Lies We Bury

by Elle Marr

  “If you change your mind, here’s my card.” Handwritten on the back is an address and a time. “I wasn’t sure whether to leave this on your car, so I wrote down a meetup location for tomorrow. If there’s another one that suits you better, I’m flexible.”

  I gape at him, not knowing what words to speak, what phrase would be appropriate upon learning my captor-father will be released in mere days. Terror slides across my mouth in a metallic film. Chet was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after twenty years; I didn’t connect that the twentieth anniversary also meant his potential release.

  When we turned eighteen, Jenessa and I signed up for the victim notifications from the court system. Did Lily? I haven’t received anything, but I also just moved here, and mail is still being forwarded from my last city.

  Does Rosemary know?

  “Well, I can see I may have delivered some surprising news. I’m Shia, by the way. Shia Tua.” He extends a hand, but I don’t take it. “So if you’re free tomorrow, I’ll be waiting at that address.”

  I watch the gray backpack he wears bounce up the road, then over the hill toward the brewery. Shadows from the building across the street reach my chest as the wind picks up.

  While I don’t know what Chet hopes to do on parole, I know he wants to see me. He said so in the few letters he wrote over the years and that my lawyer forwarded. He’s also been hell-bent on rehabbing his image, granting interviews and recording his “side of the story” during the first several years of his incarceration. If he succeeds in locating me, he’ll bring the cameras, and everything I tried to leave behind—Chet’s basement, the pain of adolescence, persistent strangers and the danger they pose—will catch up to me in an instant. No one will let me near their high school senior for a photo shoot during grad season. Chet will have taken everything from me all over again.

  A drop of rain slides down my ear, and I jolt from my trance, breaking into a sprint toward my car. The wind whips against my face as I jam my key into the driver’s door, flinging it open. I slide inside, breathless, then hit the “Lock” button with a shaking hand.

  When I uncurl my fist, the ink from Shia’s card marks my palm. His handwriting—messy, pointed—is smudged but legible, and I’m able to read the address of tomorrow’s meeting.

  Ten

  The last time I saw Chet was when we escaped. Rosemary was asked to testify against him in court, and she did, but all the adults involved, to their credit, agreed to spare us children further trauma. The prospect of seeing Chet out in the open for the first time left me wide-awake until around three in the morning. My need for coffee is real.

  Of the café’s patio tables, only one seat remains vacant during this Tuesday midmorning, opposite a lone man. Shia Tua peers at me, and he hasn’t stopped staring since I turned the corner from where I parked. The last time someone approached me out of the blue, I had just turned eighteen. A tabloid magazine suggested I pose topless, and despite the pitiful sum, I considered it.

  “Ms. Lou,” he says, standing and extending a hand. I take it, and his skin is warm, moist in the cool temperature. “Or should I say, Missy Mo?”

  He offers a flirtatious smile, speaking the alliterative name the press loved to use as I ventured past puberty, then into adulthood. Missy Mo Learning to Drive! Missy Mo All Grown Up! Missy Mo Models New Swimwear! The final headline was a complete lie. Some idiot blogger took a photo of me on their phone while I was floating downriver in my hometown.

  “Claire.” I take a seat and clutch my cross-body bag in my lap. The man doesn’t appear to have any weapons handy. Nothing to knock me out with, although how he’d do it in plain sight with ten witnesses beside us, I don’t know.

  “Of course. Thank you for meeting me. Coffee? This place is kind of Portland’s answer to Starbucks.” He leans forward, fidgeting with the sleeve of a too-small jean jacket and placing a cup with a lid in front of me. “The brew here is amazing.”

  “Thanks.” I wrap my hands around it but don’t drink.

  Shia’s probably in his early thirties, was around twelve or thirteen when our story broke. The local papers were horrified that something like our captivity could have occurred within their polite, sleepy city. A place where the running joke is that if four Portland drivers arrive at a four-way stop at the same time, they’re still there, insisting the person to their left goes first.

