She must decide what she’s going to do, who she’s going to be. She can’t remain married to Al, not after everything that’s happened. Whenever she thinks of him sitting in his car behind the dumpster at the motel, she feels a tide of revulsion. And every time she thinks of how he came home afterward and pretended nothing was wrong, was his usual, detached self, she’s afraid. She doesn’t know who he is at all. She doesn’t know what’s going on beneath that familiar surface.
They hate each other; the poison between them will leach out to their kids. They will all be better off if they separate. If they stay together, they’ll become more twisted versions of themselves. She will have to leave him, or perhaps he will offer to go. It would be better if she stayed in the house with the kids. What if he won’t go? What if he blames her, the scarlet woman, and throws her out? If he does, she will take the children with her. That gives her pause. What if he wants custody of the children? Would he get it? She’s not faultless. Does a woman have to be faultless to keep her children? She doesn’t know. She feels fear in her heart.
William knows now that Ryan had nothing to do with his daughter. She knows that William is blameless—except for falling in love with her. The only thing keeping them apart is their own guilt and shame—and public opinion. Can Nora live with the public condemnation if she chooses William, after the truth about Marion gets out? What about her children?
She sits for a long time, then starts the car and drives home. She can’t do it. She won’t see William again. She has to put her children first now.
Fifty-three
It fills Erin with joy to have her daughter back. She finds herself looking at Avery frequently, just to reassure herself that she’s real. But it’s not as if things have returned to the way they were before. Everything has changed.
Even though she has so far been shielded from the press, Avery is a front-page story, not just locally, but nationally. Over the last twenty-four hours, since the police gave their press conference, reporters have converged outside the house, there have been requests coming in for exclusive interviews, and even an offer for a book, something to be ghostwritten with Avery, for an astonishing amount of money. It all makes Erin’s head spin. She doesn’t like any of it, and neither does William, with whom she has been in frequent contact by phone. It makes her queasy.
Erin’s afraid of what all this publicity might do to her daughter, to all of them. It’s bad enough already, but Avery wants to do the interviews and the book. She and William are dead set against it. It will be hugely invasive. Hugely embarrassing for all of them. What if Avery regrets it? It sickens her more than a little. If they let her do it, it will make them look like parents capitalizing on their daughter’s tragedy. But the more she says no, the more her daughter insists, becoming an all-too-familiar power struggle, until Erin calls an attorney at the firm where she works for advice.
* * *
? ? ?
Gully follows Bledsoe into the medical examiner’s office early on Monday afternoon. They are here for the autopsy results on Marion Cooke. They make their way to the autopsy room. Gully isn’t bothered by autopsies, she has a strong stomach, but she imagines Bledsoe hasn’t been to as many of these as she has. In Chicago, she came across dead bodies all the time. She’s curious to see how Bledsoe reacts.
The room is similar to others she’s been in—tile floor, stainless-steel counters and gurneys, all very clean and medicinal. It looks like an operating room, and that is exactly what it is, except that the patient is always dead already. They aren’t here to observe the autopsy; the ME has called them in to discuss the results.
“What have you got for us?” Bledsoe asks after the preliminary greetings. He looks comfortable enough, Gully observes, not the queasy sort at all.
“Come, have a look,” the ME says, gesturing for them to come closer.
Gully looks down at Marion Cooke, so pale and cold and waxy. The sheet is drawn up over her chest, only the shoulders and head showing. Gully remembers questioning this woman at the police station, oblivious to the fact that Avery was being held prisoner in her basement. How convincing she was in her insistence that Avery got into Ryan Blanchard’s car. And now she’s dead.
“This is what killed her,” the ME explains, as she tilts the head and points to the wound. “The corner of the stair post penetrated the back of her head.” She pauses. “It probably happened in the fall.” Gully and Bledsoe look at her, waiting. “Although not necessarily.”
“What are you saying?” Bledsoe asks.
“I’m saying I can’t be completely sure. Falls are tricky. She might have struck her head hard enough at just that angle. And if she’d been alone, I would rule the manner of death as accidental as a matter of course. But she wasn’t alone at the time of death, and the circumstances were unusual.” She adds, “People do die from falls down stairs, but certainly not always. For every hundred falls down a flight of stairs resulting in injury, very few are fatal—only about one percent.” Into the silence she adds, “I’m going to rule the manner of death as undetermined, because I simply can’t be sure.”
“I see,” Bledsoe says. “Thank you.”
Gully follows Bledsoe out. She and Bledsoe walk back to the car in silence. They don’t speak until they are inside and the doors are closed. “What do you think?” Gully asks.
Bledsoe sighs and leans back in his seat. “I don’t know.”
“That girl troubles me,” she says. “Something about her.”
“I know what you mean,” Bledsoe agrees. “She’s a bit—off somehow.” He sits silently, considering. Then he says, “Is it possible that Avery went to the bottom of the stairs and struck Marion’s head against the post while she was lying there?”
Gully is silent.
“She’s nine years old, for Christ’s sake,” Bledsoe says, as if dismissing the idea.
After a while, Gully shakes her head, staring out the windshield. “It’s such a bizarre case. There was never any actual physical evidence against Ryan Blanchard—he would never have been convicted. What was Marion thinking?”
“She was nuts,” Bledsoe says. “Don’t you watch Dateline? Forensic Files? I do. People do strange—unbelievable—things. It might have been enough for her to ruin his life, to have that cloud hanging over him. And over Wooler too. Keeping him and Nora apart.”
“She must have seen Ryan drive his car down the street just before Avery appeared at her back door. How could she have done it otherwise? What if Ryan had been at work? She saw him drive down the street that day, at that time, which we know he did. Then Avery appears at her back door, without her jacket, her hair in a braid—and she sees an opportunity.”
“Yes,” Bledsoe agrees.
Gully starts the car.
Fifty-four
Erin is anxious as she arrives at the police station late on Monday afternoon, having been called in by Detective Gully. William is already there when she’s brought into an interview room. What can they possibly want now?
She doesn’t have to wait long to find out. Bledsoe tells them rather delicately about the autopsy findings, that the ME is going to rule the manner of death as “undetermined” rather than accidental.