Bledsoe prompts her, “You went into the kitchen, and what happened then?”
“My dad came home.” She glances at her father.
Gully notes that William seems to go still and can’t look at his daughter. They all know he slapped her. She senses that Avery is being deliberately dramatic.
“He was upset to find me home,” she says. “He asked me what I was doing there.” She stops again.
“And then?” Bledsoe prompts.
She asks, “Do I have to tell the truth, even if I don’t want to?”
“Yes, of course, you must tell the truth,” Bledsoe says.
Avery says, “He hit me so hard he knocked me to the floor.”
Gully hears Erin gasp, and she watches William stare at the floor, denying nothing.
“And then he begged me not to tell my mom,” Avery says. There’s an awful silence at this. “And then he left.”
“And then what?” Bledsoe asks.
“I was crying. I went out the back door and through the gate to the woods behind our house, and along the fence line to Marion Cooke’s house. I knew her. We were friends.”
“You were friends?” Bledsoe interjects in surprise.
She nods. “Yes. She saw me in the woods one day last summer and invited me in for cookies.” She hesitates. “After that, I would go over there sometimes. She asked a lot of questions about my dad.”
Bledsoe says, “Go on.”
“So that day I went over to her house and knocked on her back door. She was in the kitchen, and she saw me and let me in. I told her what happened. She gave me a snack. I woke up in the basement in the bedroom. I felt really out of it.” She pauses for a moment, looks at them watching her.
“And then?”
“I tried to get out of the basement, but the windows were barred, and the only way out was through the door at the top of the stairs into the kitchen, but it was locked. I banged and banged on the door, but she wouldn’t come.” She stops.
“That must have been very frightening,” Bledsoe says.
“It was,” Avery agrees gravely. “I was terrified. I couldn’t understand why she was keeping me prisoner. Until she told me that she was in love with my dad, and that he’d been having an affair with Nora Blanchard and she was going to make them pay.”
She stops—almost as if to gauge everyone’s reaction, Gully thinks.
Avery continues. “She saw them making out at the hospital.” The words are coming faster now. “Marion hated her. She said she acted so superior, and she was just a volunteer. She said she got everything she wanted because she was so beautiful, including my dad.”
So Marion was carrying a torch for the handsome doctor, Gully thinks, glancing at Erin, who has been rigid throughout, but has now gone a pale, sickly color. It’s all starting to make a hellish kind of sense. She can’t believe what goes on in this town.
Avery continues. “There was a TV in the room, and she would sit with me on the bed and let me watch the news sometimes, so I knew what was going on. She told the police that she saw me getting into Ryan Blanchard’s car so that he would be arrested. I begged her to let me go. I promised I wouldn’t tell.” Now tears begin to form in Avery’s eyes. “I realized that she was going to kill me so that he would be blamed.” Avery takes a deep breath. “She was bigger and stronger than me. I figured the only way I could escape was to surprise her at the top of the stairs when she opened the door. So I waited there today for her to open the door. And when she did, I pushed her as hard as I could down the stairs, and then I ran out of the house.” She adds, into the silence, “It all happened so fast.”
Now Avery seems like a tragic heroine, pale and trembling, overwhelmed by what she has suffered and what she has done.
Gully and Bledsoe observe the girl. Her parents are also watching her closely, her mother with a terrible pity, her father with—Gully’s not sure, but it might be dismay.
Avery’s face darkens. “I never meant to kill her. I just wanted to get away.”
Fifty
Erin stares speechlessly at her daughter; she can’t yet bring herself to look at her husband. This all began with him, with his lover, Nora, and Marion, the scorned woman. None of it had anything to do with her, Erin thinks numbly, or her innocent daughter. Then she turns to regard William with hostility, as he begins to understand what he has brought upon them all. He won’t meet her eyes.
Erin blames her husband for all of it—his good looks, charm, and philandering ways are to blame for everything. Marion Cooke fell in love with her husband, while he was in love with another, and that nasty little love triangle led to this. She can never forgive him. She fears Avery will be scarred by this trauma forever.
* * *
? ? ?
William feels the hatred coming off his wife in waves. He knows that he deserves it, some of it at least. But he’s not to blame for what Marion did. No reasonable person would think so.
At least Avery’s back safe and the nightmare is over. No one thinks he’s a murderer anymore. But the truth sickens him. He’d never done anything to encourage Marion. He’d had no idea. Who could imagine Marion—a competent, professional nurse—was capable of something like this? She was going to kill his daughter! She essentially accused an innocent boy of murder, out of malice. This is a woman who tried to destroy lives, out of jealousy. It’s truly frightening. It was a diabolical plan, perfectly calibrated to make each of them suffer and to keep him and Nora apart in mutual suspicion. She didn’t care that his daughter would have to die to make it all work.
It troubles him to learn that she and Avery were friends. That Avery went over there that day, of her own volition. He tries to ignore his doubts, shake them away.
But Marion failed. Avery is fine, she’s safe. They know the truth. Nora’s son had nothing to do with Avery’s disappearance. And now they know that William didn’t either. He feels like he can start to breathe again.
Bledsoe says, as they pack up to leave, “There will be an autopsy on Marion Cooke. All pretty straightforward.”
* * *
? ? ?
Avery has gone up to her room to rest, exhausted after everything that’s happened, especially the interview with the detectives. It went fine. The main thing is, Marion’s dead; she can’t contradict her.
She listens intently and hears the detectives leave the house. Her father hasn’t left with them. Her parents are still in the living room, talking in low voices. Michael is in his room, the door closed. She creeps quietly out onto the landing, where they can’t see her, and tries to overhear what they’re saying.
At first she can’t make it out, but then, as always, they forget to keep their voices down.
Her father says, “Aren’t you worried about her?”
“Of course I’m worried about her!” her mother replies.
“I—I don’t mean that,” her father says.
“What do you mean, then?”
She hears her dad walking toward the foot of the stairs and ducks out of sight. He’s probably checking to see if she’s there. She hears him go back into the living room, and creeps back out.
“I mean”—her father lowers his voice, but Avery can still hear it—“do you believe her, that it happened the way she said it did?”