Lies We Bury(75)

An advertisement for the Tru Lives TV show appears, and I dismiss the pop-up to swipe back to the video. I play it again. Again. My eyes pull wider each time I watch Chet take the stairs to Lily’s apartment. He found her. But how? She just moved back and I’m sure hasn’t completed any public address announcement. Maybe he found Lily after he already found Jenessa? Maybe Karin has been tracking us all down for him.

I navigate to my messages app and find it’s empty of unread texts. Neither of my sisters has messaged me in a panic. Maybe Lily isn’t home and—it’s a little past lunchtime—Jenessa is on break from the doughnut shop. The video would have been filmed fairly recently, then uploaded and published to online news outlets, like the Post. There’s no telling where Chet is now.

My phone pings again. My heart tightens at the chime in some Pavlovian response. Hovering over the notice bar, this time from a national news outlet, I hesitate, then tap my screen.

AP News Alert: Murderer-rapist Chet Granger released on parole seeks reunion with daughters. Local police issue a warrant for the arrest of the oldest, Marissa Mo, a.k.a. Claire Lou. Have you seen this woman?

Horror snaps through me as my face fills the screen. The photo that Pauline insisted I take for my Portland Post badge stares back at me. The closed-mouth smile that I considered professional, if aloof, here appears mysterious—secretive—beneath the paragraph about local police tracking me down.

Casting a glance around me, I scan the faces of other people waiting for the TriMet, for some indication that a call has been placed to the police and I should start running again. The platform remains as calm as when I first arrived.

Run. You run away from those crime scenes and that case as fast as you can. Rosemary was right. It was a trap all along.

Recalling the threat wedged under my doormat, I note that the killer made good on the promised timeline. A body turned up yesterday and threw my world into chaos today, the day of Chet’s release. As the murderers, Chet and Karin could have set me up to divert attention away from them, in order to execute some other scheme, but their whereabouts are being closely monitored by the media. Neither one seems to mind.

With Serena Delle long gone from this world, and Chet and his wife roaming the streets of Portland, Rosemary’s words take on new significance. Her dismay at my job. Her fears for me. Her darty eyes. Her actions and movements replay in my head like scenes from a movie, as though she gave me the answers; I just didn’t know it then. Despite avoiding her for good reason, I trust Rosemary implicitly.

Nora, she’s . . . she’s had some trouble.

The details found at each crime scene and related to my childhood are too intimate, too accurate to be the work of an onlooker or a stranger. Yes, the penguin toy, the braided bracelet, and Lily’s baby blanket were all visible to the outside world. But no one could have known based on photographs how special these items were to me personally. Someone would have needed firsthand insight from Chet’s basement or to have been close to sources who did.

Rosemary and Jenessa were trying to warn me in their own ways while protecting someone they loved. Instead of traveling the state, as Jenessa said she was, or emailing plucky updates at Christmastime, according to Rosemary—what if Nora has gone off her medication again and neither one of them wanted to expose her? As Rosemary said, it wasn’t their news to share. What if the woman I called Mama Nora has been setting me up?

Rosemary’s foreboding returns again. You handled it differently from Lily or me, and I think better than Jenessa and Nora, too. Nora, she’s . . . she’s had some trouble. Bad stuff.

I scroll through my contacts to call Rosemary and verify what she meant, then remember that the police issued a warrant for my arrest. They haven’t come screaming down this street yet, but I’ll bet I can be tracked by my phone, among a host of other ways. The AP alert they released could be a measly indicator of what’s churning off-line. I should only use my phone when I have no other choice.

Shia, during one of our sessions, echoed Rosemary’s fear with a similar response. You’re the only one who managed to adjust to outside living, to deal with all the emotional baggage of your past. You made it. Whereas everyone else, all the other women, and Chet included, have struggled to get by.

A ball forms in my chest, pushing against my ribs. Had Nora envied my supposedly smooth adjustment, watching me grow up, getting updates from Rosemary that would have been scrubbed clean to present a successful front? Jenessa certainly thought that was the case—she accused me of killing my guinea pig, for God’s sake. Maybe Nora had planted that idea, bitter that Jenessa’s—and even Lily’s—turbulent ups and downs were always being unfairly judged against me.

If the world thinks I’m a murderer, her daughter looks far better off by comparison.

It’s ridiculous to think something like that could be a competition, and yet it also makes sense. Jenessa considered Rosemary her mother by the time we escaped. Did Nora blame us for their difficult relationship? Did Chet’s upcoming release—or maybe just my return to Portland—tip her over the edge of revenge? Rosemary tried to take her daughter. Now, she’d take Rosemary’s.

I’m so confused. My nerves are shot, and I feel paranoid, like everyone has a reason to be after me. Shia. Oz. Karin. Nora. The reality is I’m no closer to knowing who the killer is than I was before.

A drop of rain lands on my head. Wetness splashes my forearm and tingles my scars. The air smells thick, ripe with impending thunder.