  Shia tucks thick black curls behind an ear. Olive skin glows beneath the overcast sky.

  “You left me a note,” I say. “A threat.”

  The pair of women beside us pauses their conversation to eavesdrop. Shia shifts forward and angles his body away from our neighbors—not the kind of self-assured comportment I would expect from a stalker or killer after brazenly suggesting we meet in public. He grips his paper coffee cup.

  “I’m confused. I only wrote you one note, on the business card I handed you. Did someone threaten you?”

  When I don’t reply, he inhales through his nose.

  “Actually, I’ve been following your story since I was in high school. Along with the rest of the country. Since college, I’ve focused on writing nonfiction, some editorial, but mostly true events that I believe were pivotal to the American consciousness.”

  He pauses as if waiting for me to challenge him. The women beside us resume discussing the latest tsunami, which struck Indonesia last week. “What does that have to do with me?”

  He leans forward onto the wooden slats of the table. “The thing is, I’ve been offered a major advance to write a book. On your family. Your . . . whole family.”

  A chill sweeps down my chest. Of course he has. This is the writer who spoke to Jenessa. Maybe he is the author of my note, the way she suspected, or maybe he’s not. Either way, he’s still trying to manipulate me for his own gain. Vultures. All of them.

  “You don’t know us,” I say. “How can you write a book on us?”

  “That’s exactly the point. We know very little. Just the facts. Yet your experience stuck with everyone for years. People want to know what happened from a firsthand perspective.”

  The fine lines on Shia’s forehead, around his mouth, and the scruff that caps his square jaw—even the long, unruly hair—seem familiar. Like the type of predatory men I’ve tried to avoid my whole life.

  “How did you find me?”

  Pink colors his cheeks, and he takes a moment to chew his lower lip. “I found your sister first. Jenessa. She refused my offer over the phone, so I was . . .” He takes another sip of coffee, as if gathering his will to confess.

  Understanding dawns on me. “You were out front. Of her house. You followed me.” It’s not hard to find a person online using basic information. Jenessa has lived in that house for the last three years; she’s had the same cell phone number since she was seventeen.

  Shia sucks his teeth as though caught in a lie. “I followed Jenessa to the brewery where she met you; then I followed you home. I was getting ready to knock on your door when you left again and went downtown. I followed you, then approached you outside Four Alarm. Now I’m just pleased you decided to join me today.” He spreads his hands in a deflated ta-da gesture.

  “I don’t understand. How did you know it was me?”

  “Ah. I hate to break it to you, but there are whole websites devoted to speculating on what you look like as an adult. Here.” Shia types something in his phone’s browser, then slides the screen around so I can read. A dozen different sites claim to offer images of me—What Missy Looks Like Now.

  Childhood photos of me have been manipulated to age the little girl in the pictures into a woman who isn’t far off from my actual appearance: medium-length black hair, light-brown eyes that tip upward at the outer crease, and a round nose that—shudder—I think Chet and I have in common. The main differences seem to be that my eyebrows are actually thicker than the theorized version, my face is thinner overall, and I have a dimple in my chin. A few other pictures show up toward the bottom of the r
esults page, which I remember were snapped outside a grocery store when I was twenty-two, five years ago, and wearing sunglasses. These websites seem to use the same technology that the adoption angel described when he tracked me down at the diner.

  “So you see, Claire. I got very lucky in finding you, but the internet has been tracking you for some time.”

  His words fly like casual bullets, puncturing the anonymity I had aspired to. My name is Claire—a trite story line.

  I was naive. So dumb to think I was being covert. That I would ever be able to fully leave behind what I never chose to begin with. It’s only a matter of time before the rest of this city finds out, and they’ll look at me as strangely as my grade school classmates. Pauline will write stories on me, featuring updates on what sandwich shop I frequented this week. Refuse to pay me, because as she said, victims are unpredictable. Fear and ogle me, knowing what darkness my genes contain. Jenessa’s story about my guinea pig will be only the beginning of what surfaces.

