by Sara Blaedel
Leslie had turned the volume up, and Ilka realized they were watching a segment in honor of Jennings.
“The final breakthrough in the case occurred just before Jennings’s death,” the TV newscaster said. He then talked about how a female former member of the cult had agreed to testify against the cult leader.
Suddenly Lydia appeared on screen, standing beside a uniformed police officer. In a small separate screen in the upper right corner, Isiah Burnes was being led away in handcuffs. Ilka saw the tears on Artie’s cheeks.
Jane-Maya appeared on the screen. “A life in hell is now over,” said the female journalist standing beside her. “A life of violence, fear, tyranny, and serious sexual abuse of children. How do you feel right now?”
She shoved the microphone in front of Jane-Maya, who was wearing a buttoned-up pastel-green dress.
“Do the girls know about this?” Ilka was looking at Leslie, but Mary Ann was the one who nodded.
“They’ve spoken with their mother, but they grew up without TV, and she asked us not to let them see the news.”
“I’m fine.” Jane-Maya cleared her throat then looked straight into the camera, saying that she had agreed to testify against Isiah Burnes. “It’s time that all the monstrous things he’s done come out. Mostly, though, I’m looking forward to seeing my girls.”
The newscaster explained that Jane-Maya’s girls had managed to escape and were now in safety, staying with friends of the family.
Friends, Ilka thought. She looked around at the others. However natural the word sounded when spoken by the newscaster, the fact was that all of them huddled around the iPad had joined forces to protect Jane-Maya’s children, even though they didn’t know her. They stood together. Together with Lydia, together with each other. The realization, the warm feeling kept growing in her until she had to escape for a moment. She needed some fresh air. And a cigarette.
On her way to the door Ilka stopped at a mention of the Rodriguez brothers from the television. The newscaster reported that substantial evidence Calvin Jennings had compiled against the two surviving brothers had been found in one of Isiah Burnes’s cars. Presented with the evidence, the police immediately dropped all charges against Lydia Rogers. The two men were now in custody.
The news report looped back to the photos of the car chase. Another voice reported that a three-car caravan transporting Isiah Burnes had been stopped earlier that day at a roadblock south of St. Louis.
Ilka lit a cigarette and closed the door behind her, but it immediately opened again. Her father stepped out to join her. They stood in silence for a few moments as she smoked, then he cleared his throat.
“Mary Ann and I have agreed to divorce.”
Ilka glanced over at him; she could hear he had more to say.
“She’s been very generous.” He explained that his wife had decided to share the enormous Fletcher fortune with Amber, Leslie, and him.
Ilka whistled under her breath. “Well. Things are certainly looking up for the funeral home’s future.”
He nodded. “I’m moving into Amber’s house when she and Tom take over the ranch.”
“What about Dorothy?” She turned to him. “Why don’t you move in with her?”
He smiled. “At our age it’s best to live separately. It’s something that happens over the years, you become a bit eccentric, and it can be difficult for others to live with.”
Ilka smiled back, but his face had turned somber again.
“Artie won’t go back to the hospital.”
He leaned against the wall and frowned. “He wants to go back to his place. Of course, we can pay for physical therapy at home, and for driving him back and forth to the hospital when it’s necessary, but one of us needs to stay with him. He can’t lie out there in bed alone.”
Ilka felt his eyes on her. She nodded.
After a few more seconds he said, “Would you consider doing it? Even though that would mean you’d have to move out there?”
She nodded again. Mostly to herself. “I’ll stay until he gets back on his feet.”
The worry disappeared from his face.
They stood in silence for a few minutes.
“You’ve grown up to be the person I imagined, the woman I’d hoped you’d be. I’m sorry that—”
“Stop, please. Just let it go.”
And he did.
“When I was a kid, I dreamed about having brothers or sisters,” she said. “I dreamed we were one big family, and there was always someone to talk to. Someone to sit around the table with. People don’t always get the families they dream about. But I have all of you now, and that’s good enough for me.”
The family she was talking about included Artie and Lydia. And even Mary Ann. Ilka crushed her cigarette with her foot. She was feeling a bit sentimental and was about to tell him how much it meant to her that they had found each other. All of them.
But before she could speak, her father cleared his throat again and pulled out a folded-up sheet of paper from his back pocket.
“Have you heard about Dazzling Star?” He handed her a photo of a dark-brown trotter crossing the finish line as a winner.
Ilka shook her head and skimmed the article below.
“I saw him run as a two-year-old, and I’ve been keeping my eye on him. And now, after all this with Mary Ann and the money, I’m thinking about buying him.”
