The Perfect Son

by Freida McFadden

  What if he’s with Olivia Reynolds?

  My breaths are coming in quick gasps. I’m hyperventilating. Jason’s eyes widen as he realizes what’s happening to me. He sprints into the bathroom and I hear him fumbling around the medicine cabinet. When he returns, he’s holding a bottle of pills. He fiddles with the childproof cap and finally shakes one out.

  “Take it,” he says.

  I haven’t had to swallow one of my Xanax in two months. I had been so proud of myself. But that progress is down the drain. I scoop the pill from his open palm and pop it in my mouth. I swallow it without water. Jason watches me, his brows knitted together. He used to only get a crease there when he was frowning, but now there’s a crease there all the time.

  “Are you okay?” he asks in a soft voice like I’m some kind of mental patient.

  I’m already feeling calmer from the Xanax, even though it’s probably a placebo effect. It couldn’t work that quickly.

  “Listen,” Jason says in that same overly calm voice. “Why don’t you lie down?”

  “Not until Liam is back,” I manage.

  “What if I go downstairs to wait for Liam? I’ll talk to him about not going out in the middle of the night anymore, okay?”

  I try to protest, but I feel dizzy and weak. That’s what hyperventilating always does to me. And the Xanax probably isn’t doing me any favors. “Okay. Thank you.”

  I lie down in the bed, and even though Jason said he was going downstairs, he lies down next to me and strokes my hair. “You need to relax more, Erika. Everything is fine. The kids are doing fine. You worry much too much.”

  I wish I lived in Jason’s universe. Where the kids are doing fine and my biggest problem is our substantial mortgage. But unfortunately, nothing in my life is that simple.

  It’s my last thought as I drift off to sleep. I have no idea that my entire world is about to fall apart.

  Chapter 21

  Erika

  Liam claims shotgun during the drive to school the next morning. He’s in an unusually good mood, in spite of the fact that Jason read him the riot act when he got home, and I repeated the entire performance this morning. But I don’t think Jason gave him that hard of a time, and I know I didn’t give it my all, considering I was still out of it from lack of sleep mixed with a Xanax hangover.

  On top of that, I couldn’t get that angry when I knew that Jason had given him permission to leave the house during the night. Really, Jason should’ve been the object of my wrath. But he had already gone running, showered, and hit the road before I was fully awake. I don’t think that was an accident.

  Liam has commandeered the radio, and he’s got a Maroon 5 song playing. He’s humming along, which is very unusual for Liam. Hannah is the one who usually belts out radio lyrics in a painfully off-key voice. In spite of his lack of sleep, Liam is very peppy this morning. I guess he’s right— he doesn’t need that much sleep. He’s still humming when we pull onto the block to get to the front of the high school.

  “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?”
<
br />   “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.”

  “So what happened during the year to change your opinion of him?”

  “Well, like I said, Liam was an exceptionally well-behaved child. But sometimes he would say the most disturbing things. He had this sweet face, and when he said something like that…”

  “Like what?”

  “Um, well, it’s hard to remember so long ago, but there was one thing he said that stood out to me. And that’s why I called you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We were doing a unit about families and marriage and all that. And Liam raised his hand and said that he couldn’t wait to get married.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “He said he couldn’t wait to get married, so he could stuff his wife deep in a hole and never let her out.”

  “…”

  “Exactly.”

  “Did you do anything about all those statements he was making?”

  “I contacted his parents, of course. I didn’t take it to the level of the principal, because it didn’t seem frequent enough and he wasn’t disrupting the class in any way.”

  “So you spoke to his parents?”

  “Just his mother. His father was away on business and couldn’t make it for the meeting.”

  “And what did Mrs. Cass say when you talked to her?”

  “She was horrified, of course. I told her I thought Liam would benefit from some sort of psychological therapy, and she agreed. She said she was going to find a child therapist as quickly as she could. But the weird thing was…”

  “Yes?”

  “She was horrified, but she didn’t seem surprised. Not really. Not the way you’d think she should’ve been.”

  “And why do you think that is?”

  “I think she already knew Liam was having these thoughts. I mean, he must have said things to her over the years.”

  “Do you know if she ever got him into therapy?”

  “She told me she did.”

  “And did his behavior improve?”

  “If you’re asking if he kept making those disturbing statements, the answer is no. He didn’t. He never said anything like that again. But I always got the feeling…”

  “What?”

  “Well, like I said, Liam was a smart kid. I got the sense that the only reason he stopped saying those things was because he realized he shouldn’t say it out loud anymore. I don’t think he stopped having those thoughts though. But of course, it’s impossible to know.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “I hope I did the right thing calling you. I wasn’t sure if I should, but after I read what happened to that Mercer girl and remembered Liam was in the same grade… well, I just thought I should say something.”

  “No, it’s good you did.”

  “I really hope you find her.”

  “We do too.”

  Chapter 23

  Erika

  I’m jumping to conclusions.

  Just because a girl went missing and Liam happened to be out last night, it doesn’t mean my son had anything to do with it. Just because her name is Olivia, it doesn’t mean she was the girl Liam was interested in. Olivia Reynolds was the girl Liam was talking to in debate team. I confirmed it was her based on her Facebook profile. This is another completely unrelated Olivia.

  I’m panicking over nothing. This is going to be okay.

