Nora let the silence linger a second longer. “Dr. Trask told me about a necklace with a gold medallion she had as a child. It was given to her by her maternal grandmother but has since been lost. Are you familiar with it?”

Saul’s eyebrows rose. “Of course. Gianna was distraught over the loss of the necklace. I looked for it several times in the boxes from her old home but could never find it. She hasn’t mentioned it in years until she emailed me about it this morning. Why are you asking about that now?”

His reaction appeared sincere. Owen stared at her with one brow raised, echoing Saul’s question.

“It’s turned up. It was around the neck of the man who was found dead in Gianna’s rented cabin.”

Both men simply stared at her, their body language frozen in place.

Saul reacted first. “Gianna didn’t say anything about that in her email. How can that be? Are you sure it’s the same? Perhaps it’s only similar.” Bushy gray brows formed a single line above his eyes.

“Dr. Trask is quite positive it is the same.”

“She hasn’t seen it in decades,” said Saul. “She must be mistaken.”

“Did you look for it?”

“I forwarded the request to an assistant. All her parents’ things are in storage. It could take some time, but yes. I can tell him to put a few more people on it.”

“Dr. Trask hasn’t said much about how she came to live with you,” Nora began, choosing her words carefully. “I’ve read the newspaper articles, but I’d like to hear your side of the story. I noticed you weren’t quoted in any of the articles.”

Saul’s facial expression shut down. “I refused to feed their media frenzy.”

“Understandable.”

“Why are you asking about something that happened so long ago?” Owen asked.

Nora glanced at Owen, who’d lost interest in his phone and now listened intently. “The appearance of a long-lost necklace has me curious about her past. I’m exploring many areas. This is one that I assumed you’d describe best, Mr. Messina. Dr. Trask was a child at the time. I imagine her memories of the incident are cloudy.”

“She doesn’t remember the accident,” Owen stated. “She’s told me that several times. She recalls the bright lights of the house where she found help. That’s it.”

Several times? Why would Owen ask her about it more than once?

“I got a phone call early that morning,” said Saul. “My brother’s car had gone off the road and down the cliff to the ocean. I was told Gianna had crawled out of the car, up the steep cliff, and walked several miles to find help in the pitch dark.” He swallowed hard. “They were on vacation in Southern California. Some of those roads along the coast are treacherous.”

“You went there?”

“In a heartbeat. It wasn’t that far from where I lived. She’d been transported to a hospital by helicopter. They were concerned with her head injuries.”

“She didn’t break any other bones,” Nora commented.

“But her skull had a hairline fracture. The rest of her injuries were bruises and abrasions. The doctors thought some of the wounds came from her climb up the rocky slope to the road.”

“The accident happened around midnight?” Nora asked, knowing the accident report placed the mother’s death at that time.

“So they say.”

“The car was partially submerged in the ocean.”

Saul nodded. “When they looked at the tide levels and salt marks inside the vehicle, they estimated the car was almost fully submerged.”

“She was a very lucky girl,” said Nora. “I can’t imagine how traumatic that must have been. And either she realized her parents were dead or she needed to get help.” Pitch-dark sky, water, cold, a steep rocky bank to climb up. No wonder Gianna had blocked all memories of the accident.

“Since his body wasn’t found at first, for three weeks people speculated that her father had sent the car over the bank to murder Gianna and her mother.” Anger flooded Saul’s face. “The media was brutal. But when his body washed up a few weeks later, they shut up. I’m thankful Gianna was in the hospital most of that time. I insulated her the best I could from the horrors of what was said during that time, but I assume when she was old enough, she did some research and read the articles for herself.”

“I read them,” Nora said simply. “Can you imagine what would be said if it’d happened in our Internet age? Every conspiracy theorist in the world would be commenting and creating their own evidence.”

“People have no lives,” interjected Owen.

Nora agreed completely. “When Gianna was interviewed about the accident back then, what did she say?” She directed the question to Saul.

“She didn’t say anything until a few weeks after the accident. She’d been sedated a lot and the detectives at the time didn’t bother to question her. To them the event was clear: a car wrecked and a child survived. I talked to her after she was weaned off the strong medications, and she remembered being wet and her feet hurting. She’d lost her shoes and walked barefoot for several miles along the road. Under sedation in the hospital, she often cried about pain in her feet. The skin on the bottom was in shreds.”

They didn’t interview the lone witness? “I’m shocked they didn’t talk to her. Her father’s missing body must have raised red flags at first.”