Ilka looked up.
“He’s running this weekend. You want to come along? We can see how he does before we make an offer.”
They stood looking at each other for the longest time. Then Ilka folded the paper back up and nodded.
Acknowledgments
My trilogy about the undertaker’s daughter has been so much fun, truly an exhilarating journey. My heartfelt thanks go out to all of you for how warmly you’ve welcomed Ilka, and for following along with us.
The Third Sister is a work of fiction. Many settings in the book exist in the real world, but I’ve also taken the liberty of creating locales, reshaping them, moving them around to make them fit my story. My travels to Racine and Key West have been fascinating, but my characters are not based on real people. Their names and everything about them sprang out of my imagination.
The same goes for God’s Will. It was inspired by actual cults and true events, but the cult and everything that transpired in the book are fictional.
Again, I’d like to extend my gratitude to Christina Gauguin, the undertaker at Elholm Mortuary. She was my first contact with the undertaking business and has since taken time to answer all my questions.
This book could never have been written without the help of Benee Knauer. Her help with research in the United States has been indispensable.
I lived in the US for eighteen months while writing the Family Secrets trilogy. I would like to thank the enormous Danish network over there for your incredible support, both for my books and for me personally.
My team at my publisher, People’s Press, deserves a big thank-you. Thanks for working with me, thanks for supporting me from the very start of this trilogy. A special thanks goes out to my gifted editor, Lisbeth Møller-Madsen, who always knew precisely where I wanted to go with Ilka.
Thank you so much, Elisa Lykke, for being a wonderful PR agent. You have a sharp eye for knowing what’s best for me. It’s meant so very, very much to be able to work so closely with you.
And I want to thank Malene Kierkegaard from the Plot Workshop for her many hours of work helping me get everything into place. I’m so grateful for how committed you’ve been, how willing you were to keep at it until I brought out everything in the story I’d wanted.
A warm thanks goes out to the very talented Lotte Thorsen, who spent a week with me in New York to find out what was hidden behind the sister’s habit. Your ideas helped get the whole project off the ground. Thank you.
A very special and loving thanks to Lars and Andreas. You two keep my entire life and everything around me from unraveling. Thank you.
And my
loving thanks go out to my son, Adam. Everything is better when you’re here. You are my biggest support and my greatest joy.
Finally, my heartfelt thanks go out to my fantastic, loyal readers and followers. You are the ones who make the stories live for me, who simply make me want to write. Thanks for always cheering me on. I’m so grateful that you want to read what I write. Thank you!
—Sara Blaedel
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About the Author
Sara Blaedel’s interest in story, writing, and especially crime fiction was nurtured from a young age, long before Scandinavian crime fiction took the world by storm. Today she is Denmark’s “Queen of Crime” and is published in thirty-seven countries. Her series featuring police detective Louise Rick is adored the world over, and her new Family Secrets series has launched to great critical success.
The daughter of a renowned Danish journalist and an actress whose career included roles in theater, radio, TV, and movies, Sara grew up surrounded by a constant flow of professional writers and performers visiting the Blaedel home. Despite her struggle with dyslexia, books gave Sara a world in which to escape when her introverted nature demanded an exit from the hustle and bustle of life.
Sara tried a number of careers, from a restaurant apprenticeship to graphic design, before she started a publishing company called Sara B, where she published Danish translations of American crime fiction.
Publishing ultimately led Sara to journalism, and she covered a wide range of stories, from criminal trials to the premiere of Star Wars: Episode I. It was during this time—and while skiing in Norway—that Sara started brewing the ideas for her first novel. In 2004 Louise Rick and her friend Camilla Lind were introduced in Grønt Støv (Green Dust), and Sara won the Danish Academy for Crime Fiction’s debut prize.
Originally from Denmark, Sara has lived in New York but now spends most of her time in Copenhagen with her family. She has always loved animals; she still enjoys horse riding and shares her home with her cat and golden retriever. When she isn’t busy committing brutal murders on the page, she is an ambassador with Save the Children and serves on the jury of a documentary film competition.
ALSO BY SARA BLAEDEL
THE LOUISE RICK SERIES
The Missing Persons Trilogy
The Forgotten Girls
The Killing Forest
The Lost Woman
The Camilla Trilogy
The Night Women
The Running Girl
The Stolen Angel
The Homicide Trilogy
The Midnight Witness
The Silent Women
The Drowned Girl
THE FAMILY SECRETS SERIES
The Daughter
Her Father’s Secret
The Third Sister