Page 59 of Everyone Here Is Lying
“I hate her,” Marion says. “She’s a volunteer at the hospital and acts like she’s better than everyone else. She’s not even a nurse. But she’s got all the doctors wrapped around her little finger.”
“Why?” Avery wants to know how this woman gets people to do whatever she wants.
“Because she’s beautiful. That’s the only reason.”
“My father too?” she asks.
“Your father especially,” Marion says bitterly.
She’s jealous, Avery realizes. That’s why she did it. Avery can understand that, but she doesn’t like that Marion interfered withherplans. “Is she having sex with my father?” she asks. Marion looks at her as if surprised that a nine-year-old would say such a thing. She might be only nine, but she knows things. She knows what adults do.
“Yes.”
“How do you know?” Avery demands.
“I saw them together, at the hospital. They didn’t know I was there.”
Avery digests this information. Finally, she says, “You’re going to take it back.”
“What?”
“You’re going to go to the police and say you made it up, about seeing me get into Ryan’s car.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You can, and you will.”
Forty-three
Marion stares back at the girl on the bed, the one who thinks she’s pulling all the strings.
“I can’t,” Marion repeats.
“You have to,” Avery says, “or I think we’ll need a change of plan.” Avery looks at her angrily. “You said you’d help me, Marion. But that isn’t what you’ve done, is it? You’veusedme. So you tell the police that you lied about Ryan, or I’ll tell them where I’vereallybeen all this time.”
Marion looks at her, amazed that this nine-year-old thinks she’s really that stupid. Stupid enough to put herself in the hands of a selfish, vindictive child.
Avery looks away, unmutes the television set. The news is starting. “Oh, and I’ll be watching for it on the news, so I know you actually did it. Because I can’t trust you anymore, can I?” She turns and gives her a cold look.
“Fine,” Marion says at last. She gets up and says, “I just wanted to see her suffer, the way you wanted to see your father suffer.” But Avery has turned her attention to the television and won’t look at her. Marion doesn’t stay to listen to the newscast. She leaves the room and goes back upstairs, locking the door silently behind her.
She’s not going to recant her statement to the police. Not now. Not ever. Poor little Avery.
Little fool.
•••
Ryan Blanchard hearsa commotion coming his way. He stares catatonically at the painted concrete of the cell wall in front of him.
An officer is hauling a drunk, angry man down to the cells.
“Get your fuckin’ hands off me,” the drunk shouts.
“That’s enough,” the officer says.
Ryan is suddenly fearful that the officer will put the belligerent drunk in the cell with him. But he marches him past and puts him in the empty cell next door, where the man continues to curse in a loud, slurring voice. Ryan exhales in relief. But then he realizes that this is nothing. Real prison will be much worse.
They’ve taken everything away from him—including his shoelaces—so that he has nothing to kill himself with. But maybe there’s a way.
