48 Hours

Secrets in the Sand (20x16)

: 30, 2007

April Barber had the kind of wedding most girls only dream about: a beach in the Bahamas, at sunset, a beautiful dress and a handsome groom, Justin Barber. But April's aunt, Patty Parrish, says April was hardly a traditional bride. "She was more of a country girl at heart," Patty remembers. "She had a gorgeous white dress that I remember cramming into her suitcase, and here we are trying to get the wrinkles out of it the day of the wedding." If anyone deserved such a happy day, it was April; so many of the days before it had been difficult and sad. "Her mother had passed away when April was 17. She died from cancer and that was very difficult," Justin explains. As 48 Hours correspondent Harold Dow reports, her mother's death made April grow up fast. Her father fell apart and later got into trouble over drugs. So April briefly took over the mothering of her younger brother Kendon, who was only one, and her sister, Julie, who was nine.