Marion didn’t go out and confront the other woman. She simply stood behind the door in the supply closet until Nora left. And then she had gone home ill in the middle of her shift. That had happened just days before Avery showed up at her back door with the welt on her face. Marion let her in and listened to her story that her father had hit her. She wasn’t sure she believed Avery, because why would he even be at home at four in the afternoon? He’d be at work. But someone had obviously hit her, and it was clear she was angry at her father; perhaps it was true. Marion was still angry at him herself.
Avery explained her childish plan to run away and hide for a while to pretend she’d gone missing and asked if she could stay with Marion. She wanted her father to be sorry. She wanted her father to be blamed. Marion, too, wanted to see William Wooler hurt. The only thing she wanted more was to see Nora Blanchard hurt, and she saw an opportunity.
So she’d let Avery stay, hidden in her basement. She told Avery she was not to come upstairs, ever, in case she was seen through the windows, and like a wicked old witch, Marion quietly locked her in.
Marion would visit her in the basement, and together they’d watched the search unfold and Dr. Wooler’s fall from grace on television. Marion enjoyed watching him suffer, maybe even more than Avery did. It served him right—for ignoring her, for cheating on his wife, for choosing someone more beautiful than her. She welcomed the scrutiny Avery’s disappearance brought to Dr. Wooler, because she knew they would investigate him. She hoped they would find out that he was having an affair with Nora and that it would blow his life apart. She hoped it would destroy Nora’s marriage, and her family, and her comfortable life. But there was more. Because she’d seen Ryan Blanchard drive down the street that day, just before Avery turned up at her back door. And she knew she could do something that would rip Nora’s heart right out of her chest.
She waited till she’d seen William suffer sufficiently, then she’d slipped out to a pay phone and called the tip line and claimed to have seen Avery Wooler get into Ryan Blanchard’s car. And when they didn’t immediately arrest him, she’d done the same thing again, adding some details about Avery’s appearance. She’d said she was willing to come in, but she’d lied. She wasn’t going to identify herself as the witness till Avery was disposed of.
It was unfortunate that the police had discovered her before she wanted, but she had her story about an abusive ex-husband ready. Now Ryan Blanchard has been taken into custody, and Nora must be going out of her mind.
As soon as things quiet down a bit, Marion will get rid of Avery. And then she will come forward publicly and stand by her story till her dying breath.
* * *
? ? ?
Alice Seton had seen Ryan Blanchard being taken into custody on the seven o’clock news. She can’t help it—she feels relieved. Jenna doesn’t know what her brother, Derek, has been accused of, and Alice and Peter want to keep it that way. Maybe, with Ryan in custody, that will be the end of it.
Alice has not confided in her husband about what she did earlier that day. She did tell him that Detective Gully had arrived at their front door that morning and threatened them with a search warrant. They both hope that is now on hold. She felt weak with relief when she heard they’d taken Ryan into custody.
But she hasn’t told her husband what she did once Gully left in her car. How she lost her mind and tore the house apart, looking for the body of a dead girl. How she’d gone through the house—the crawl space, the furnace room, the attic, everywhere, anywhere you could hide a body, even the shed in the back. She’ll never tell a soul. It’s something she will take with her to her grave.
She’s so ashamed that her imagination took her there. Ashamed that she could think that of her son, even for a moment. At one point during that dreadful, crazed morning, she’d glanced out the window and noticed a car. It was still there when she looked later on. She realized she was being watched, which only fed her paranoia. But finally, when she’d searched everywhere and found nothing, when she was certain that the police would find nothing, she sat down, wrote out her grocery list, and went shopping. There was nothing to find. She was sure of that.
And now it’s going to be all right because Ryan is in jail. She spares a thought for Nora Blanchard, whom she knows a little, because their daughters go to the same school. What she must be going through. What they all must be going through in that house.
She thinks of her own son. This has been very distressing for him. For all of them. He’ll get over it, in time, Alice tells herself. This will all pass, and they will never talk about it again.
Thirty-six
Erin Wooler wanders around the house like a ghost who can’t move on. She’s relieved that they have arrested Ryan. She remembers his face when she knocked him down—she thought he looked guilty.
She has to put her faith in the police, trust that they know what they’re doing. They have found the witness, at least. She wants to know who it is. All she knows is that it must be someone who lives around here, probably on this very street, or how else would they have seen what they saw, and recognized the car? Why are they keeping the witness’s name secret? She would like to know who it is. She’d like to know who waited so long to tell the police who took her daughter. Maybe she should feel grateful to the witness for finally coming forward, but all she feels is colossal rage at the delay. Why didn’t this witness tell the police what they saw the moment they saw it? What possible acceptable reason could there be for a nine-year-old girl to be getting into a man’s car like that? And it was only a short time later that the police were called and a full search was on. So why the hell didn’t they go to the police with what they knew? If they had, there might have been time to save her daughter. She’d like to confront this witness, the way she confronted Ryan, and ask, Why?
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.