Everyone Here Is Lying(77)
“I’m not afraid of them,” Avery says. “I know what to say.”
“Just—no,” her mother insists. “Let’s think about this. Let’s not be rash. You may feel differently in a day or two.”
Avery considers. She can wait a day or two. That might even be better.
* * *
? ? ?
Nora leaves the house, taking the car, saying she’s going to pick up some groceries. She doesn’t normally get groceries on a Sunday morning, but nobody says anything. Al studiously ignores her.
She has to get out of the house, with its claustrophobic atmosphere. It makes her want to scream. The kids have picked up on the fact that there’s something seriously wrong between her and their father—they’ve seen the bruise on her face—but they’re afraid to ask. It’s put something of a damper on the celebration of having Ryan home, and Avery being found alive. She will have to tell them about her and William, before they see it in the news. She knows the police are going to hold a press conference at noon today. It will all come out then, why Marion did what she did. Everyone will know. It makes her feel ill.
She’s thinking about William. Where is he? Is he at home? She drives past the Wooler house and sees that there is still a crowd of media milling around outside, waiting for something to happen. She can’t tell if he’s there or not. His car isn’t there, but it might still be with the police or in the garage.
She drives to the Excelsior Hotel, where she knows he’s been staying. Is he there now? There are no reporters here anymore. She parks and sits inside her car. Does she dare go inside? She might as well wear a scarlet letter on her breast. This is a conservative town. People go to church. They have opinions, they judge. She should know, because she’s one of them.
She must decide what she’s going to do, who she’s going to be. She can’t remain married to Al, not after everything that’s happened. Whenever she thinks of him sitting in his car behind the dumpster at the motel, she feels a tide of revulsion. And every time she thinks of how he came home afterward and pretended nothing was wrong, was his usual, detached self, she’s afraid. She doesn’t know who he is at all. She doesn’t know what’s going on beneath that familiar surface.
They hate each other; the poison between them will leach out to their kids. They will all be better off if they separate. If they stay together, they’ll become more twisted versions of themselves. She will have to leave him, or perhaps he will offer to go. It would be better if she stayed in the house with the kids. What if he won’t go? What if he blames her, the scarlet woman, and throws her out? If he does, she will take the children with her. That gives her pause. What if he wants custody of the children? Would he get it? She’s not faultless. Does a woman have to be faultless to keep her children? She doesn’t know. She feels fear in her heart.
William knows now that Ryan had nothing to do with his daughter. She knows that William is blameless—except for falling in love with her. The only thing keeping them apart is their own guilt and shame—and public opinion. Can Nora live with the public condemnation if she chooses William, after the truth about Marion gets out? What about her children?
She sits for a long time, then starts the car and drives home. She can’t do it. She won’t see William again. She has to put her children first now.
Fifty-three
It fills Erin with joy to have her daughter back. She finds herself looking at Avery frequently, just to reassure herself that she’s real. But it’s not as if things have returned to the way they were before. Everything has changed.
Even though she has so far been shielded from the press, Avery is a front-page story, not just locally, but nationally. Over the last twenty-four hours, since the police gave their press conference, reporters have converged outside the house, there have been requests coming in for exclusive interviews, and even an offer for a book, something to be ghostwritten with Avery, for an astonishing amount of money. It all makes Erin’s head spin. She doesn’t like any of it, and neither does William, with whom she has been in frequent contact by phone. It makes her queasy.
Erin’s afraid of what all this publicity might do to her daughter, to all of them. It’s bad enough already, but Avery wants to do the interviews and the book. She and William are dead set against it. It will be hugely invasive. Hugely embarrassing for all of them. What if Avery regrets it? It sickens her more than a little. If they let her do it, it will make them look like parents capitalizing on their daughter’s tragedy. But the more she says no, the more her daughter insists, becoming an all-too-familiar power struggle, until Erin calls an attorney at the firm where she works for advice.
* * *
? ? ?
Gully follows Bledsoe into the medical examiner’s office early on Monday afternoon. They are here for the autopsy results on Marion Cooke. They make their way to the autopsy room. Gully isn’t bothered by autopsies, she has a strong stomach, but she imagines Bledsoe hasn’t been to as many of these as she has. In Chicago, she came across dead bodies all the time. She’s curious to see how Bledsoe reacts.
The room is similar to others she’s been in—tile floor, stainless-steel counters and gurneys, all very clean and medicinal. It looks like an operating room, and that is exactly what it is, except that the patient is always dead already. They aren’t here to observe the autopsy; the ME has called them in to discuss the results.