  This Shia person clutches his coffee, awaiting my reply. Full eyebrows form a steeple between strained brown irises. A writer who enjoys research. No doubt, meticulous. Ambitious.

  I tap the side of my cup, then take a deep gulp. Too much sugar. “So what is your goal here? Are you saying you’ll expose me if I don’t help with your book?”

  “Not at all.” He leans forward. “I only want to make sure the truest story is recorded. If you agree to a few interviews, I’ll share the advance with you.”

  “Define ‘share.’”

  “A hundred thousand would be yours. I’d get it as soon as the manuscript is accepted.” Shia sucks in a breath. “And I’ll wire you a thousand of my own money now if you agree, as a show of good faith.”

  One hundred thousand dollars. That’s way more money than my settlement portion. I could live on that for years.

  I could put a down payment on a house with that.

  I could buy a whole new identity with that.

  The last thing I want is to expose myself to further poking and speculation, but a sum of that size would buy me stability. Allow me to navigate building a solid photography portfolio. Give me my first bridge to ordinary in ages. Hell, even $1,000 up front is a dream come true.

  After Chet was sentenced to life in prison, an attorney approached Rosemary and offered to file a separate lawsuit, pro bono. Said he’d work to ensure we received adequate recompense for our pain and suffering. Since Chet abused company funds to build out his compound—our living quarters—in the basement, the civil suit would name both Chet and his employer as codefendants. Six months later, we received a settlement—money to cover our initial medical bills, relocation costs, whatever we needed to move on.

  Rosemary’s settlement money went mainly to housing, as she held only sporadic jobs afterward and permitted a few paid interviews. My share was depleted five years ago—the price of pursuing normalcy without a steady income proving higher than I planned. I did my best to replace it with wages from restaurant jobs, online proofreading gigs, and easy nannying that didn’t require more than a driver’s license. Before I turned to photography, the topless tabloid offer from when I was eighteen crossed my mind more times than I’m proud of.

  Jenessa’s disapproving scowl flickers to mind, reminding me that she didn’t even return Shia’s call when he reached out to her. She wouldn’t like me accepting now.

  “The publisher is keen for a draft as soon as possible, given that this year is the twentieth anniversary of your escape, and Chet’s parole is next week. The market is dying for details.”

  I only nod. Sweat breaks across my chest at the thought of that monster being out in the world, trying to contact me.

  Lily and Jenessa will be distraught. What about my mother? How will Rosemary react to seeing her captor grabbing groceries in the same city as me?

  “Claire?” Shia says in a low voice.

  A thousand dollars right now. I could use the money. And it seems I still have some issues to work through, if the bitter taste of anxiety I felt in the brewery cellar is any indication. More importantly, if the note I found on my windshield is linked to the twentieth anniversary, answering Shia’s questions may offer information—some details of my childhood that I’ve admittedly never explored as an adult. Working through those issues could lead me to the next body indicated in the anonymous note, and maybe someone else won’t have to die.

  If I learn the killer’s identity before anyone else and before Chet exposes who I am, Pauline will have to keep me. My past will be an advantage.

  “So I could be a ‘source’? I wouldn’t go on record. And you wouldn’t reveal anything about my location or jeopardize my privacy in any way.”

  Shia regards me with hopeful, droopy eyes and something else. A spark. A flicker of excitement before it dies like an ember I’m not sure I saw. “Sure. What do you say, Claire?”

  We agree to meet tomorrow at the city library for our first session. I leave the coffee shop feeling hopeful for the first time in days—resolute that this is a way forward, even as my stomach clenches, ties itself into a series of loops.

  Leaving downtown, I brake my car to a hard stop as a man jaywalks across the street. A blanket covers the shopping cart he pushes, so I can’t tell what it carries, but he sees me looking. He lifts a hand wrapped in a scarf and points to me over one—two—three seconds, proud aggression tightening his features. Curiosity makes me lean over the steering wheel and watch him complete the path to the sidewalk.

  Four alarms have been shot. Twenty years. Twenty beers. All named for leaders. Find the name I most admire and you’ll find the next one first.

