All the Dangerous Things(93)

After the news of Ben’s arrest broke, Paul Hayes visited my house, too, asking me to keep a secret of his own.

“That man you saw is my father,” he said, a nervous tremor in his throat. “He’s been living with me now that he’s nearing the end, but we both have records. Pasts that I’m not proud of.”

I remembered again what Dozier had said: the drug charges and his time in jail. It was against the terms of Paul’s parole to harbor another criminal, even though they’re family, so he kept his father stashed in the house, blinds drawn and windows dark, hidden away each day until the sun dipped down and it was safe to come back out.

“Dad told me he saw you that night,” he said, shaking his head. “All this time, I thought it was you, but I couldn’t turn you in without turning us in, too.”

I think of him slinking back at the vigil; the hatred in his eyes as he found me sitting on his porch. He thought I was a murderer. He thought I murdered my own child and his father was the only person on earth who could prove it. He must have been racked with guilt, watching me get away with it every single day and knowing that he and he alone could bring me to justice—but in the end, he chose family, protecting himself and his father through silence and lies.

And then there’s my own family, too: My parents, who have since reached back out in an attempt to mend the brokenness between us. My mother, and the quiet guilt she constantly carries; my father, and the shame he feels for failing us so badly. They had already lost two daughters, after all. They didn’t want to lose a third. It’ll take time, I know, getting to know one another again—forgiving them for everything they did and didn’t do—but at least it’s out in the open now: Margaret and Ellie and the terrible things that happened in that house.

The memories that none of us wanted to remember—but, now that I do, will be impossible to forget.

I remove my headphones and watch as Waylon flips the switch, turning the green light off. It’ll be out into the world soon, our story, pulsing through the ears of others—and then it’ll be true. It’ll be true because they’ll believe it to be, bending the facts to fit their feelings. Finding fragments of truth in all the wrong places. Forcing them together to reveal a picture that was never even there in the first place.

“You feel good?” Waylon asks, wrapping the cords around his wrist and nestling them back into the case. “About all of this?”

I glance outside, the setting sun casting an orange light across the sky. Just three weeks ago, the sunset used to signal the start of something—the start of another long, lonely stretch of night—but now it feels like the end. The end of a nightmare that I’ve finally managed from wake up from.

“Yeah,” I say, nodding. “Yeah, I do.”

“Everything you did,” he says, “it was worth it.”

I smile before walking Waylon to the door, opening it wide as we say our goodbyes. Once he’s gone, I turn back around and take in the renewed silence of my house: Roscoe on the floor, napping quietly, dusk streaming through the windows as dinner warms on the stove. I peer into my dining room, thinking about all those names and pictures and article clippings that I’ve since torn down; all the conferences and calls to Dozier. The leads I chased blindly in the dark.

That comment that had appeared and vanished again.

He’s in a better place.

That’s how it all ended: that comment. Even after it was deleted, they were still able to trace it—and it brought them not to Valerie’s place, but to Abigail Fisher’s, a nondescript little rental she had moved into halfway across the country. And that’s where they found her, waiting, almost like she was relieved to get caught: sitting in a little nursery set up with toys and dinosaurs and piles of books.

All the things a child would need to be happy, healthy. Loved.

I still think about how it must have been for her: a childless woman just trying to grieve and move on—but she couldn’t. She couldn’t move on. Instead, she held on to it, refusing to let it go, pushing it around and around until Valerie approached her one night, late, and told her a story.

A story about a boy with an unfit mother. A boy who would be better off with somebody else.

In a way, I understand it. I really do. Nothing about grief makes sense: the things it has us do, the lies it leads us to believe. Valerie simply told her what she wanted to hear, and she let herself believe it—that it was for the best, for everybody—so she swallowed her guilt and her fear as she met her that night, late, fingers digging into Mason’s little body as he was passed between them in the dark, his stuffed dinosaur slipping from his grip and getting stuck in the mud.

Then she strapped him into her car seat and took off fast, disappearing into the night.

I walk down the hall now, toward Mason’s nursery, and approach the door that I’ve always kept closed. I touch my hand to the knob the way I’ve done so many times before—too afraid to twist it, to peer inside, to catch a glimpse of everything I had lost—but now I do. I open it gently. I let myself look. And there he is, just as I’ve imagined it so many times before: There’s Mason, sitting up in his bed, cracking that toothy little smile when he sees me. He’s holding that same stuffed toy, the mud cleaned off before being removed from evidence and returned back to us, a gentle reminder of the life with me I know he’s probably forgotten.