I realized in that moment that I had never seen my father cry before. In my twelve years spent living under his roof, never once had he shed a tear in my presence. Watching your parents cry should be a painful experience, uncomfortable even. One time, after my aunt had passed away, I had barged into my parent’s bedroom and caught my mother crying in bed. When she lifted her head, there was the imprint of a face on her pillow, her tears, snot and spit marking the very spots where her features had been, like some kind of funhouse smiley face stained into the fabric. It was a jarring scene—otherworldly, almost, her splotchy skin and her reddened nose and the self-conscious way she tried to push back the wet hair stuck to the side of her cheek and smile at me, pretending that everything was okay. I remember standing in the doorframe, stunned, before slowly backing up and shutting it closed without uttering a single word. But watching my father sob on national television—watching his tears pool in the crease above his lip before staining the notepad positioned on the table below him—I felt nothing but disgust.
His emotion seemed authentic, I thought, but his explanation felt forced, scripted. Like he was reading from a screenplay, acting out the role of the serial killer confessing to his sins. He was looking for sympathy, I realized. He was casting the fault in every direction but his own. He wasn’t sorry for what he had done; he was sorry he got caught. And the fact that he was blaming this fictional thing for his actions—this devil that lurked in the corners, forcing his hands to squeeze their necks—sent a shot of inexplicable anger through my body. I remember balling my hands into fists, my fingernails drawing blood from my palms.
“Fucking coward,” I spit. Cooper looked at me, shocked at my language, my rage.
And that was the last time I saw my father. His face on my television screen, describing the invisible monster that made him strangle those girls and bury their bodies in the woods behind our ten-acre lot. He made good on his promise to take the police there. I remember hearing the slam of the cruiser doors, refusing to even glance out the window as he led a team of detectives into the trees. They found some remnants of the girls—hairs, clothing fibers—but no bodies. An animal must have gotten to them first, a gator or a coyote or some other hidden creature of the swamp desperate for a meal. But I knew it was the truth because I had seen him one night—a dark figure, emerging from the trees, covered in dirt. A shovel slung across his shoulder as he slumped back to our house, oblivious to me watching from behind my bedroom window. The idea of him burying a body before returning home and kissing me goodnight had made me want to crawl out of my skin and live somewhere else. Somewhere far away.
I sigh, the Ativan making my limbs tingle. The day I turned off that television screen was the day I decided that my father was dead. He isn’t, of course. The plea deal made sure of that. Instead, he’s serving six consecutive life sentences in Louisiana State Penitentiary without the possibility of parole. But to me, he is dead. And I like it that way. But suddenly, it’s getting harder and harder to believe my lie. Harder and harder to forget. Maybe it’s the wedding, the thought of him not walking me down the aisle. Maybe it’s the anniversary—twenty years—and Aaron Jansen forcing me to acknowledge this horrible milestone I never wanted to be a part of.
Or maybe it’s Aubrey Gravino. Another fifteen-year-old girl gone too soon.
I look back at my desk and my eyes land on my laptop. I open the lid, the screen glowing to life, and launch a new browser window, my fingers hovering over the keys. Then I start to type.
First, I Google Aaron Jansen, New York Times. Pages of articles fill the screen. I jump to one, then another. Then another. It’s becoming clear now that this man makes his living writing about the murder and misfortune of others. A headless body found in the bushes of Central Park, a string of missing women across the Highway of Tears. I click over to his bio. His headshot is small, circular, black-and-white. He’s one of those people whose face and voice don’t match up, like it was stitched on as an afterthought, two sizes too big. His voice is deep, masculine, but his image is far from it. He looks skinny, wears brown, tortoiseshell glasses that don’t actually look prescription. They look like blue-blockers—glasses made for people who wish they had glasses.
Strike one.
He’s wearing a fitted, checkerboard, button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, a thin knit tie hanging limp against his scrawny chest.
Strike two.
I scan the article, looking for a strike three. For another reason to dismiss this Aaron Jansen as just another journalist prick looking to exploit my family. I’ve had these interview requests before, lots of them. I’ve heard the whole I want to hear your side of the story. And I’d believed them. I’d let them in. I’d told them my side of the story, only to read the article in horror days later as they painted my family as some kind of accomplice to my father’s crimes. As they blamed my mother for the affairs that were discovered in the wake of the investigation; for cheating on my father and leaving him emotionally vulnerable and angry at women. They blamed her for allowing the girls into our home, too distracted by her suitors to notice my father eyeing them, sneaking out at night, and coming home with dirt on his clothes. Some of the articles even suggested she knew about it—she knew about the darkness in my dad and simply turned a blind eye. Maybe that’s what drove her to cheat: his pedophilia, his rage. And it was the guilt that drove her mad, the guilt about her role in it all that made her recoil into herself and abandon her children when they needed her most.