Marion pulls herself together. She must stick to her story. She deliberately keeps her voice low. “I didn’t want my name made public because I’m hiding from an abusive ex-husband. He’ll kill me if he finds me,” Marion says. She’s very convincing—it’s as if she’s convinced herself that her ex-husband wants to kill her. “And yes,” she says quietly, “I did see Avery get into Ryan’s car that day.” She meets Erin’s eyes. “That’s the truth.”
She expects that to calm the other woman, to diffuse the situation. Once she knows, she’ll go. But that isn’t what happens.
“And you’re absolutely sure it was Avery?”
“I’m sure.”
“Then why the hell did you wait so long to call?” Erin cries. “You knew Avery was missing! Everybody knew! But you waited more than a day!”
Erin’s face is livid with rage. Specks of spit fly out of her mouth. Marion thinks Erin is going to strike her. The situation is out of control. Marion tries to placate her. “I told you—I was afraid of my husband . . .”
Erin shakes her head, not accepting it. “No! You could have called right away and not given your name. You didn’t need to wait. She might have come home to me if you’d called right away!” She’s weeping now. Weeping and shouting. “But you didn’t. And if my daughter is . . . gone, it’s on your hands!”
“Get out of my house,” Marion says with cold fury. She needs this woman to leave, now.
Erin gives her one last, wrathful glare, and storms out of the house.
Marion locks the door behind her, heart thumping, and goes back to the kitchen, where she leans against the counter, her hands gripping its edges tightly. She stares at the door to the basement. Did Avery hear all that? She might have, even from the reaches of the basement bedroom.
Forty-two
Avery is standing behind the kitchen door, on the small landing at the top of the basement stairs. She knows Marion is in the kitchen, on the other side of the door, just steps away, because she’s listened to everything. She’d heard the knock at the door and recognized her mother’s voice. She’d heard the footsteps cross overhead and fade away as they approached the kitchen, and Avery concluded that Marion didn’t want her to hear their conversation. Avery had wondered why not.
Marion would expect her to stay in her bedroom in the dark, not moving, not wanting to be found. But Avery wanted to know what was going on, so she crept quietly out of the bedroom and up the carpeted stairs, and listened at the door.
What she heard stunned her. Marion was the one who called in the tip about her getting into Ryan Blanchard’s car, drawing suspicion away from her father. It was a lie. It enraged her. Why did she do it?
But Avery still wasn’t about to make a surprise entrance and wreck all their plans.
Now her mother is gone, and Avery stands behind the door, seething with rage, thinking about what to do. She could open the door right now and tell Marion that she heard it all. See what she has to say for herself. That’s what she wants to do. It takes a tremendous effort of will, but she returns to her basement bedroom without a sound.
* * *
? ? ?
William Wooler’s cell phone rings on the bedside table in his hotel room. He regards it nervously, then picks it up. “Yes?”
“William?”
It’s his wife. And she sounds upset. “What is it? Have they found her?”
“No. But I know who the witness is.”
Had the police told her? They’d refused to tell him. “Who?” he asks tersely.
“Marion Cooke. She lives on our street.”
He sits back against the headboard of the bed. Marion Cooke. It’s disconcerting—astonishing—to learn that she is the witness, that it’s someone he knows. “How did you find that out?”
He listens while she tells him, impressed. It’s more than he’s done.
“She denied it at first,” Erin says, “but then she admitted it. She says she’s telling the truth about Avery getting into Ryan’s car, and obviously the police believe her, because they’ve got him in custody. But, William,” she’s sobbing now, “how could she have waited so long to call? She saw him take her. If only she’d called right away—”
She’s right, William thinks. If they’d known earlier, they might have found her in time. But now . . . he knows—they both know—that it might be too late.
He feels a rage well up in him to match his wife’s. He can’t find words.
“William?”
“I can’t believe it,” he says, his voice shaking. “She’s a nurse at the hospital.” He feels utterly betrayed by someone he sees regularly. She knew Avery had gotten into Ryan’s car, and she said nothing for more than a day, even though it was all over the news that they were looking for her and that the police suspected William of harming his own daughter. She hadn’t spoken up. Why? Marion has a lot to answer for. But if she’s telling the truth, and Ryan took Avery—he feels the room spin.
“I didn’t know you worked together,” Erin says. “She didn’t mention that.” She sobs in despair. “If he doesn’t talk, we’ll never know what happened to her.”
When she hangs up, William puts down the phone, his mind in turmoil. Erin thinks Marion’s telling the truth about Avery getting into Ryan’s car. Why would she make something like that up? But he doesn’t want it to be true. Because if it is, Avery is probably dead.
William had thought, in the beginning, that Avery had run away. He’s the only one, besides Avery, who knows that he hit her that day hard enough to knock her off her feet. He feels a deep shame thinking about it. He remembers going out to his car, hesitating, turning to go back in and beg once more for her forgiveness. But he hadn’t. He’s the only one who knows how furious she must have been. He knows she can be vengeful. He thought she’d run away, but as time went on and she wasn’t found, that seemed less and less likely. He’d gone from fearing that she’d reappear and tell everyone how he’d struck her, to fearing she really had been taken by someone and that he would be wrongly arrested for murder. And now, worst of all—she was probably taken, and murdered, by the son of the woman he loves.
* * *
? ? ?
Marion leans against the kitchen counter, clutching its edges, for a long time. The situation had gotten out of control. They’d been shouting. She tries to recall exactly what was said, but now it’s all a jumble in her head. Could Avery have heard it all?
She must go down and face the girl—her questions, her demands, her cold intelligence. She knows that the longer she waits to go downstairs, the angrier and more impatient Avery will get. But she must think. She opens the fridge and takes out an opened bottle of white wine. She pours herself a glass and drinks, finishing it quickly.
She has to face Avery. The more she delays, the harder it will be.
* * *
? ? ?
Avery hears the kitchen door at the top of the stairs opening. She’s left her bedroom door open, waiting. She’s in a nasty mood. It’s taken her long enough, Avery thinks. She was probably figuring out what to say. Avery’s sitting on the bed. It’s almost time for the eleven o’clock news.