Lies We Bury(69)

I succeeded in staying awake for three days. I dozed off a few times, but I woke myself up whenever the dreams started.

The next six months came and went with no basement dreams, and I was ecstatic. Empowered and overjoyed. I thought I had excised those bastard nightmares from my mind, and I told my teacher so.

Two years went by before they resumed. The year I turned twelve, I stole my first pack of cigarettes.

After I left Oz staring at me from the doorway of Four Alarm, I dreamed I was running back and forth, touching first one wall of Chet’s basement, then the other, increasingly frantic, like a hamster in a cage. I knew I wasn’t ever leaving again, and the knowledge fueled my hysteria. When I lifted my hands in the dream, thick red liquid coated my palms, sticky and pungent—blood, dripping in fat drops to the concrete floor. I followed their trail and found the drops formed a pool in which the fourth body lay wrapped in rope made of bedsheets.

Lately, memories or images I’d suppressed from childhood seem to blend with my imagination and create that same sense again—that I’ll never get out of the basement. Never be anything but trapped.



Seated at our usual table in Ezra’s Brewery, Shia makes notes in that bound journal of his. When he spots me, his mouth shifts into a frown. “Almost thought you wouldn’t show. You’re late.”

“I’m here. My emotional baggage just slowed me down today.” I slide into a tall bar-height chair. Shia’s head remains bent over a page, but his expression brightens. I rub my shoulder and wince from the deep-purple bruise that was noticeable in the bathroom mirror this morning.

Trying to stop the killer from exposing me has only led me to spending more time with Oz and Topher Cho, the combination of which has outed me in record time. Is that what the intruder’s message in my apartment was referencing? It’s time to come clean about my family history, to the police department, to the Portland Post?

I packed a suitcase last night. Debated leaving town at five in the morning. The same doubts I’ve had since discovering the windshield note, however, stopped me: What would I do? Where would I go and with what money? With no attractive answers, I woke up, showered on autopilot, then drove here in a daze.

My stomach turns like I might be sick. When I focus on Shia’s face again, he’s already watching me. “Should we get started?”

I flag down a server and order a plate of tater tots, this establishment’s prime offering after beer. The restaurant side is packed with patrons today, all of whom seem to be on their cell phones. Noise carries from the brewery side of the building—the usual raucous shouts. “What do you want to discuss?”

Shia leans forward and hugs his elbows. “I didn’t think you’d show. Not because you were late. But because of . . . today.”

I place my hands flat on the table and try not to look like I’m craving an aspirin. The lacquered wood tabletop is cool, soothing against my skin. “What do you mean?”

“Claire, look around you. You think this many people normally come to a brewery this early on a Monday? What do you think they’re reading on their phones or watching on the TVs right now? What could be so important to them today—and to you?”

The chill returns. It skates across the back of my neck, gliding beneath my ponytail, like a rope. The shouts from the bar seem to shift and morph into clear words that make me wish I’d ordered whiskey instead of tots.

Chet.

Chet Granger.

Chet Granger is free.

Shia dips his head, his eyes never breaking from mine. “That’s right, Claire. What day is it?”

I swallow hard, no longer sure how I made it out of bed at all. “Monday. The day of Chet’s parole.”

“Correct,” Shia murmurs.

I gasp—suddenly feeling like I’ve hit the tile floor again, the wind gone from my chest. “What’s happening? What is everyone watching?”

Shia’s hand touches mine, but I focus on the scratches carved into the tabletop.

“It’s only news coverage at this point. Local stations have been camped out in front of the prison since six this morning. Nothing much has happened, so it’s mostly been weather reports. ‘Sunny skies the day that Chet Granger is released.’ Did you really forget about it?”

The basket of tots arrives, and I grab a handful and swallow, barely chewing. Hunger and anxiety meld together like ravenous mice in my belly. “No. Yes. I don’t know. Do we know if he’s already out or still signing paperwork or whatever?”

My skin prickles, imagining him walking through the doorway of a restaurant or brewery like this one. Enjoying fresh air and freedom for the first time in years, while assessing how women have changed over time, no doubt considering what crimes he could get away with in this modern age. What statutes may have been legislated since his incarceration and what loopholes will help secure the careful plans he’s been making all the while.

“Karin Degrassi, his wife, has been giving interviews.” Shia watches me, then writes a note in his book, visible from where I sit—PTSD undiluted. Does trauma ever really heal? Time heals all wounds or some?

I take a breath. Using two fingers, I gouge the fat pad of my palm until tears prick my eyes.

My eyes flick toward one of the four flat-screen televisions in the bar area. “Any other news reported this morning?”