Everyone Here Is Lying(27)

“Ryan Blanchard.”



* * *



? ? ?

Nora is lying sleepless in bed, on her side, staring at the digital clock on her night table while Al snores loudly beside her. It’s 1:11 in the morning. When she hears the doorbell ring, she nearly jumps out of her skin. When it rings again, she quickly rises from the bed, pulling her robe on. Al is still sound asleep as she leaves the room. It’s the middle of the night. Who else could it be but the police?

She moves down the stairs in trepidation. She opens the front door and sees two people in plain clothes on her doorstep, a man and a woman, as the cold of the autumnal night creeps in. The man holds up his badge and introduces himself as Detective Bledsoe. She recognizes him from the television. She doesn’t catch his partner’s name, she’s too frightened for it to register. She holds her robe tight to her neck. She feels so vulnerable in her nightclothes.

“Mrs. Blanchard?” the detective says.

“Yes.”

“Sorry for the late hour. May we come in?”

She lets them in. What else can she do? She feels herself growing colder and colder and pulls her robe more tightly around her. She begins to tremble. She finally brings herself to face them, flooded with shame. Adultery is a sin. And now everyone will know.

“We’d like to talk to your son, Ryan,” Bledsoe says. “Is he here?”

“What?” she asks. They’re not making sense. Why do they want to talk to Ryan?

“We need to talk to your son. Is he home?” Detective Bledsoe repeats.

“He’s in bed.”

“Can you get him up, please?”

She turns away from them and makes her way upstairs and opens the door to her son’s room, her mind all over the place. She’s thinking, Not again. She can’t face Ryan getting into trouble for drugs again. She flicks on the light. He doesn’t respond. She moves over to the bed and shakes him by the shoulder and says urgently, “Ryan, the police are here. They want to talk to you.”

He looks up at her groggily. “What? Why?”

“I don’t know.”

On the landing, Al appears at their bedroom door. “What’s going on?” he asks, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

Nora says, “The police are here. They want to talk to Ryan.” She sees the immediate concern on her husband’s face.

Her husband grabs a robe and the three of them go downstairs. Nora keeps her eyes on her son, in T-shirt and pajama bottoms, his hair sticking up at odd angles. But what she notes most is how worried he looks when he sees the detectives standing in the downstairs hall.

“Let’s go into the living room,” Nora suggests, functioning on automatic pilot, something awful in the pit of her stomach. None of this feels real. She can’t do this. Not again.

They all sit down and face one another.

Detective Bledsoe says, “Ryan, do you mind telling us where you were Tuesday afternoon?”

Nora’s simmering anxiety escalates to genuine fear. What is going on here? She glances at Al, who looks alarmed. Then she looks back at Ryan, who suddenly seems very young and overwhelmed.

“I, um, I have to think,” he says.

“Take your time,” Bledsoe says, as if humoring him. Nora immediately dislikes the detective.

“My shift at work was canceled yesterday,” Ryan says, stumbling over his words. “I usually work one to nine, but they’ve been cutting back lately.”

“So where were you?”

“I was here, at home for a while.” He turns to Nora. “I was here when you left, remember?”

She nods. “That’s right. He was home.”

“And what time did you leave, Mrs. Blanchard?”

“I went to run a few errands around two or two thirty,” she says, feeling the heat rise in her face with the lie. She’d gone to the motel to meet William. But they aren’t here about her and William, she realizes. This is much worse.

“And what did you do, Ryan?” the detective asks.

“I, uh, I hung out here for a while, then I went out in my car.”

“Alone?”

Ryan nods. “Yes.” His face is flushed. He’s not meeting the detective’s eyes.

“What time would that be?” Bledsoe asks.

“I don’t know exactly. Sometime around four thirty?”

Nora sees Bledsoe give the other detective a sharp glance.

“Where did you go?”

“I drove out of town, just killing time.”

“Where, exactly?”

“I don’t know, east—onto the rural roads. I had nothing to do.”

“What car did you drive?” the detective asks.

“I have my own car, it’s a 2015 Chevy Spark.”

“Anyone see you? Did you talk to anyone?” Bledsoe asks.

Ryan swallows. “I don’t think so. I didn’t talk to anybody. I don’t know if anyone saw me.”

“Why don’t you go get dressed,” Bledsoe says. “We’d like to bring you down to the station for further questioning, if that’s all right with you.”

Nora looks on in shock, unable to grasp what is happening. All she knows is fear.





Seventeen