Page 67 of The Souls of Lost Lake

“Sorry,” the person mumbled around a long Jolly Rancher stick.

“I signed up for a membership on this site. I should be able to access the general information about my birth records.”

Eddie nodded. Wren could sense him studying her. It made her squirm. She looked up. “What?”

He was frowning. “I’m just trying to figure out the connection. If there even is one.”

Wren nodded. He meant between her, Jasmine, and Trina. And the only reason she was thrown into the mix of unfortunates was that stupid doll they’d found in the cellar of the old burned-out Coons cabin.

“Look up Trina Nesbitt. See if you can find any info on her disappearance.” Eddie stood, spun the chair around, and hunched next to Wren.

She opened another tab on her browser, pushing off her own personal history for a moment. Searching, a litany of links popped up with Trina’s name.

“That one.” Eddie pointed to a local news source.

Wren clicked on it, waited for the page to load, then silently scanned the beginning paragraphs. “Trina Nesbitt went missing ten years ago. So we’d have been...” She tried to do the simple math in her head. Her brain was frazzled.

“Sixteen, and I was eighteen.”

“It wasn’t long after my mom died.” Wren shot a quick glance at Eddie. The comment about a mother passing didn’t seem to affect him. “I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to it.”

“No surprise.” Eddie gave her an empathetic smile. “Especially since they pretty quickly came to the conclusion that her dad had absconded with her.”

Wren studied the online article. The words blurred, then came back into focus as she shoved back a sudden onslaught of tears that wanted to surface. Tears for herself and her own loss, tears for Eddie and his impending loss. And Gary! The man was going to lose hiswife! Patty was a link for them all, and without her...

“See?” Eddie pointed at the screen. “There was a search ongoingfor Trina and her father. She was last seen with him, and he was last seen in northern Minnesota shortly after Trina disappeared.”

“I wonder why they never found him?” Wren mused. She scrolled down the article.

“If Nesbitt took Trina to Canada, then that would have explained a lot.” Eddie shrugged. “I know that’s what a lot of people concluded.”

Wren nodded in agreement. “Her parents were divorced.” She typed the Nesbitt family name into the search engine next toTempter’s Creekas a search criteria. Another link popped up to a news article a few years after Trina’s disappearance.

“The Nesbitt home was sold after Trina’s mom moved out of Wisconsin. There was an auction on their house.”

Eddie grimaced. “All this time, the dad’s desertion was a distraction from the fact that Trina was still here.”

“By Lost Lake.” Wren leaned her head on her palm, elbow propped on the canteen table. “Wayne was right.”

Eddie’s eyes sharpened. “About?”

“That Lost Lake needed to be searched. He insinuated that Trina had gone missing and he’d thought it needed further searching back then.”

“Why does Wayne Sanderson care about Trina Nesbitt?”

Their eyes met as Eddie’s question sank in. Wren scrunched her face in a struggle to piece it together. “An amateur sleuth?”

Eddie frowned. “Hard to believe.” He shifted the laptop toward him. “Let me check...” He waited, then opened a page that popped up. “Okay ... Sanderson, Wayne. Tempter’s Creek.”

Wren realized they were studying a rudimentary Sanderson family tree. “There’s been a Sanderson here since before Ava Coons was ever born.”

“Yeah.” Eddie scrolled, narrowing his eyes as he studied the screen. Finally he shook his head. “Huh. I don’t see any connection to the Nesbitts.”

“Why would there be?” Wren was trying to follow Eddie’s line of reasoning.

“I thought maybe they were related, which would explain why Wayne Sanderson would have a vested interest in Trina—enough to bring her up in front of Meghan Riviera.”

“There can’t be a coincidence that two six-year-old girls disappeared ten years apart. A decade. It’s kind of a landmark,” Wren noted.