The Truth (Mommy's House 2)

Part Seventeen

Lettie laughed, shaking her head. "Oh, my heart is in shambles. As much as I can believe my daughter would do something like this... God, I don't even want to call her that."

Liv shifted from beside me. "What was she like as a child?"

Lettie paused for a moment. "She started out a bright, beautiful child. Great in school, played with her friends all the time. But... something was off about her that I always noticed. She had a weird relationship with her father. She was jealous of me, and well, she absolutely hated me. She wanted all of her father's attention."

I bit down on my lip and tilted my head. "So... she had a weird relationship with her father? Meaning?"

"I don't know exactly why they were so unusually close. They just were. When I divorced him around the time she was twelve, she would have outbursts and punch me, kick me..." Lettie told us. "All because she wanted to go live with her father. But he didn't want her, who would?"

"When she was kidnapped, did you-"

"Kidnapped?" Lettie asked with a scoff. "What do you mean? Rosemary was not kidnapped."

I looked at Liv, and we both shared a moment of pure concern and worry. I started, "Well, we were told that she was kidnapped by a man named Steven-"

Lettie almost laughed. "Steven did not kidnap her. I know Steven. He was about twenty-five when he met my daughter, God knows how they met. He was a charming man - tall, dark hair, these light, breathtaking blue eyes. He resembled her father almost exactly."

"So you knew Steven?" Liv asked.

"I only met him once. I told my daughter to stop, that she was only a child and that she couldn't be messin' around with an older man. But she was a whore. That's absolutely what Rose was, a slut. She was so promiscuous, oh, it broke my heart," Lettie said while shaking her head. "She was only a little girl."

"So..." Liv trailed off, but Lettie wasn't finished.

"They ran away. My daughter hated my guts, and her father wanted nothing to do with her after the divorce. So she ran away with that Steven guy, and there was nothin' I could do about it. We're talking about the 50's here, what could I have done? I was all alone, and I didn't need the whore around. She made me sick," Lettie told us. "I'm being honest here, is that what you want?"

I was in pure shock at what I was hearing. "Uh, of course. Of course we want you to be honest, but we're-"

"Rose was not kidnapped. She left and I never saw her again. She left high school, her friends, everything behind. I have never saw her again after that. I turn the television on, see these three kids are missing. I turn it on about a month or two later, and what do I see? A photo of my daughter on the screen, but she's the criminal behind it," Lettie shook her head. "Purely disgusting."

"Did you suspect any abuse between Rose and her father?" I asked, and Lettie held her hands out.

"Oh, please. There was no abuse. Although I did think she was in love with him. It was weird, you know," Lettie said. "It was a weird... weird bond. But her father was an alcoholic, did drugs, he was a regular gambler. He wasn't right in the head, so who knows?"

I nodded, and listened to the sound of Liv's pencil jotting notes down on her notepad. I knew that something was wrong about the relationship between Rose and her father. It would explain the motive behind Rose's assault towards Cole.

"I don't know the details but please tell me that those kids didn't suffer so bad," Lettie pleaded, her eyes welling with tears as she stared at us. "I would hate to hear that she did even worse to them than just kidnapping."

I exhaled, running my hand through my hair. "Well, ma'am, we aren't going to go into that. I'm curious to know more about your relationship with Rose."

"What more is there to say?" Lettie asked. "She was a slutty girl, and me and her clashed. She would dress like a whore, like one of those whores on the side of the street, one of them that asks wealthy men if they wanna have a fun night with 'em. She thought she was hot stuff, I would tell her she wasn't. She smoked cigarettes, drank alcohol - she was awful. A bad seed."

I thought back to what Bella told me Rose would say to her. Almost identical language to what Rose's mother was portraying to me.

"Even after Steven died, you never saw her?" I asked.

"After Steven died?" Lettie furrowed her thin eyebrows, which seemed to be poorly coloured in with a brown eyebrow pencil. "Steven did not die."

My eyes widened. "How... how are you sure of this, exactly?"

Lettie inhaled sharply. "Before I knew any of this happening, he came to my house and said he was sorry for taking my daughter away from me all those years ago. This was just a few weeks ago. Then, he left immediately after. He's an older guy now, still got the handsome black hair though. It's a little grey, but-"

"I'm sorry, Ma'am, but it is extremely important that you tell us everything you know about where Steven could be. Did he say anything that indicated where he was going? What did he say exactly?" I pestered. My heart was racing. There was no way this disgusting man was still alive...

Lettie looked a bit frightened. "He knocked on my door, told me he left my daughter. He said he was sorry he took her away from me all those years ago. I said, 'what happened to you guys?', he goes, 'she wants to have kids and I don't'. I thought, you know, how typical of a man. And then... he just hugged me goodbye and left."

"Do you know what vehicle he was driving, anything?" I asked, trying to restrain my voice from sounding panicky. If he was still on the loose, that meant that he must have still been committing crime. Emilio lied straight to Jared and me, though I wasn't surprised by that.

"No, I do not," Lettie answered, shaking her head with her eyes closed. "All I know is that he is not dead, I can assure you that."