Her Name Was Annie

fury unleashing. When the wind whipped down the beach once again, turning my umbrella inside out, I took that as my cue to head back inside. I pulled up my hood, trekking through the sand and back toward the house. Since I was already soaked, I decided to walk out to the driveway where my car was parked to grab my bag, containing some papers that needed to be graded. As I slammed my car door shut, I caught a glimpse of a man in a green raincoat, walking along the beachfront road as if he was on a stroll on a sunny summer day, instead of out and about during a nasty nor’easter.
It was hard to tell his age or anything about him at all for that matter because he was bundled up for the elements. He was tall just like that man on the beach, and his slow movement made me believe he was older. I immediately began to wonder if he was lost or confused, but when he hopped into the SUV just a few feet away from him and drove off, I didn’t think much more about it. I had just assumed he was visiting one of the neighbors.
It hadn’t occurred to me until now that the neighbors who lived on each side of my parents’ beach house would close up their homes sometime in October for the rest of the winter. So who could he have been visiting? Was it the man in the ocean? It made complete sense. One of the photos they had found was from that day at that same exact time I was on the beach. How could I have been so stupid not to have remembered a detail like that? I hopped off the couch and grabbed my phone to call Jack. It would be another piece of the puzzle that fit, but we still had a long way to go before we could see the whole picture.

Chapter 13
“I’M BEGINNING TO think you’re looking for excuses to see me.” I teased Jack the following morning as I opened the door, and he walked inside.
“I’m trying to put this all together, so this nightmare could be over with,” he replied, assuring me this was by no means a social call—which for the record, I was already aware of. He followed me into the kitchen, and I prepared him a cup of coffee the way he always drank it. “I wanted to go over some things with you.”
I wasn’t quite sure why these things couldn’t have been discussed over the phone, but I kept my thoughts to myself. I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea again.
“The detectives sent me some footage from the neighbor’s security camera from the day you were talking about. It’s a little grainy because of the weather conditions and because the camera isn’t all that great, but you can definitely make someone out in it.” He placed his phone on the counter and the video began to play. At first it was just the trees blowing in the wind as the rain pelted down, but about fifteen seconds later, the man appeared in the frame. Jack paused the video and zoomed in on him. “Was that who you saw that day?”
“Yes! Yes, that’s him!”
“I sent this to my work colleague who’s in the office today, and he’s going to try and enhance it more with our computer software. I wish your dad had cameras on his house because then we could get a clearer shot of the vehicle and the plate to see who it was registered to or if it was a rental, who it was rented by. That way we’d know for sure if it was him or not.”
“Yeah, well, that’ll never happen. My dad is still trying to get used to having a cell phone. He doesn’t believe in modern-day technology.” I had tried so many times to convince him to install cameras on the house, being they weren’t there all the time, but he refused. I gave up after a while, certain that I wasn’t going to change an eighty-four-year-old man’s way of thinking no matter how hard I tried. “You can see a little bit of the vehicle from this footage. Maybe with any luck your software can pick up the plate number too.” I was hopeful, but the look on Jack’s face told me it was doubtful.
I sighed heavily and took a sip of my coffee.
“What’s all this?” Jack asked, looking around at the contents of my mother’s secret box that I had scattered across the kitchen island. I had just started to go through it right before he had gotten here.
“Oh, just some things of my mom’s I wanted to go through. I thought it was kind of odd that she had the drawer this box was in locked. So, I just wanted to go through it here to make sure there wasn’t anything in there that may potentially upset my father.”
“What?” Jack nearly spat out the sip of coffee he had just taken. “You actually think your mother, the most straitlaced person there was, may have been having some secret affair?”
I raised an eyebrow. “People can surprise you. You just never really know…do you?”
He dropped his gaze to the floor, knowing I was referring to him. I reached for the photograph of my mother and Kara on the day Kara was born and smiled. I could honestly say that was the happiest day of my life. It was amazing how much joy the birth of a child could bring, but I was also no stranger to how much sorrow it could bring as well. I quickly chased that thought away and handed over the photo to Jack.
“Look how sweet she was.”
Jack’s face lit up at the sight of our daughter just a few hours old, sporting a pink knit cap and wrapped in a blanket.
“I think she began to form an opinion about a day after that