The Perfect Son by Freida McFadden(25)

“What’s going on at the school?” Hannah pipes up.

It’s a very good question. The front of the school is packed with police officers and reporters in equal numbers. It’s a bad combination. I try to pull up in front of the school, but a police officer waves me to the side entrance. My stomach sinks. The last thing you want to see around your kids’ school is a bunch of cops.

“Is the school even open?” I say. “What’s going on?”

Of course, Hannah and Liam immediately whip out their phones to try to figure it out. I pull alongside the side entrance, where there is a teacher manning the door. It seems like they are letting kids inside, although I’m hesitant to let mine out of the car.

“A student disappeared from her bedroom last night!” Hannah exclaims. “Nobody has any idea where she is.”

I throw the car into park and look back at Hannah. “Who’s the student?”

Not Olivia Reynolds. Not Olivia Reynolds.

“Hang on…” She’s still scrolling with her thumb. “It’s…” The color drains from her face.

“Hannah?”

Hannah chews on her lip. She glances at Liam, then back down at her phone. “Olivia Mercer.”

“Olivia…” I frown at my daughter. “Olivia… Mercer? What year is she?”

She keeps her eyes pinned on the screen of her phone, her hair falling in front of her face. “She’s, um, a junior.”

I lift my eyes to look at Liam. He is staring at the screen of his own phone, his lips slightly parted. “Liam, do you know this girl?”

“A little,” he says. “I’ve met her. But I don’t know her very well.”

I narrow my eyes at him. Is he lying? I can’t tell anymore. I used to be able to see through him, but he’s gotten too good at deceiving me. He sounds like he’s telling the truth, at least. Maybe he really is.

So instead, I look back at Hannah, who is an open book. Sure enough, she is looking at the screen of her phone, her brows bunched together, biting her lip hard enough that it’s turned white. I get a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach. Oh my God, did I get the wrong Olivia? How many Olivias are there in this goddamn school?

“Maybe you two shouldn’t go to school today,” I say.

Hannah shakes her head. “I’ve got a math test today. And anyway, why would we stay home? We’ll be safe at school.”

“If you’re sure…”

Hannah manages a smile, but it’s strained. “Don’t worry so much, Mom.”

With those words, she grabs her backpack and gets out of the car. Liam reaches for the bag at his feet and starts to do the same, but I seize his arm. I still remember when his arm was so small and skinny, I could wrap my fingers around it. A lot has changed since then.

“Liam,” I say.

He shifts his backpack onto his lap. Hannah has about a million little ornaments hanging off her bag, but Liam has nothing. “I’m going to be late for school.”

“Liam.” I choke out the next sentence: “Where did you go last night?”

He lifts his dark eyes and looks straight into mine. “I just walked around the block.”

“You swear?”

“Mom, stop it. I swear.”

When he was younger, Liam had difficulty maintaining eye contact when he was lying—that’s how I knew. But his eye contact is strong right now. If he’s lying, he’s lying right to my face and doing it very well. The truth is, I don’t know what to believe. But I keep seeing the way Hannah lost her composure when she read that girl’s name off the screen.

“Mom, I’ve got to go.”

“Okay.” I release his arm. “Go. But tell Hannah I’ll pick you both up at school today.”

“I’ve got track team practice.”

“Skip it.”

Liam looks like he’s going to protest, but he keeps his mouth shut. He puts his hand on the handle of the door, poised to turn it. “Bye, Mom. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

The hardest thing about Liam is that when he says “I love you,” I can’t tell whether that’s a lie too.





Chapter 22


Transcript from police interview with Eleanor Williams:

“How do you know Liam Cass, Ms. Williams?”

“I was his second grade teacher.”

“You were his teacher the entire year?”

“That’s right.”

“And what did you think of Liam?”

“Well, at the beginning of the year, he was one of my favorite students. Maybe my favorite. Second graders… they don’t have a great attention span. They get easily distracted or silly and I have to redirect them. But Liam wasn’t like that. He was always well behaved, even when the other kids were messing around. And he always finished his assignments first. He understood everything. His homework was immaculate. And on top of that, he was very polite. He was also just a really cute kid. Like the kind you’d see in a commercial.”

“How did the other children interact with him?”

“For the most part, they all liked him a lot. He was only seven years old, but he was very charming. Almost too charming, if you know what I mean. Like he was putting on an act. That’s unusual for a seven-year-old. Usually with kids that age, what you see is what you get.”