Avery shakes her head. “No. But I was locked in, and I couldn’t get out.”
“Did she hurt you, physically?”
“Not really.”
Casey asks gently, “Did you know why she’d done this?”
“She told me.”
“What did she tell you?”
Avery feels quite comfortable now. “Marion was a nurse at the same hospital where my dad worked. He’s a doctor. She told me she was in love with him, but he was having an affair with Nora Blanchard. She was a volunteer at the hospital, and she’s Ryan’s mom. Marion wanted to hurt them both. So she locked me in her basement and told the police that she’d seen me get into Ryan Blanchard’s car.”
Casey looks back at her, shaking her head. “How awful. And you’re just an innocent victim in all this, an innocent child.”
Avery nods. “She was going to kill me.”
“What did you think about, for those four days, when you were trapped in that basement, alone, afraid for your life?”
“All I thought about was how to escape. But I couldn’t. She kept the door to the upstairs locked. The windows were barred. There was no way out.”
“And at what point did you realize—I’m sorry, Avery, this must be difficult—at what point did you realize that she meant to kill you?”
Avery pauses. It was when she realized that Marion had been locking the door, had gone behind her back about Ryan, and hadn’t admitted to the police she’d lied like she said she would. But she can’t say that. She thinks, unsure of what to say for a moment. “I knew all along,” Avery says. “Her plan wouldn’t work unless I was dead. She couldn’t let me go. I knew what she’d done, and why. She was afraid I would talk.” Avery’s voice has dropped almost to a whisper, and she puts on the pained expression that she’d practiced in front of the mirror.
Casey shakes her head as if in horror. “All I can say is, you are a very brave and resilient young lady, and I’m glad you’re sitting here with me today.” Her eyes seem to fill for a moment, as if she might spill a tear or two. She composes herself and asks, “Did she bring you food and water?”
“There was a bathroom downstairs with running water. And she brought me food.”
“You were trapped in that basement, with no idea what was going on outside those four walls, the massive search going on for you. What did you imagine was happening?”
“Oh, I knew. We watched the news together every night, so I knew what was going on.”
“You watched the news together? So you weren’t in the basement the whole time?” Casey looks back at her in obvious surprise.
Avery has made a mistake. She must fix it. “There was a television in the basement,” she explains. “Marion would come down and make me watch it. She wanted me to know what was going on—she wanted me to see how clever she was. I think she wanted someone to talk to about it, and she didn’t have anyone else she could tell.”
“I see,” Casey says slowly. “It must have been odd, since you were friends before, and then watching television together, knowing that she meant to kill you. It must have been confusing.”
“It was confusing. And terrifying.”
“Can you tell us about the day you escaped? What happened?”
Avery clears her throat. “She was bigger and stronger than me. I realized that the only way to escape was to take her by surprise. So I hid behind the door at the top of the stairs and waited for her to open it. And when she did, I pushed her down the stairs as hard as I could and ran.”
“That was good thinking,” Casey says.
Avery allows herself a small smile.
“Marion Cooke was, unfortunately, killed in that fall,” Casey says, “but thankfully you escaped, and you’re able to talk to us today.”
Avery watches Casey wrinkle her forehead, as if she’s confused about something.
“I’m just wondering about something. If you knew from the beginning that she meant to kill you, was there a reason you waited four days before pushing her down the stairs?”
“Pardon?”
“I mean, if she was bringing you food every day—presumably her hands were full—I’m wondering why you weren’t able to push her down the stairs sooner?”
“I—I didn’t think of it.”
Casey’s eyes are still kind, but now more curious too. Her voice is gentle as she says, “Really?”
Casey is looking right at her, and Avery feels a surge of panic. She can’t think. Her eyes dart away, searching for her parents on the edge of the living room. But then she recovers and turns back to Casey and says, “She gave me sleeping pills. I was out of it a lot of the time.”
Casey nods. “I see. So you pushed her down the stairs and ran out of the house, ran for your life. You must have been so frightened, so angry.”
“I was angry. She double-cross—” She stops herself. Avery can hear her own heart thudding in the abrupt silence.
Casey misses nothing. “She double-crossed you, is that what you were going to say, Avery?”
Avery looks back at her, speechless and afraid. Casey’s eyes are still warm, still coaxing, and more curious than ever.
“How did she double-cross you, Avery? . . . What do you mean?”
Avery has messed up. Panicking, she again seeks out her mother, latches on to her mother’s horrified face. They stare at each other for an awful moment. Her mother will know now, she’ll know what Avery’s really like. She wants her mother to step in, put a stop to this, but she appears to be frozen. Now Casey is speaking again in her gentle voice, and Avery turns back to her, frightened, paralyzed. She doesn’t know what to do.
“There’s more to this story, isn’t there, Avery? Why don’t you tell us what really happened, from the beginning.”
About the Author
Shari Lapena is the internationally bestselling author of the thrillers The Couple Next Door, A Stranger in the House, An Unwanted Guest, Someone We Know, The End of Her, and Not a Happy Family, which have all been New York Times and The Sunday Times （London） bestsellers. Her books have been sold in forty territories around the world. She lives on a farm outside of Toronto. Everyone Here Is Lying is her seventh thriller.