Everyone Here Is Lying(34)

“It’s not just you,” she says, her voice unnatural, strained. “They’re looking at my son.”

“What?” He doesn’t think he heard her correctly. “What did you say?”

“Someone called in an anonymous tip that they saw Avery getting into Ryan’s car that afternoon. But it’s not true. Who would do something like that?”

He feels a clutch at his heart. Is she accusing him? Of having someone call in a false tip, just to take the heat off him? He would never do that. But if he did, the last person he would point the finger at is Nora’s son. He could never hurt her.

“Who would make up a malicious lie like that?” she repeats.

“I don’t know,” he says. He tries to think. He doesn’t know anything about Nora’s son, except that he’s eighteen and didn’t go off to college this year like he was supposed to—something to do with community service he has to complete because of a drug charge. She’d let that slip one day.

“I should go,” she says.

“No—not yet,” he pleads.

They stay on the line, breathing together, saying nothing. Unsure of each other.

Finally, William says, “I know it’s impossible, but I wish I could see you.”

“It’s impossible,” she agrees dully.

He’s suddenly swamped by despair. He’s lost everything. And the police are probably going to charge him with murder.

“I think Al suspects us,” she says.

“How would he know?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he followed me one day. Or maybe somebody at the hospital suspects something and told him. He’s being weird.”

“No, we’ve been so careful,” William protests.

Her voice catches. “He’s convinced you killed Avery.”

“No! Nora, I didn’t.” She doesn’t say anything. “Don’t get rid of your second phone,” he tells her. “I’ll call you again—for as long as I can,” he says. “I’m staying at the Excelsior. Erin has kicked me out.” And then he immediately regrets it because she asks him the question he’s been dreading.

“William, why did you lie to the police?”



* * *



? ? ?

Nora holds her breath. She had to ask. Everyone is asking, Why did William Wooler not tell the police he was at home that day? But now he has been found out. He was seen. There was a witness.

She wonders if he’s going to hang up. But finally he answers.

“It’s complicated,” he begins, his voice unsteady. “After you ended things with me, at the motel, I was really upset. I thought no one would be home, and I wanted to be alone for a bit, to process it. But Avery was home.” He pauses; she can hear him swallow. “She’d gotten into trouble at school, and we had an argument and I stormed off, went for a drive. And then later, I knew how it would look if I admitted I’d been home. I couldn’t account for my time because I’d been at the motel with you. So I panicked and didn’t tell them when I first had the chance, and then it was too late . . .” He adds, “God, I was so stupid. I just didn’t think.”

It sounds almost plausible, she thinks. “I have to go,” she says and hangs up.

She sits on the edge of her bed for a long time. She’s alone in the house—Al at work, Faith at school, Ryan doing his community service. She begins to cry. William had sounded horrible—on the edge of losing it. But he’d protected her. How does she feel about him now? Does she believe him?

That’s the thing. She’s not sure she does.





Twenty-one


Ryan Blanchard moves like an automaton through his morning shift at the homeless shelter, keeping his head down. He doesn’t want to be noticed. He still finds it embarrassing to be here, in a place he doesn’t belong. He’s middle class, college bound; the shelter, and the lost and downtrodden people in it, make him uncomfortable. He feels out of place here, freshly showered, in his clean, good-quality clothes. In a flash of maturity one day, not long ago, he’d realized how privileged he was, born to well-off parents who took good care of him. But it was like a glancing blow, quickly shrugged off. Mostly he resents having to be here—the smells, especially, are hard to take—urine, vomit, and body odor so thick and so embedded into their filthy clothes that it makes him gag. And the visuals are pretty awful too. Seeing people reduced to nothing, to rags. He can’t wait for his probation to be up and his community service to be finished. Two hundred hours. He’s counting them down.

It could have been much worse. He knows he’s here because of his own actions. But acknowledging this, even to himself, is painful, so he usually quickly thinks about something else—about his friends at college, going to parties, meeting girls. But he’s not thinking about any of that today. Today, he’s thinking about last night at the police station. Remembering how antagonistic that Detective Bledsoe was, how piss-scared he was. A drug charge is nothing compared to a kidnapping or murder charge.

When it was over, he was alone with his attorney for a couple of minutes. Oliver Fuller had looked him in the eye and said, “This is some serious shit, Ryan.”

“I didn’t do it,” he insisted.