Page 54 of Everyone Here Is Lying
Alice Seton hears the knock at the door and goes still. She has grown wary of knocks at her door. Her heart begins to pound. She doesn’t want to answer it. She looks at her watch. It’s almost nine at night. She’s not expecting anyone. What if it’s the police? The knock comes again. She gets up off the sofa, where she’s been trying to read a book, and answers it with dread.
She’s surprised, and discomfited, to see Erin Wooler standing on her doorstep. Erin looks how you might expect a woman whose daughter is missing to look. Unkempt, grieving, almost unhinged. “Erin,” she says. She doesn’t know what else to say.
“Can I come in?” Erin asks. She sounds reasonable enough. Alice remembers uneasily how this woman barged her way into the Blanchards’ home the day before and physically attacked Ryan Blanchard. And then she remembers that it was Erin’s son, Michael, who saw Derek in the tree house with Avery and accused Derek. Alice steps back, suddenly apprehensive. Why is she here? She doesn’tknow what Erin is going to do. She glances over her shoulder, as if hoping to find her husband right behind her, but he’s upstairs.
“I’d like to talk to you—and your husband—if you don’t mind,” Erin says quietly.
And really, what can Alice do? She can’t turn the poor woman away. Their daughters used to play together, and Erin seems mostly calm at the moment. She gestures her inside, closes the door quietly, and leads her into the living room. She knows Derek is in his room on his computer with his headphones on; he can’t hear anything. Peter and Jenna are both upstairs. “Pete’s on a work call upstairs right now,” she says. But she knows that if she screams, her husband will come running.
She signals for Erin to sit on the sofa and sits across from her in an armchair, the solid coffee table between them. “I’m so sorry,” Alice says, “about Avery. How are you holding up?” A stupid question, but she’s uncomfortable, and it makes her stupid.
“As well as can be expected, I guess,” Erin says, with a trace of bitterness. There’s an awkward pause. Then Erin says, “I wanted to ask you—as one mother to another—if you are the one who saw Avery get into Ryan Blanchard’s car?”
Alice is taken completely by surprise. “Me? No. Why would you think that?”
“Or perhaps it was your husband?”
“God, no. It wasn’t us,” Alice says.
Erin must believe her because her face seems to collapse in disappointment. “I don’t know who this witness is,” Erin says. “And the detectives won’t tell me.”
“Why not?”
Erin shakes her head. “I don’t know. Detective Gully told methere’s a good reason, but she wouldn’t tell me what it was. I just need to know who it is and whether they’re telling the truth.”
Alice can see the tears starting in the other woman’s eyes, and feels her own eyes begin to well up in response. It’s terrible, what this woman must be going through. She begins to relax—relieved that Erin doesn’t seem to be here about Derek after all. “Of course you do,” she says sympathetically. “I mean—if it’s true Avery got into Ryan’s car...” She trails off awkwardly. She says, “The police must believe it, or they wouldn’t have arrested him.”
Erin makes a face that seems to indicate that she doesn’t think much of the police. “I’m going to every house on this street to find out who called in that tip,” Erin says. “And when I find them, I’ll know if they’re lying.”
“How will you know?” Alice asks doubtfully.
But Erin doesn’t answer. Instead, she says, “The police questioned Derek, didn’t they?”
Alice bristles. “Yes, but it was just routine,” she says defensively.
Erin looks her straight in the eyes. “They think he might have been inappropriate with my daughter.”
“No. He wasn’t,” Alice says with heat.
“I can understand how that upsets you,” Erin says, with heat of her own. “Imagine how I feel.” She rises from the sofa. “We don’t know our own children as well as we think we do. We don’t know what they’re doing every minute of the day.” Her face is bleak. “We can’t.”
Alice stands up herself. “Derek never touched her,” she insists, her voice low. She shows Erin to the door, and then watches as she goes down the sidewalk to her left, and up the driveway to the next house. She really means to find this witness, Alice thinks. She means to find the truth.
•••
William Wooler paceshis small hotel room, weighed down with grief and guilt. He’s trapped in an unimaginable situation. He wants to make things better, but it seems impossible.
His standing in the community is ruined. Even if Ryan is convicted, he will always be the infamous Dr. Wooler, who lied to the police when his daughter was missing. And if Ryan isn’t convicted, what does that mean for William? There will be a permanent cloud over his head for the rest of his life. A significant number of people will always believe he killed his little girl.
His marriage is over. Even worse, his relationship with his son is probably damaged beyond repair. William collapses onto the bed and weeps for the loss of his daughter, his son—and his wife too.
Things will never be all right again with Erin. But he must try to mend things with Michael. He wishes he could go to the house, talk to him, but he doesn’t want to face Erin, and he doesn’t think she’ll let him in. But he can call Michael’s cell. He texts him first, to tell him he’s going to call him from a new number.
He’s nervous as his son’s phone rings. It rings a few times. William is about to hang up in despair when Michael picks up. He doesn’t say anything.
“Michael?” William says.
“Yeah.”
