by Lisa Regan
“Did he ever tell you that he hurt anyone, though?”
“No.”
“Did you ever see Rory or Pax with a gun? Ever?”
“No.”
“Emily, has anyone told you why we’re looking for Rory?”
She hugged the dog to her chest. “Because he killed Pax’s dad.”
“Yes,” Josie said. “But also because people think that Rory killed your mom and Holly, too. Remember the first day we talked, and I asked you a bunch of questions, and you said you couldn’t tell me the answers because the bad things might happen?”
“I remember. But you know the secret now. Rory was bad. Sometimes he hurt us. Mama didn’t want him to go into foster care or the ‘system’ so she made us all be quiet about him. She was always afraid he would go away, and we wouldn’t ever get him back. She cried all the time about it.”
“I’m so sorry,” Josie said. “Rory told Pax that someone else was there in the house the day that your mom and Holly were killed. Do you know if that’s true?”
Emily went very still. “I can’t say.”
“Was it Pax?”
She shook her head vehemently.
“Did you see who it was?”
Again, a vigorous shake of her head.
“Then how can you be sure there was someone else?”
“I can’t tell you. Rory made me promise not to tell.”
“I thought you said Rory didn’t tell you anything.”
Her body began to rock in the bed. She counted to six under her breath. Then she said, “I can’t tell. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone. If I break a promise, another person might die. What if it’s you?”
Josie reached out and touched Emily’s arm. She remembered what Dr. Rosetti had said about OCD being nonsensical, about how trying to use logic was like telling a diabetic to produce more insulin. “Remember the first night we were here in the hospital and you were upset because someone had thrown away your things?”
“One, two, three. Yeah, I remember. One, two, three, four, five, six.”
“Do you remember what you told me about your mom? How she said that when you feel distress, you have to ‘tolerate’ it.”
“One, two, three, four, five, six. Yes. That’s what she said.”
“And Holly said that that meant you had to feel all your feelings till they’re done?”
“… five, six. Yes.”
“I think this is one of those times,” Josie said. “The distress you’re feeling about telling me? It will go away. Nothing bad will happen if you tell me what Rory said. I’m not going to die. Your brain is playing tricks on you. Lying to you.”
She stopped counting, though her body continued to rock. Her fingers kneaded the fur of the dog. “Like Pax’s palterer?”
Josie smiled. “Exactly like that. Did your mom talk to you about that?”
She nodded.
“Do you have a name for your… palterer?”
“I didn’t have one yet. I wanted to call him LiarLiarPantsOnFire but Mama said that was too long.”
Josie laughed. “I like that. What about Liar Pants for short?”
Her grip on the dog loosened. “I like that.”
“I think that Liar Pants is in your brain telling you that if you tell me what Rory said, someone will die, when that’s just not true. Liar Pants is making you feel that distress when you even think about telling me. Does that make sense?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can we try something?”
“I don’t want to.”
Josie leaned in closer. “I don’t like feeling all my feelings either, to tell you the truth.”
“You don’t have a Liar Pants, though. Or a palterer.”
“I don’t.”
“That’s gotta be hard.”
“It is,” Josie admitted. “But I’m willing to stay here and help you, like I did before, remember? When we sat on the floor together?”
Her rocking increased. She white-knuckled the dog and counted to six three times under her breath. Josie glanced at the doorway to see Mettner, Noah, and Marcie Riebe standing there. She looked back at Emily who crossed her legs and then patted the bed in front of her. Josie climbed onto the bed with her, sitting face to face, and crossing her legs as well. Emily extended an arm and turned it so Josie could see a gash down her forearm. “I’m going to have a scar, too.”
“Looks that way,” Josie said.
“Do you think scars remind us of the bad things?”
Josie fingered her own scar, running her fingers from her ear to just beneath her chin. She’d always hated it. Until now. “No,” she told Emily. “I think that they remind us how strong we are and how much we are able to survive—how much we can tolerate. They’re… marks of badassery.”
Emily giggled. “You said a bad word!”
