Everyone Here Is Lying(57)

They will never recover from this if Avery never comes back. Erin wonders just how much damage all this will do to her son. To all of them. How it will change them. She already knows that she has changed. She will never be able to look at the world the same way, ever again.

She’s so worried about Michael. She goes upstairs and taps on his bedroom door, pushes it open. Her son is sitting on his bed with his laptop, looking pale and afraid. “Do you want something to eat?” she asks.

“No.”

“You didn’t eat anything at supper,” she tells him.

“Neither did you.”

She takes a deep breath, lets it out. “If I make a sandwich, will you share it with me?”

“Okay.” He looks relieved, and she realizes then how anxious he must be about her, on top of everything else.

“Come downstairs and I’ll make us a grilled cheese.” It’s his favorite.



* * *



? ? ?

William Wooler sits in the chair in his hotel room staring blankly at the walls. He can’t stop thinking about Ryan Blanchard and what he might have done to Avery. All the ways he might have hurt her, and then probably killed her. He has to face it—Avery might never be coming back to them. He weeps into his hands.

Putting a face to her kidnapper has made it all the more horrible. The witness has come forward; it must be true. He wonders who it is, and why they aren’t releasing the person’s identity. He’d stared at the television in revulsion and disbelief, watching them take Ryan away. A good-looking kid. He looked so normal.

His thoughts turn to Nora. He doesn’t blame her. He can’t blame her. Kids turn out the way they’re going to turn out, despite their parents’ best efforts and intentions. He knows this because of Avery. He and Erin have done everything they can to love her and help her, but she is who she is, and they can’t change that; they can only hope to encourage her in the right direction. But look at Michael, there’s nothing wrong with him. They were brought up by the same parents, in the same household, yet they couldn’t be more different.

If Ryan is a child molester, kidnapper, or, sickeningly, a murderer, he can’t blame Nora for it, or her husband either. They didn’t make him that way. He was born that way; William is convinced of it. He loves Nora, but now there’s baggage. At this thought, he laughs out loud, long and bitterly. Baggage. You could say that.



* * *



? ? ?

Nora had had to be held back by her husband as they took her son away. She wouldn’t let go of him, was crying and wailing. The police officers had to prize her off her son, gently at first, and then more forcefully.

When he’d gone, down to the cells, she had slumped in her husband’s arms, a dead weight. Her legs couldn’t support her, and he had half carried her over to a chair. She stopped wailing as a kind of stupor set in.

Now Oliver Fuller is trying to get her attention, trying to get her to focus. He’s telling her that it’s not over. That Ryan will probably come home in a day or two. She tries to focus on what the attorney’s saying. He’s telling her there’s still hope.

Fuller says, “Unless they come up with some physical evidence, they won’t be able to hold him.”

“What physical evidence?” Nora asks. Her brain is dull. They’ve already been through the house; they have Ryan’s car. They haven’t found anything, as far as she knows.

“If they find her body,” Fuller says delicately.

Nora shrinks back in her chair, numb. For the first time, she finds herself hoping they never find William’s daughter.

“Who is the witness?” Al asks grimly. His face is drained of color.

“I don’t know. They won’t say,” the attorney says.

They talk for a while longer. Then they have to discuss the question of payment for the attorney. Finally, Al gets her up on her feet and they head for their car to go home. It’s almost dark. She can’t bear to leave her son behind in the cells. What will happen to him there? They have to fight their way past the clutch of reporters waiting outside the station. She holds her hands up over her face as they swarm, and a police officer tries to clear them away. At last they make it inside Al’s car and lock the doors. Al starts the car. It’s such a hollow, empty sound.

Nora is mute on the way home, her mind catastrophizing. She tells herself that she does not believe that Ryan killed that little girl, but she’s terribly frightened anyway. She has no control over what’s happening. At last, she looks sidelong at Al, driving with his eyes fixed straight ahead, his hands tight on the steering wheel. His face takes on a ghastly hue whenever the streetlights play over it. She wonders what he’s thinking. Does he think their son is guilty? Or does he know more than she does? This has been troubling her, lurking in the back of her mind. Is Al vengeful enough to have brought this on all of them by harming William’s daughter?

She says quietly, “Al?”





Thirty-seven


He doesn’t seem to hear her.

“Al?” she repeats, more firmly.

“What?” he says tersely.

And now she has to say it. It sticks in her throat like a glob of half-chewed food. She swallows nervously, clears her throat. “Do you think Ryan picked her up?”