Everyone Here Is Lying

by Shari Lapena

No one ever tells you how complicated it is being a parent. How much energy it sucks out of you. The toll it takes on a marriage. Somehow simply growing up in a family isn’t such great preparation for having your own.

Maybe she has that little girl’s blood on her hands.

Gully can’t help thinking that hanging up a jacket is the sort of thing a parent would do.

“We didn’t tell them anything,” Bledsoe answers. “They draw their own conclusions.”

“If you don’t mind, you can remain here while we talk to your wife.”

Ruh roh

He remembers clearly the first time his dad hit her. She was six years old, throwing a tantrum because she didn’t get the cup she wanted for supper.

Michael had cried, but Avery had seemed, even then, to enjoy the chaos she caused.

She wonders if he thinks of her at all.

Nora and william have their priorities messed up!

But he’s a coward—or maybe he’s a ridiculous optimist, he doesn’t know which.

Erin is more progressive, more patient; he’s old-school and flies off the handle. They seldom agree at all anymore on how to handle Avery. They argue about it all the time, nurse resentments and grudges.

Nora knows how Marion feels about William and suspects Marion wants to be alone.

“One of your neighbors saw your car, Dr. Wooler, enter your garage at around four o’clock yesterday afternoon.”

“But she said he did things to her. Grown-up things.”

And Nora will learn an important lesson. The wages of sin is death. If the man she chose to fall in love with is a murderer, Al doubts his wife will ever cheat again.

It must be hard, he thinks, realizing you’ve been sleeping with a murderer. That you’re in love with a monster.

Suspicious there Al

That’s what they have here—a series of mishaps that have led to disaster.

“Who was with her, Michael?” “Derek. Jenna’s brother.”

“Oh God. It’s Nora Blanchard, isn’t it? She’s the other woman.”

Such an interesting twist to the case—the father of the missing girl and the mother of the prime suspect, lovers—how the media will love it!

She knows that it’s not necessarily the ones who seem different that you need to be afraid of—it’s the ones who can carry off normal without anyone suspecting a thing.

But it’s not up to her, Marion thinks. None of this is going to end the way Avery Wooler thinks it is.

She doesn’t know that Marion is obsessed with Avery’s father. The fact is, she’s been in love with him for a long time, her days and nights filled with thoughts of him.

Marion, too, wanted to see William Wooler hurt. The only thing she wanted more was to see Nora Blanchard hurt, and she saw an opportunity.

His son is not a monster, but Al realizes in that moment, driving too fast down that dark highway, that he himself might be capable of something unspeakable.

Marion’s plan was perfectly designed to sabotage any possibility of happiness for her and William together. How evil Marion was. How she must have hated them both.

Nuts!

couldn’t understand why she was keeping me prisoner. Until she told me that she was in love with my dad, and that he’d been having an affair with Nora Blanchard and she was going to make them pay.”

She’s the more nurturing parent. She knows them better than William does.

Uhhh not so sure

“There’s more to this story, isn’t there, Avery? Why don’t you tell us what really happened, from the beginning.”