keep her away from her horrible father, and her homeless mother. She had succeeded for a while, but she couldn’t lie about it anymore. She had to fess up. She was terrified of Donald coming after her, and her family. He was a killer.

  “Okay, okay, you are right,” Jeanette confessed, putting her palms up toward Catherine in defeat. “Isabella is the child you gave birth to. I’m sorry for taking her, really, but at the time it seemed like the right thing for me to do.” Jeanette fully expected Catherine to lunge at her after what she had just told her, and she braced for the inevitable confrontation.

  “Oh god, I’m gonna be sick,” Catherine blurted out as she ran around to the front of the car she was leaning on and lost the little bit of breakfast she had managed to eat.

  Until that moment, Catherine wasn’t entirely sure that her accusations were completely true. She was pretty sure. Isabella did seem to look like her, but she wasn’t positive. Once Jeanette confirmed it, that’s when Catherine’s stomach couldn’t take anymore. Jeanette stood where Catherine had left her and waited for Catherine to finish. There was no point in running now.

  After she stopped heaving and wiped her face with some tissues she had in her purse, she walked back over to stand in front of Jeanette, who stood there with downcast eyes, and the guiltiest looking face Catherine had ever seen.

  Chapter 15

  TEN YEARS AGO

  The night Isabella was born, Emily, as she was known back then, did an unspeakable thing. She took the baby. She just couldn’t give the child back to a neglectful mother and troubled father. She just couldn’t do it. As soon as Catherine was asleep and Emily left the room with the baby in her arms, she called her husband and told him to get to the hospital immediately. She would explain when he got there.

  When her husband, Jacob, arrived, Emily told him all about the mother and why she took the baby. Though Emily and her husband already had one child, they had not been able to conceive another. Emily felt this was her chance to be a mother again.

  Emily and Jacob fought bitterly that night. In the car. In the pouring rain. Their son, Sawyer, only 7 years old was with them, and listening to every word. Jacob wanted a child as much as his wife did, but wanted nothing to do with taking one from the hospital. Emily told him that the mother didn’t want the baby and had told Emily to take her. Though Jacob was apprehensive, for some reason that even he can’t explain, he agreed and took the baby home. There was a bit of desperation in his wife’s face that he couldn’t bear to watch.

  The next day Catherine left the hospital alone. Emily made sure she was there, so she could see Catherine off without anyone asking about the baby. Emily had put in the medical chart that the baby died. With all of the staff coming and going, no one had noticed when Emily sneaked out the back door with the baby the night before, as the other nurses were distracted. When they saw in the chart that the baby died, they took it as the truth. Emily had been working there for years and no one had any reason to question her. Babies sometimes died. It was a sad fact of life.


  After Catherine left, it was Emily’s job to update the medical chart and take it to the medical records department. She changed the records to say that Catherine was discharged, along with a healthy baby girl. There might be follow up on an autopsy and death certificate if she left the chart saying that the baby died. No one had any reason to follow up on a baby that left with her mother.

  Emily definitely felt some guilt in there, but justified her actions by telling herself that Isabella was better off with her nice, normal family, instead of with a homeless woman that had a killer for a husband.

  Over the next few years, Catherine’s daughter grew up with Emily, who started going by her middle name, Jeanette, and her family on Wildflower Island. Isabella was cute and smart and precocious. Jeanette rarely thought of Catherine and she and her husband never told a soul.

  THE PRESENT

  Still standing in the cafe parking lot, Jeanette couldn’t look Catherine in the eyes as she spoke. She knew what she did was wrong. She also knew that it seemed right to her at the time.

  “Oh my god! I can’t believe this is happening. If I hadn’t come looking for answers about the whereabouts of her body, I would never have found out. You planned to keep my daughter from me forever. I would never have known she existed. You are a horrible person!” Catherine screamed at her. She didn’t care that all eyes in the cafe were on them. “I want my daughter back.”

  “What? No. Please don’t do that.” Jeanette sounded desperate. “I’m the only mother she has ever known. You are a complete stranger to her. Maybe we can work something out.”

  “It’s your fault that I’m a complete stranger to her.” Catherine took a deep breath as she attempted to remain calm. “If you don’t give her back, I’m going to the sheriff. You and your husband will go to prison for a really long time.”

  Jeanette was terrified. “I know. You are right. But I can’t just hand her over to you. I have a son. Even though he is a teenager, he still needs me. This isn’t his fault. Please don’t have his parents arrested. Please don’t do that to him. We have to figure something out.” Jeanette was pleading.

  “Like what?” Catherine asked her. “What could we possibly figure out?”

  Catherine wanted her daughter back desperately, but could understand what Jeanette was saying. She didn’t want to traumatize the girl, or her brother. She knew that yanking her from her family and sending her parents to prison wasn’t the right way to go about things. But what was the right way? There were no instruction manuals on how to get your child back after her death was faked and she was stolen at birth from you.

  “I really don’t know. I need to talk to my husband about it. Can we talk later?” Jeanette asked her.

  “What about Isabella? I don’t trust you. You could take off with her.”

  Catherine looked toward the car as she spoke. She desperately wanted her daughter, but it had all been such a shock, that she really didn’t know how to handle the situation properly. Should she walk over to the car and talk to Isabella? Should she tell her the truth? Something in her gut told her that wasn’t the way to handle things. But what was the correct way to handle them?

  “No, I won’t do that. I want to work this out with you.” Jeanette sounded sincere, but Catherine was smart enough not to believe anything that came out of Jeanette’s mouth.

  “I still don’t trust you. Can you blame me?” Catherine asked, with her eyebrows raised questioningly.