“I did. But you know what? I think you and I have earned the right to say ‘badassery.’”
Emily looked at her cut. “Mark of badassery.”
“Are you ready?” Josie asked.
Emily sighed. “I’ll never be ready for this. I think you were right about the being ready thing. But Mama always said it was the best thing to do, and I always felt better once we did.”
Josie put her hands out and Emily placed her own hands in Josie’s. She closed her eyes. “One, two, three, four, five, six. I heard a man. That’s how I know. That’s how I know there was someone else there. I can’t—I can’t—”
Josie held tight to her hands as she rocked harder. Tears spilled from the corners of her eyes. “Someone’s going to die. Someone’s going to die.”
“It’s the Liar Pants, Emily,” Josie reminded her. “Don’t let him boss you around. Did you hear anything the man said?”
Her eyes remained clamped shut, but her head swung back and forth. “I only heard some things. He was so loud. So mad. He said, ‘enough, enough’ and ‘you’re living in a fantasyland.’”
“Do you know who he was talking to?” Josie asked.
Her body shuddered. A sob erupted from her mouth. Josie squeezed her tiny hands. “You’re doing great, Emily. I’m right here. The distress will be gone soon. Do you know who the man was talking to?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. He said, ‘I hate you’ and he said some bad words. A lot of really bad words. He kept saying, ‘No’ and ‘I don’t care.’ He said, ‘this wasn’t my choice.’ Then I thought he was gone but he came back. I don’t know all the things he said after that. It was a lot of things, and Mama was crying and Rory was shouting, ‘I hate you, I hate you’ and then the man yelled, ‘I wish you were never born’ and the boom came.”
She opened her eyes finally. They were red and glassy. Tears poured down her cheeks. “I don’t like this,” she told Josie. “I don’t like the way it feels.”
“I know,” said Josie. “But we’re almost there. You’re doing great. Had you ever seen a man before that day? At your house?”
“No. Only when Pax’s dad came to get him. He was the only one. I heard a different man before though.”
“You did?”
“One, two, three, four, five, six. Yes, a couple of times when Rory was trying to hurt Mama and Holly. Holly always told me to hide. That was part of the plan. I always hid until one of them told me to come out. Sometimes, I heard the man’s voice. I couldn’t hear what he said, but I knew it was a man’s voice ’cause it didn’t sound like Mama or Holly or Rory.”
“But you never saw him?” Josie prodded.
“One, two, three, four, five, six. I never saw him ’cause I had to hide.”
“That’s very good,” Josie told her, squeezing her hands. “Emily, did you ask Rory about the man the next time you saw him?”
“I didn’t ask him, but he told me he didn’t kill Mama and Holly. He said the man did and that he was going to make the man pay. That’s why he couldn’t go to the police. I told him that if he just called you, you would believe him, and you could just go get the man and put him
in jail. But he said no one would ever believe him ’cause he’s just a messed-up kid with ‘rage issues.’”
“He was trying to find this man?”
Emily let go of one of Josie’s hands long enough to swipe at her tears. “Yes. I think he was going to kill him like he killed Pax’s dad.”
“You have no idea who this man was?”
Emily shook her head and took a shuddering breath.
“Okay. You did great, Emily.”
“I still feel it,” she said, rocking.
“I’m still here,” Josie told her.
They settled into a comfortable silence. Josie was in no hurry to leave. She felt a sense of peace when she was with Emily, and she knew once she left, all that waited for her was crushing grief. She was not anxious to get back to it. Once Emily let go of her hands and relaxed back into the pillow behind her, Josie climbed out of the bed. She was about to leave but had one more question. “Emily, why did you leave the house at Harper’s Peak?”
“After I was there for a couple of hours, they left me alone to talk in the kitchen and Liar Pants told me if I didn’t look inside every room in the house, then I might never see Mama or Holly in heaven. So I went to every room in the house and looked. I knew that lady and her husband wouldn’t like it, but they didn’t even notice. The lady was on the phone in the kitchen. She kept walking back and forth saying, ‘Tom, Tom calm down’ and ‘it wasn’t my choice.’ Stuff like that. She never even came out to check on me! Anyway, in one of the rooms upstairs I saw a picture of her and Rory together.”