  I pull over on a side street shortly after the kids get out of the car and take out my phone. I do a search for “missing high school student” in our town, and the name Olivia and an article instantly pops up. Olivia Mercer, sixteen years old, disappeared from her bedroom during the night. Her mother went to wake her up for school and she wasn’t there.

  The police are considering the possibility that the girl has run away, but think it’s unlikely. All her clothes and luggage seemed to be present, and she also left behind her wallet and her cell phone. On the other hand, there were no signs of struggle or forced entry. Maybe she hadn’t run away, but she had left the house on her own accord. With somebody she knew.

  There is a color photograph of Olivia Mercer in one of the articles. She’s not quite beautiful, but undeniably cute. Round face, lots of freckles, a little dimple on each cheek when she smiles. She looked like a sweet girl. The kind of girl you can’t help but like.

  I read about ten articles on Olivia Mercer’s disappearance, but after the first three, they repeat all the same information. I refresh, hoping to discover a new article about how she was miraculously found.

  But no. Olivia Mercer is still missing.

  I want to go home and hide under the covers, but we need groceries. Unfortunately, the grocery store near the school will be teeming with parents, wanting nothing more than to gossip about poor Olivia’s disappearance. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about it.

  There’s another grocery store that recently opened up about twenty minutes away. I won’t run into any parents there. It’s worth burning the extra gas. Maybe driving will clear my head.

  I bring up the GPS in the car to lead me to the grocery store. But as I start to type in the name of the store, the GPS brings up a list of recent searches, including one address that is unfamiliar to me. The last search on the list is 41 Green St.

  When was I searching for that address? Who lives there?

  On a whim, I click on it. The British-accented voice of my GPS instructs me to drive straight and then make a right at the next light. I follow the directions, making a right at the light, followed by a left, and another right onto Green Street. I drive down the street, watching the numbers on the right side, which are the odd numbered houses. I’m looking out for number 41.

  It’s not hard to find. It’s the house that has all the police officers and reporters in front. This house is clearly of interest today.

  I don’t even need to check the mailbox, but I look anyway, just to torture myself. The black letters written on the gray box are like a punch in the gut:

  MERCER

  I turn the corner and pull over onto an empty street. I sit in my parked car for fifteen minutes, my hands shaking too badly to drive. Liam went out last night. He obviously took my car. And he drove here. To the home of the girl who is now missing. Possibly dead.

  I reach into my purse and pull out my phone, but my hands are shaking so much that I nearly drop it. I barely manage to press the button for Jason’s phone number. Thank God, he picks up. Jason gets very involved with his work, and we have an agreement that I’ll only bother him for level two or worse emergencies. I think this counts.

  “Erika?”

  “Hey.” My voice cracks and I clear my throat. “Jason, we need to talk.”

  “Jesus, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  “There’s a girl from the high school that’s missing.” I suppress a sob. “She wasn’t in her bed this morning when her parents came into the room. And Liam… I think when he went out last night, he took my car and went to see her. Her address is in the car GPS. And now she’s missing. She’s gone, Jason. Vanished!”

  “Wait…” Jason is quiet for a moment. “You’re saying he took the car out himself—without me?” His voice rises a notch. “That’s not okay! He only has a learner’s permit.”

  “That is what you’re getting out of this? Jason, do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I… I guess not…?”

  I take a deep breath. “This girl is missing. Somebody took her, and Liam might be the last person to see her alive.”

  “So he should call the police and tell them what he knows so they can find out who did this.”

  My hands are still shaking, but now it’s with anger. How could Jason be this dense? Maybe he’s not around much, but he know
s the stories about Liam as well as I do. And no, he doesn’t believe there’s anything wrong with our son. But he has to realize how this looks.

  “Wait.” Jason’s voice breaks into my thoughts. “Are you saying you think Liam has something to do with her disappearance?”

  “Yes, that’s obviously what I’m saying!”

  “Jesus Christ, Erika. Are you serious? You really think Liam would…?”

  “You know what I think.”

  “He wouldn’t. This is our kid we’re talking about.”

  “Right.”

  I hear shuffling on the other line. “Do you want me to come home?”

  I let out a sigh. “No. There’s nothing for you to do. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Liam did not do this,” Jason says with more conviction than I feel. “She probably just ran away and will turn up in a day or two.”

  God, I hope he’s right. Because the alternative is too horrible to imagine.

  Chapter 24

  Erika

  When I get home, there’s a white Lincoln Continental in our driveway. I recognize it immediately as my mother’s car. She’s the last person I feel like talking to right now, but it looks like she’s already used her key to get inside and is likely brewing herself a nice hot cup of coffee.

  Even though my mother lives all the way in New Jersey, she’s currently retired and single, so she doesn’t think much of driving out to see us on a whim, without checking if it’s okay. Amazingly, Jason doesn’t seem bothered by it. His own mother died from breast cancer when he was in college, and his father passed away only a year later from a heart attack. (“He died of a broken heart,” Jason told me.) So he likes having the kids’ only grandparent around. I like having her here, but I wish she’d call.

  Still, I have nowhere else to go. So it looks like I have to deal with whatever she wants.

  As soon as I enter the house, I hear her clanging around in the kitchen. My mother loves the kitchen. She’s always buying us some new gadget to use in there. The last thing she got me was an instant pot last month. She spent twenty minutes raving about all the great stuff she could cook with it. Since then, it’s been collecting dust in the corner of my kitchen. I know that thing makes great soup, but I don’t like soup.