  Jeanette’s eyes were downcast as she shook her head. She had been living with the guilt of what she had done for a decade. Why would Catherine trust her at all? She would not trust the woman if the roles were reversed.

  “Give me your phone number and let me see your ID,” Catherine demanded.

  Jeanette rattled off her phone number as she reached into her purse and handed Catherine her ID. Catherine took a picture of it with her phone and handed it back. She then took a picture of the license plate of the car that her daughter was currently sitting in.

  “Great, thanks. I’m going to give the ferry office a copy of your ID and pay them a lot of money to let me know if you try to leave the island with my daughter. Got it?”

  “Yeah, I got it. I’m not going anywhere. I’m tired of hiding. I don’t know how, but I want to work this out amicably,” Jeanette replied.

  Jeanette meant what she said. She was terrified of prison and Donald Sharpe. She needed to work the problem out, though she had no idea how they would actually do that. Share custody? She doubted that. What else could they do? She needed to have a serious talk with her husband about the whole situation.

  The women parted. Catherine stood in the parking lot and watched as Jeanette drove away with her daughter. She suddenly had huge misgivings about letting Jeanette leave with Isabella. Was Jeanette lying to her? Would she try to run? What if she did and Catherine had blown her only chance of getting her daughter back?

  Catherine headed immediately to the ferry office and paid them a lot of money to make sure Jeanette didn’t leave with Isabella. They knew Jeanette, and liked her, but the money Catherine was offering was enough to keep them on high alert. Of course, Catherine was not stupid, and knew that there were other ways to get off of the island, such as a private boat. There was no way she could watch the entire island, so she just had to have faith that Jeanette wouldn’t run. At least if she did, Catherine had her ID copy and that would make it much more difficult for Jeanette to get away and hide for long.

  She knew that she should head straight for the sheriff’s office and have Jeanette arrested. For some reason that she couldn’t explain, she just couldn’t do it. Jeanette had taken care of her daughter when Catherine really couldn’t. Deep in her heart she knew that when Isabella was born, Catherine had no business being a mother. She could barely feed herself. How would she have taken care of a newborn? As she sat in her hotel room that afternoon, crying for a daughter she never even knew she had, she had no idea how she was going to take her away from the only mother she had ever known. Could Catherine do that to her? That was something she was going to have to figure out.

  Jeanette called a friend of hers and dropped Isabella off at her friend’s house on her way home from the cafe. She called Jacob also and asked him to come to her house so they could talk. She stressed to him how important it was. He agreed. She needed to have that talk with Jacob without Isabella around. Their son, Sawyer, had left early to go surfing and would probably be out all day with his friends. So, she could be certain that they could talk without prying ears.

  Jeanette told Jacob everything. He already knew that Jeanette took Isabella from the hospital, but she had lied to him about the circumstances. She had told him that the mother was an unwed teenager, that didn’t want a baby. She said the teenager was apathetic and refused to even look at the baby. She had also told Jacob at the time that she and the girl agreed that Jeanette would take the baby. However, there was no way that the hospital would have allowed something like that. It was very unethical and it was illegal to just give your child away. That’s why she lied and did it in secret that night. Because of that story, Jacob agreed to take the baby home. He was a bit apprehensive about the whole thing, because it wasn’t done through the proper channels, but he wanted a daughter as much as his wife did. He was afraid that if they tried to adopt Isabella through the courts, that something would go wrong and they would be denied. So, he agreed. They had never spoken of it again after that night. Until now.

  Now she had to tell him the truth. The undeniable, unvarnished truth. She was terrified of how he might react, due to the lies she had told him on the night they brought Isabella home. She knew it was a risk to tell him, but she had no choice. She also knew that he might not ever forgive her for her deceit.

  What she didn’t know was that someone was listening to their entire conversation. Someone she had never met. Someone that could cause a lot of trouble for her family.

  Back when Catherine stopped her in the parking lot of the cafe, Jeane
tte had no idea that Lola was hiding around the corner, listening to every word of their exchange. Then Lola jumped on Piper’s bicycle that she always left outside the inn and followed Jeanette home. Lola watched as Jeanette dropped Isabella off at a friend’s house and headed to her own home. She didn’t live far from the cafe, less than a mile, so it was easy for Lola to keep up with her as she drove slowly through the neighborhoods.

  When they reached Jeanette’s house, Lola hung back and waited for Jeanette to go inside. Then she made her way around to the back of the house and crouched under the open kitchen window.

  Lola heard everything. Every sordid detail. She didn’t get any satisfaction out of it though. She was distressed by the whole situation. Distressed that Isabella was kidnapped and was being raised by the kidnappers. Distressed that Isabella’s biological mother had shown up and threatened Jeanette to get her daughter back. Distressed because she was quite certain that Isabella killed Eric Doyle by poison in the cafe and also killed her father’s girlfriend by pushing her off a cliff.

  The problem was that Lola had no proof of any of it and had no idea how to get proof.

  There was a lot of yelling in the Hale home that day. When it was all over, Lola sneaked back around to the front of the house just as Jeanette’s friend dropped Isabella off. Isabella didn’t say a word, but glared at her as she got on the bike and rode away. Lola was not known for being afraid of anyone, but that look sent shivers up Lola’s spine.

  Chapter 16

  The moment Isabella walked into the house, she could sense the tension between her parents. It hung in the air and was almost tangible. The house was silent, except for the dull thump, thump, thump of the clothes dryer. Her parents not speaking to each other was very unusual for the two of them. Even though they were separated, they still spoke frequently and were on good terms. A few minutes after her mother’s friend dropped her off, her brother, Sawyer, arrived home. He had had a great day surfing with his friends and was in a chipper mood.