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?”
He glances at her. “Fuck, how can you even ask that?”
“You must have asked yourself,” she says.
“He didn’t do it,” Al says. He says it with conviction, as if he’s certain. “He’s not capable of something like that. You should know that—you’re his mother.”
She ignores the implied criticism. “I know,” she says. “I just needed to hear you say it, I guess.” She adds, and she knows she sounds frightened, “I just . . . I’m not sure Oliver believes him.”
There’s a long pause. Then Al says, “He’s a lawyer. He doesn’t care one way or another.”
“I think he cares,” Nora says.
“It doesn’t matter what he thinks,” Al says gruffly. “He’ll do his best for him.”
Does she dare say what’s really on her mind? She begins with a tearful, “This is all my fault.”
Al is silent. She knows he’s not going to disagree with her. He believes in God’s wrath.
She knows he’s furious with her about the affair. Just how angry is he? What might he have done? She stares out the windshield into the deepening dark, into the oncoming traffic. “I’m sorry, Al. I’m sorry about the affair with William, about everything.”
“Oh, you’re sorry now, are you? You weren’t sorry before,” he says nastily. He drives in silence for a little, and then says, with heavy sarcasm, “Maybe Wooler called in the tip himself, to draw attention away from him.”
She turns in the passenger seat and stares at him. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she snaps. “Besides, he would never hurt me like that.”
Al flushes with anger. “You still think he’s innocent?” he asks, sneering at her. “Well, I don’t. I think he killed his daughter. He was probably molesting her himself, the pervert.”
This makes her angry. “You’ve been awfully keen to think William did it from the beginning,” she accuses him. “You’d love to see him go to prison, wouldn’t you? So that we could never be together, is that it?” She’s thrown away all caution now. She doesn’t love this man, it’s William she loves. She doesn’t believe William killed his daughter—why would he? But in her escalating panic she can understand why Al might do it—to punish her and William for what they’ve done. Could he go that far? He’d sat in his car behind the dumpster while they were in the motel, every Tuesday afternoon, for weeks. And then come home and pretended he didn’t know. What else might he have done, with her entirely oblivious?
He’s on their street, and now he pulls into the driveway and turns off the car. She plucks up her courage. “Was it you?” she hisses.
“What?”
“Did you take Avery? To punish me and William? So that he would go to prison? And I would learn my lesson?” She’s shouting now. “But you didn’t anticipate someone lying and saying they saw her get into Ryan’s car, did you? You didn’t see that coming. You seem awfully sure she didn’t get into Ryan’s car! How does it feel, seeing our son in jail for something you did!” She’s speaking quickly now, hysterically, the words tumbling over each other, and suddenly she feels a hard slap across her face. The blow stuns her, leaves her face turned to the passenger-side window. She stops talking abruptly.
“Shut your goddamn mouth,” he says viciously. “You utter whore.”
She turns back to him again, her face throbbing, her voice hard and cold. “Well, did you?”