Trying to catch him in a misstep. A lie.
I think about how Dozier had looked at me last week, his eyes darting down to my bandaged hand. He knew what happened to Valerie—deep down, he knew—just like Chief Montgomery knew what happened to Margaret. What really happened. But he didn’t want to know that, not really. He didn’t want to know the truth, what actually occurred, but instead wanted to hear what was easier to believe. So he had asked me all the right questions, listened to me recite my lines, then shaped a reality in his mind that was better, more convenient, than the one that really existed, holding his own lie tight against his chest before watching it wriggle away, like something slippery in his hands.
We talked about Ben and Valerie and the plan they hatched together; his ring beneath the couch, and how he had used her to find his way back to a childless life before killing her when it was over and staging it as a burglary to keep his secret safe. Kasey agreed to be interviewed, too, talking at length about how Ben was quietly controlling. How she had watched me change, slowly, long before Mason vanished, and how he had alienated me from everyone in my life until he was all I had left.
After the news of Ben’s arrest broke, Paul Hayes visited my house, too, asking me to keep a secret of his own.
“That man you saw is my father,” he said, a nervous tremor in his throat. “He’s been living with me now that he’s nearing the end, but we both have records. Pasts that I’m not proud of.”
I remembered again what Dozier had said: the drug charges and his time in jail. It was against the terms of Paul’s parole to harbor another criminal, even though they’re family, so he kept his father stashed in the house, blinds drawn and windows dark, hidden away each day until the sun dipped down and it was safe to come back out.
“Dad told me he saw you that night,” he said, shaking his head. “All this time, I thought it was you, but I couldn’t turn you in without turning us in, too.”
I think of him slinking back at the vigil; the hatred in his eyes as he found me sitting on his porch. He thought I was a murderer. He thought I murdered my own child and his father was the only person on earth who could prove it. He must have been racked with guilt, watching me get away with it every single day and knowing that he and he alone could bring me to justice—but in the end, he chose family, protecting himself and his father through silence and lies.
And then there’s my own family, too: My parents, who have since reached back out in an attempt to mend the brokenness between us. My mother, and the quiet guilt she constantly carries; my father, and the shame he feels for failing us so badly. They had already lost two daughters, after all. They didn’t want to lose a third. It’ll take time, I know, getting to know one another again—forgiving them for everything they did and didn’t do—but at least it’s out in the open now: Margaret and Ellie and the terrible things that happened in that house.
The memories that none of us wanted to remember—but, now that I do, will be impossible to forget.
I remove my headphones and watch as Waylon flips the switch, turning the green light off. It’ll be out into the world soon, our story, pulsing through the ears of others—and then it’ll be true. It’ll be true because they’ll believe it to be, bending the facts to fit their feelings. Finding fragments of truth in all the wrong places. Forcing them together to reveal a picture that was never even there in the first place.
“You feel good?” Waylon asks, wrapping the cords around his wrist and nestling them back into the case. “About all of this?”
I glance outside, the setting sun casting an orange light across the sky. Just three weeks ago, the sunset used to signal the start of something—the start of another long, lonely stretch of night—but now it feels like the end. The end of a nightmare that I’ve finally managed from wake up from.
“Yeah,” I say, nodding. “Yeah, I do.”
“Everything you did,” he says, “it was worth it.”
I smile before walking Waylon to the door, opening it wide as we say our goodbyes. Once he’s gone, I turn back around and take in the renewed silence of my house: Roscoe on the floor, napping quietly, dusk streaming through the windows as dinner warms on the stove. I peer into my dining room, thinking about all those names and pictures and article clippings that I’ve since torn down; all the conferences and calls to Dozier. The leads I chased blindly in the dark.
That comment that had appeared and vanished again.