“Oh,” she finally whispered. “I’ve wondered about her for years.”
We met the next morning at a small café.
Carol Bennett arrived carrying a canvas folder.
“I was a charge nurse at St. Anne’s,” she explained.
Seven years earlier, a patient had been transferred there from River County.
The paperwork listed her as an unidentified woman in her early thirties.
She rarely spoke.
One afternoon, Carol saw a newspaper story about Melissa’s memorial fundraiser.
The photograph caught her attention.
“I thought they looked similar.”
So she called the number listed for Grant Family Market.
Dorothy answered.
“My wife came to see her?”
“Twice.”
I could barely move.
“Did Melissa recognize her?”
“Not clearly.”
Carol looked toward her coffee.
“The first time, your daughter became agitated—not frightened, exactly. Emotional. She kept staring at Mrs. Grant’s scarf.”
“The green one.”
“Yes.”
Dorothy sat beside Melissa for almost an hour.