Josie looked toward the opening in the curtain to make sure Mettner was still paying attention.
“What lady?”
“The lady,” Emily said. “I forget her name. She got mad when I cut the buttons off her couch. I mean, I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I thought I was going to choke on them.”
“You saw a picture of Celeste and Rory together?” Josie clarified. “What kind of picture?”
Emily shrugged. “I don’t know. They were just standing together, smiling.”
“How old did Rory look in the picture? Was he a little boy?”
“No. He looked like he does now. When I saw the picture, I got scared because I knew Mama wanted Rory to be a secret. I got nervous. I was going to tell the guy—her husband—’cause he was nicer than her, but he had to go do something for work. That’s when I cut the buttons off the couches. She really freaked out on me after that, so when she went back on her phone call in the kitchen, I left.”
“Where were you going?”
“I just wanted to find somewhere safe. Then I saw Rory standing in the woods. I walked to him. We went into the forest, and we saw Pax and that’s when everything went wrong.”
Thirty-Nine
“Well, shit,” said Mettner as he, Josie, and Noah stood outside of the Emergency Department. “Pax was telling the truth. There’s someone else.”
“And Celeste Harper is a liar,” Noah added. He kept looking over at Josie, and she knew he was trying to assess her. She wanted to tell him she was okay—at least, in that moment—but she didn’t want to say it in front of Mettner.
“I’ll get up there and see what she knows,” Mettner said.
“She’s not going to tell you anything,” Josie said.
“But what is she hiding?” Noah asked. “Why would she be in a photo with Rory? Even if she knew about Rory, even if she had a relationship with Rory and Lorelei, why lie about it?”
Mettner said, “Maybe she didn’t want her husband to know?”
“But he knew about Lorelei,” Noah said.
“But not about her kids,” Josie said. “Or so he said. You should bring them both in. Separate them. See what you can get out of them. Bring Tom Booth in as well. Celeste was obviously having some kind of heated discussion with him when Emily walked out.”
“Yeah,” Noah said. “There’s a strange dynamic there between Celeste and Tom—and Adam. I’m not sure if it has any bearing on the case, but I’d definitely question Tom as well. He knew about Lorelei.”
“Is this going to lead me to the killer though?” Mettner said.
“We don’t know,” Josie admitted. “But someone needs to talk to Celeste at the very least. She lied about not having a relationship with Lorelei. She lied about not knowing Lorelei’s kids. She lied about when Emily walked off into the woods. What’s she hiding? Listen, you’ve still got DNA evidence from the Mitchell crime scene which will take weeks to process. That could break things open but until then, you have to keep pulling at whatever loose threads you’ve got. Did Chitwood put the searchers back on the Harper’s Peak mountain?”
Mettner nodded. “Police only, since Rory is considered possibly armed and dangerous.”
Josie looked at Noah then back at Mettner. “Will you keep us updated?”
Mettner said, “Of course.”
Josie leaned into Noah and he put an arm around her waist. “Take me home,” she said.
Noah had brought Trout home from Misty’s house, and the dog went into a frenzy when Josie walked through her front door. She’d been dreading coming home ever since the words “take me home” came out of her mouth. Lisette had spent many nights in their guest room. She was a regular visitor, and they’d had countless wonderful times with her in Josie and Noah’s house. Even though she had lived full-time at the nursing home, she had been with them enough that knowing she would never return made the house feel empty and sad. Trout’s frantic butt-wiggling and happy yips salved her wound a little bit. She dropped to her knees and let him lick her face. Then she rubbed his back and neck and ears, and when he flopped down and rolled over, his belly.
He followed her everywhere she went, even into the bathroom. When she went into the kitchen to eat some of a casserole that Misty had dropped off, he lay at her feet. She and Noah moved around one another silently, and she was glad that he didn’t feel the need to talk or make her talk. He was simply there. They climbed into bed, Trout getting between them and pawing at the covers until Josie let him under. He pressed himself against her side. Noah rolled toward her and took her hand. When he fell asleep, she put his hand back onto his side of the bed. She picked her phone up from the nightstand and flipped it on. Her message count was in the hundreds, but there was only one person whose messages Josie cared about.