  Leaders. Who would the note’s author most admire? What would he protect? The first victim was a woman, a stripper, restrained and held underground for several days from what the news reports. She likely died from bludgeoning, according to the medical examiner I overheard with Peugeot.

  I tried to look up local Portland leaders related to breweries and didn’t get anywhere. The killer wouldn’t admire law enforcement or politicians.

  Pulling over at the next stop sign, I park at the curb. A quick search on my phone of killers + beer sends me to a concert listing.

  Twenty beers. All named for leaders. I search the phrase leader brewery, but the results return another series of top-ten lists. Four Alarm turns up, along with an announcement that the victim is named Eloise Harris.

  I try again. Serial killer + twenty beers provides a dozen links to irrelevant websites, but the third page down, I find one that fits: The Stakehouse Brewery and Gentlemen’s Club. A strip club serving beers named after homicidal men.

  Tapping on my passenger window tears my attention from my phone. The homeless man has pushed his cart up the street to where I parked. He points to the steel signpost beside me and says, “No parking,” the admonishment audible through the window.

  I nod and shift my car into drive. It’s past time I got moving.

  Eleven

  THEN

  Ranger Mo scans the horizon searching for children and injured animals who need her help. She raises a hand to her eyes to protect from the high-noon sun.

  A little animal—a Lily frog—ribbits across the desert town with a limp! Poor little Lily frog, with no crackers to eat or spaghetti to slurp—

  “Wait a minute. Frogs don’t live in the desert.” Twin stands pouting against the far wall of the bed room. She didn’t want to play a few minutes ago when Sweet Lily and I started.

  “Why not?” I ask. Frogs live in a lot of places on television. Land and water. “Horses live in the desert . . . and . . . and snakes?”

  Sweet Lily gives a fast nod. “Turtles.”

  “And turtles! They live on land and water, right?” I look from Twin to Sweet Lily but only Sweet Lily smiles. Red sauce from our pasta lunch still covers her chin.

  Twin scoffs and throws her hands up as if I’ve just said the dumbest thing. “Yes, they all live in the desert, but not frogs. Frogs need
water. What you’re playing doesn’t make sense. Sweet Lily can’t be a Lily frog in the desert.” She rolls brown eyes like two poops up toward the ceiling.

  Sweet Lily looks like she might cry, lower lip shaking and blues getting all shiny. A fat tear rolls down her cheek.

  “Hey that’s okay. Why don’t we play Lily turtle in the desert? I’ll be Ranger Mo still, and I’ll find you all tired from your long journey from a mountain—”

  “Turtles don’t live in the mountains!”

  “How do you know?”

  Mama Rosemary pops into the doorway. “Girls, what is going on here?” Her hair sits on her head. Like a black hat. A turban. “You’re supposed to be doing arts-and-crafts hour. Where are your bracelets?”

  We hold up the one we did together.

  “You’ve been in here for forty-five minutes and that’s all you’ve made?”

  We nod.

  Mama Rosemary makes a face. “All right, well, let me see you make two more. You each need one. One for each sister.”

  “I forget the song though,” Twin says all whiny. “Why are we doing this? How much longer do we have to?”

  “Less questions, more bracelet braiding. I’m sure your sisters can help you. Right, girls?” Mama Rosemary looks at Sweet Lily and me. So I know she really means me.

  “Right,” I say. I scooch over to Twin and hold the three threads in my hand. Twin takes them and spreads them out then she looks at me not sure what comes next.

  “The baker goes for flour.” Twin moves the left one over the middle one.

  “He’s gone for an hour.” She moves the right one back over the first two.

  “He bakes what he wants.” Twin takes the new right one and puts it in the middle again.

  “A big fat croissant.” Then she takes the left one and puts it back in the middle.

  She holds up her end of the bracelet and it’s exactly like Mama Rosemary taught us from her Girl Pouch days.

  “We made a croissant!” I laugh then stop laughing. “Mama Rosemary, what’s a croissant?”