Everyone Here Is Lying(38)

She reaches the driveway, and they move for her so that she can get to her car. But she walks past her car and turns right at the end of the driveway. She walks quickly, with purpose, her heart pounding. They start to follow her then, cameras clicking, calling, Where are you going? Has there been any news? How are you feeling, Mrs. Wooler? Where is your husband? She ignores them.



* * *



? ? ?

Michael listens to his mother leave the house; he hears the front door open—the shouting of the mob of reporters—then the door closes behind her and the journalists are muted again. He wants them to leave his mother alone. Maybe he should have gone with her. He hurries to the front of the house and slips into his parents’ room; their window looks out onto the street. He sees his mother walk past her car and head down the drive. She’s not going to the hotel to see his father like she said. Where is she going? His stomach lurches; she must be going to Derek’s, because of what he said. He feels sick now. But no, she turns right and keeps going, past the Setons’ house. He watches the mob of reporters and camera people follow her, at a slight distance. It makes him think of the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin; his mother is the piper and the journalists are the rats following her down the street. He wonders what makes him think of that, until he remembers that the Pied Piper stole children, that must be the connection. Avery has been stolen. And he begins to cry—broken, ugly crying that he wouldn’t want anyone to see, to hear. But he keeps watching through his sobs and is shocked to see his mother turn up the driveway at the Blanchards’ house.



* * *



? ? ?

Gully’s eyes are glued to the laptop screen. The drone hovers for a while over the Winters’ house as it begins its flight. Then it travels along and over the street, moving north toward the field at the top of the street, where it turns east onto Greenley. The drone circles over the empty field to the north of the Woolers’ and eventually heads over the woods along the river.

The drone is nowhere near Connaught Street at 4:30, when Avery is supposed to have gotten into Ryan Blanchard’s car, or for that matter, at 4:20, when Wooler’s car left the garage. Shit. Gully has to swallow her disappointment. She wasn’t expecting it to be that easy. Adam had already said he hadn’t seen anything.

Even so, Gully has the other officer sit with Adam while they go back through the previous days of footage, working backward from Tuesday, to see if they can find anything that might relate to Avery—maybe they’ll see Avery with Ryan, or with someone else. “And let’s get a copy of everything, okay?”



* * *



? ? ?

Nora hears a disturbance outside and looks out the living-room window to investigate. She sees a woman she recognizes as Erin Wooler—but a very different-looking Erin Wooler—turning up her driveway, followed by a pack of media. She feels a wave of panic. Erin must know. She must know, somehow, that Nora is William’s lover. He swore he wouldn’t tell, just this morning, on the phone. She believed him. Or did Erin find out some other way? And now she is coming up Nora’s walk, followed by all those reporters, and this can’t be happening, she wants to hide. She will hide. She won’t open the door. She’ll pretend she’s not here. Even though her car is sitting there in plain view in the driveway.

Now Erin is pounding forcefully on the front door. Nora covers her ears with her hands, slides down the wall to crouch on the floor, and closes her eyes tight. The photos of this will be everywhere—Erin pounding angrily on her door. But she won’t open the door, and Erin will have to go away, taking the reporters with her.

The pounding on the door intensifies, the door is rattling in its frame, and now the doorbell is ringing incessantly. She hears Ryan coming down the stairs and opens her eyes.

“What’s going on?” Ryan asks in alarm, looking at her strangely.

She stares at him in dismay; she’d forgotten he was home. Thank goodness Faith isn’t home from school yet. What must he think of her, finding her crouching on the floor with her eyes shut tight and her hands over her ears? She has no time to answer. She hears the front door flung open. Shit. It wasn’t locked. How dare Erin just barge in here? Nora scrambles to her feet, comes out of the living room, and faces Erin Wooler, standing in their foyer. Erin thrusts the door closed behind her.

Nora stares at her. Erin is almost unrecognizable. Her attractive face has become gaunt in such a short time. She is without makeup, her hair unwashed; she’s wearing track pants and an old hoodie. She looks like she’s almost out of her mind. Nora observes all this and is frightened. And percolating beneath the fear is shame, shame that she’s brought more pain to this suffering woman. In that moment, Nora feels that she deserves to go to hell. Perhaps that is where Nora is right now, and Erin too.

Nora trembles before her, but Erin barely looks at her. She turns her attention to Ryan, now in the foyer with them.

“What are you doing here?” Ryan demands.

Nora notices that he looks frightened of her as well.

“Where is she?” Erin asks, her voice threatening. “Where is my daughter?”

Nora is hit by a wave of nausea.

“What?” Ryan stammers.

“She was seen getting into your car,” Erin cries, her eyes wild. She comes up very close to him and cries, more loudly, “What did you do with her?” And she pushes him aggressively, both hands against his chest.