Chapter 14
After spending a few hours combing through old news clippings and public records, the outline of Maisy Goodwin’s life began to take shape.
She hadn’t lingered in Hollow Pines after graduation.
Instead, she’d packed her bags for Northern California, enrolled in college, and trained to become a nurse.
She became a nurse four years later, working at Rosewood General Hospital. While there, she built a reputation for compassion and steadiness under pressure—qualities that stood out in sharp contrast to the shy outcast who once spent an afternoon drifting on a boat with Vince Slater.
Then the tone of the obituary shifted, telling the rest of her story.
At some point in the last year, she developed a fatal illness.
Cancer.
As I read on, there were no flowery tributes, just the facts: Maisy left behind a husband, a daughter, and a son. I scanned the names once, then again, letting them sink in. Something tugged at me, a familiarity I couldn’t place right away. I went back to the obituary, reading the names again.
And then it hit me—Hazel.
Maisy’s daughter was Hazel Goodwin—the same Hazel who had been working at Sweet Hearth Bakery the night Gideon Belmont was murdered.
For a moment, I just sat there, staring at the screen, replaying what might have happened that night in my head: Hazel behind the counter, watching Gideon but avoiding eye contact.
When we spoke outside the wake, I believed I was speaking to a girl who was struggling over the loss of Camille’s brother.
But with this new piece of information, the picture shifted, premeditation entering my mind.
If Hazel was Maisy’s daughter, then Gideon’s death wasn’t just a random murder in Hollow Pines. It was part of a web stretching back decades—through Vince Slater, through Maisy, and now through Hazel herself.
My attention shifted, and I opened a new tab, typed in Hazel’s name, and started digging.
It didn’t take long before the trail curved back to Maisy again.
An old announcement buried in a local newspaper archive caught my eye; Maisy Goodwin had left Hollow Pines not only to attend college.
She also carried something more than ambition with her.
She was pregnant.
But who was the father?