Lies We Bury(88)

He sees me and dips his head in my direction. The last time I saw him, at Jenessa’s sentencing hearing, he was in the back row of the courthouse, a concerned expression stitching his heavy brows together. Despite Peugeot’s best efforts at influencing the prosecutor and judge, Jenessa was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole in twenty years. Just like Chet.

Ironically, for once, Jenessa was not the center of the scandal the whole time. Two millionaires from Silicon Valley and a casino owner from Las Vegas were also given life sentences for taking the tunnel victims’ lives.

When I asked Peugeot why he’d made such an effort for my sister, he said that Jenessa was the victim of unusual trauma—we all were. We know so little about the long-term effects of real trauma, he said, and she didn’t deserve a life sentence.

After her arrest, Oz and Pauline threatened to sue me for misrepresenting my identity. I felt exposed, foolish for having trusted Oz. Yet when he suggested that he and Pauline could be persuaded not to sue if I agreed to be featured on the front page of the Post and in subsequent editorials commenting on Jenessa’s trial, my sheepishness turned to contempt. Screw you, I’d replied. The look on Oz’s face—a woman rejecting him—had been worth giving him more ammunition against me in the articles I knew they would write regardless.

When my therapist asked why I declined, I explained that people would gossip, whether or not I’d misled anyone. There will probably be another book in another twenty years, this one following up on Jenessa’s portion of the ordeal, and I shouldn’t let the ebb and flow of public interest dictate my life. She gave me a slow clap at that. Said I was making progress.

Shia’s book is displayed on a golden platter at the back of the room, surrounded by artfully stacked copies. A blown-up version of the book’s cover, with endorsements from other crime biographers splashed across it, occupies an easel beside the table. The title, Family Ties: The Twentieth Anniversary of Portland’s House of Horrors, is emblazoned in bronze lettering across a grayscale photograph of Chet’s home. A bit dramatic. I told Shia as much, and he said the publisher insisted on the word horror being included somehow.

Shia smiles when I catch his eye, but he doesn’t leave his conversation. Black curls fall across his forehead, and he brushes the fringe away with awkward fingertips, still not used to the shorter do. An older woman in a stylish pantsuit stands with her back to me, speaking to him. She gestures toward the easel, then sputters a laugh.

Circulate. Enjoy yourself. Just be in the moment and celebrate something you worked hard on. Nobody needs to know. It was easy for Shia to suggest—he wasn’t the subject of a four-hundred-page tome on sale at every bookstore. But as the date approached and Jenessa continued to refuse visits from me, the prospect of a party seemed less like corporal punishment and more like an opportunity to move forward.

A slight woman follows behind a child teetering on unsteady, chubby baby legs. They pass below a stage light angled on the books for sale, and Lily’s white-blonde crown of hair gleams, braided down to her waist. She waves me over, then scoops Olive up in her arms and plants a loud raspberry kiss on my niece’s cheek.

“Hey, glad you could make it,” she says.

“Yeah, traffic was a pain. I should have left earlier.”

Lily looks over her shoulder, then back to me. “Totally. You missed the crab cakes. We need to get invited to launch events more often.”

“Agreed.” We could buy crab cakes if we wanted them—as many as we want—but I refrain from pointing out the obvious. Once Shia’s publisher accepted the final draft and he sent me my promised portion of the advance, I halved my share between Lily and me—nearly, anyway; I saved twenty grand for Jenessa, for whatever she’d need while in prison: lawyer fees, extra pillows, maybe a standalone gardening bag to place beneath a window.

“Did Mom end up coming?”

A smirk crosses Lily’s prim mouth. “‘Mom’ now? What happened to ‘Rosemary’?”

A server passes by with a tray of glasses of white wine, and I grab one. “Therapy is forcing me to accept things about myself and other people, believe it or not. Warts and all.”

She raises two eyebrows, impressed. Olive sucks on her fist in Lily’s arms. “She said she was going to the bathroom about ten minutes ago. I should make sure she didn’t—”

“My two girls!” Rosemary exclaims, joining us. Her hair is curled, and she wears a red dress I’ve never seen before. “My three girls,” she says, nudging Olive’s cheek.

“Hey. Thought you might have jumped out the window.” I smile so she knows I’m only partly joking.

“Not without my parachute.” Rosemary winks, and I can’t help marveling at the change in her after only a few months. It turns out that while she did have a hard time being among large groups of people, a consequence of the consistent paranoia she suffered post-captivity, much of it was out of fear of encountering Chet. She always worried he would be released on parole before she was notified. That he’d attack her again, or worse, track her down to ask for her forgiveness. Now he’s dead.

For my part, I’d often wondered whether Chet’s father, Jameson, might come out of the woodwork once the details about the murders hit the national news circuit. But instead of a ninety-year-old grandfather looking for absolution or a handout, it was his widow who reached out—an eighty-year-old woman who lives on a ranch in Montana. She didn’t make any demands but let us know Jameson had no idea about us—or he never confided as much during their fifteen years of marriage. She didn’t even know he had a son.