Trinity had sent her all the photos of the wedding they’d taken in the hospital. Josie scrolled through them one by one, lingering on the ones of herself and Noah standing beside Lisette’s bed. The look of pure joy on Lisette’s face was startling. There was one of Josie and Noah gazing at one another, that instant of happiness and delight after they’d made up their vows on the fly since the ones they’d written months ago were somewhere in a room at Harper’s Peak. Behind them, Lisette grinned. There was one with Sawyer in the frame that gave Josie a jolt. He looked so much like his biological father, Eli Matson, it nearly took Josie’s breath away. She’d seen the resemblance before, but it had never seemed so stark.
Why not? she wondered. She’d seen him plenty of times. She’d seen him several times before she knew who he was, and it had never crossed her mind that he resembled Eli or Lisette in any way. Of course, Lisette always said that both Eli and Sawyer looked more like her late husband than her.
Trout groaned when Josie threw off the covers and sprang out of bed. She tucked him back in and went downstairs. On a bookshelf in the living room, she and Noah had put several of their family albums. Josie found an old one that Lisette had given her years earlier. It was filled with photos of Lisette as a young woman, a wife and mother. There were photos of Eli growing up which Josie had often delighted in. She’d shared this album with Sawyer the first few times he had come over for dinner. He loved this album. She should make a copy of it. She should have done so ages ago. Josie flipped the pages until she found Lisette’s wedding photo. Even then, Lisette’s curls had been bouncy and unruly but brown, not gray. Her skin was unwrinkled and supple, and her smile
was infectious. Her husband, Josie and Sawyer’s grandfather, who had died long before either Josie or Sawyer came along, stood beside her. He had a more serious air about him. Lisette always said he was stoic. But in the photo, his lips curled into a bright smile. His face seemed to say, “Look at this incredible woman who agreed to marry me! Can you believe it?”
He looked just like Josie remembered Eli. Just like Sawyer.
“Shit,” she mumbled.
She left the album out, so she’d remember to make Sawyer a copy of it and went to the kitchen. Her laptop was on the table. She turned it on and waited as it booted up. From upstairs came the sounds of dueling snores: Trout and Noah. Often, Noah would wake up if she got up in the middle of the night, but she knew the last few days had taken a toll on him. He would probably sleep through anything right about now.
Josie pulled up her internet browser and typed in the search terms. It took several minutes and four different websites to find what she was looking for: a wedding announcement and photo from eighteen years ago.
“Son of a bitch,” she said, and went upstairs to get dressed.
Forty
Josie tried to be as quiet as she could, but it didn’t matter. As she suspected, Noah was completely passed out. After throwing on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and jacket, she left him a note. Trout’s head popped up as she left it on Noah’s nightstand, but when she assured him he was a good boy and told him to go back to sleep, he stuck his head back under the covers. Downstairs, she went into the garage and found a bin of old hunting, camping, and fishing stuff the two of them had accumulated over the years. Most of it was Noah’s but when their old Chief, Wayland Harris, had died almost six years ago, his wife had given Josie a box of things from his office, including some of his hunting gear which he had found useful on occasion while on the job. Josie found one of Noah’s flashlights and Chief Harris’s night vision goggles. She changed the dead batteries in both and tucked them into her pockets.
In the car, she took her cell phone and quickly checked for messages from Mettner. There were several. They’d brought Celeste in for questioning. She admitted that she’d been on the phone with Tom while Emily was at the house. They’d been fighting over the fact that she and Adam had decided to take Emily in. Mettner suspected that Celeste and Tom were having an affair, but neither would confirm that. Celeste also claimed she never knew Rory existed. Couldn’t pick him out of a line-up, she’d said. Claimed Emily was lying about a photo with her and Rory together. There was no such picture.
