Lies We Bury

by Elle Marr

  Current city: Portland, Oregon.

  She’s here.

  My fingers fly across my keyboard, and I hope against hope that the sushi restaurant doesn’t notice me click-clacking away for free at their back entrance and cut me off. Not now.

  I search Serena Delle again, this time with the phrase Portland, Oregon. The third result shows an address tied to her name. Recalling the TriMet bus pass that Pauline gave me the day I took the marketing department’s headshots, I dig through my wallet and find it shoved behind my expired Costco card. According to the TriMet website, the nearest light-rail station is two blocks over. With that as my starting point, I map the fastest route to Serena.

  Thirty minutes pass on a rail trolley mostly empty of people, none of them interested in me. A police car speeds by when we pause at an intersection, but I slink farther down the fabric-lined seat. The space between houses lengthens, and yards become larger, now unfenced. A railroad bell rings somewhere nearby. I exit at one of the stations, then follow the map on my phone west on a narrow street with deep ditches flanking each side. At the second-to-last house on the left, the map displays a message, You have arrived at your destination.

  A pale one-story home spreads across the lot, ranch house–style. Naked saplings with only a handful of buds line the perimeter of the front yard, while empty flowerpots frame a gravel walkway, last summer’s contents shriveled and brown. On a metal mailbox atop a wooden post, reflective letters spell out the name Delle.

  Adrenaline gushes through me. With each step closer to the rusted cross on the front door, I can feel my heart drumming against my ribs.

  I hesitate at the threshold. If Serena Delle really has followed me to Portland and has been wreaking havoc in my life the last week, how did she do it so quickly? Or did she move before I did? She pursued me from Arch, where we went to high school together, two hours west to the college town where I worked odd jobs and began my photography business. I thought after the restraining order was filed that she might have moved back to Arch or stayed where she was and succeeded in building her own life. Judging from the way she sent that letter to the Tru Lives reporter, she’s been keeping tabs on me for longer than I was aware.

  If she is behind the murders—with Shia as her partner?—I’d be stupid to come here alone and without a weapon. I withdraw my pepper spray from my messenger bag. The last time I saw Serena, she was wearing a high-waisted flowy dress and her heavy cheeks were flushed. She showed up at my job, uninvited, and begged me for five minutes outside, where she asked that I reconsider our friendship, swore that she’d misinterpreted me in high school and I was the only friend she had. We had been friends—in middle school. I remember bonding over our mutual dislike of Aaron Carter songs and her father’s tendency to hit her mother. As the mayor of Arch, Zeke Delle was untouchable; it was comforting for Serena to meet someone like me, who’d also experienced trauma.

  But as I privately battled the depression that reared during adolescence, that came in waves with each photograph I viewed of Rosemary as a twenty-year-old, of Chet as a predatory thirty-five-year-old, and spiraled into days of self-harm, I couldn’t handle anyone else’s emotional needs. I could barely see straight some days, my vision so blurred with tears and the throbbing heartbeat of wounded skin. I never knew if Serena or anyone else at school recognized the self-destructive behavior. Whether, in leaving dead animals for me to find, she thought she was helping me exorcise some genetic compulsion or if she’d simply developed an affinity for death herself.

  All I know is that one day during high school, a dead squirrel showed up beside my car. The next month, there was another. And another. Then two more. Serena and I hadn’t spoken in a few years at that point, and I was horrified when I found her depositing the final corpse at my tire. Rather than ask her why, I snatched the body from the ground and threw it at her, splattering her light-blonde hair with squirrel guts and blood. We were both suspended from school for several days.

  So why now? Did she and Shia meet somehow, maybe in one of those dark-web forums speculating about my family? When did she graduate from killing small animals to murdering people?

  I step forward onto a threadbare welcome mat and lift my fist to the screen door. A cardboard sign beside the doorbell says BROKEN, while another one written on faded paper beneath says NO SOLICITORS.

  I knock twice. I’m not here for anything but a confession.

  Footsteps approach from the other side, and the fresh scab on my inner elbow feels like it might spontaneously combust into new embers. I plant my feet to be ready for whatever happens next.

  The dead bolt unlocks, and I feel a flash of fear that Shia will be the one to answer, then yank me inside and hold me until the police arrive. The inner door cracks open. A woman stares back at me, full of suspicion from behind the screen.

  “Can I help you?” she says. The door opens wider, another six inches, and I meet an older version of Serena Delle. Ash-blonde hair hangs in wisps around a full, lined face, and the same pug nose wrinkles at the sight of me. However, instead of Serena’s ghostly blue eyes, this woman examines me with brown eyes. She hunches forward, almost in a bow, in a more exaggerated way than Serena used to shuffle about our high school hallways. She licks thin lips, the kind that might close around a cigarette a dozen times a day.

  “Miss? Can I help you?”

  No movement comes from behind this woman, and I don’t hear a back door slam or feet taking off through the backyard. “I’m . . . I’m looking for Serena. Is she here?”

  The woman’s face falls. The door opens all the way, although the screen door remains shut. “Were you a friend of hers?”

  “What do you mean . . . ‘were’?”

  “Serena died. Three years ago. She killed herself.” The woman bites down on her lip. She stares at the ground, then flicks sharp eyes to mine. “Did you know her?”

  My plans out the window, I stammer the truth. “I . . . yes. I did. Back in Arch. I wanted to say hello.”

  If Serena is dead, and by suicide no less, who sent the Tru Lives reporter to talk to me? Who is Shia working with? What the hell is going on?

  The woman’s face softens. A pink birthmark is visible on her clavicle, similar to the starfish shape that was on Serena’s hand. “What’s your name, honey?”

  “Claire. Claire Lou,” I add, not missing a beat.

  “Well, Claire,” she says, pursing her lips. “You’ve arrived just a few years too late. Serena could have used a friend out here. Arch wasn’t very kind to her growing up, but then you probably know that, having been classmates. I don’t know, it’s all so hard to tell as a parent . . .” Her voice trails off as a delivery truck rumbles down the street. “I was hoping Serena would get a fresh start in Eugene when she went to U of O. But that seemed to have made things worse.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. In high school, Serena kept to herself as far as I knew. But I did learn that Serena had some . . . eccentricities. She left dead animals for a girl, Marissa Mo. Did Serena have some kind of fascination with that family?”

  Hearing Serena’s mother dismiss the ways her daughter made my life so challenging makes me push for the answers I can never get from Serena now. Why the squirrels? Why the stalking?

  The woman glares at me. She doesn’t look as certain that I am a kindred spirit, a friend to her beloved, lost child. “Serena had her faults, and you’re right, her quirks. There was a lot of pressure on her to be this political prop for her father. But she was a good person. I . . . I never learned what that business was between her and Marissa. I moved up here after her father and I divorced; then she followed about four years ago.”

  She wipes an eye with a chipped pink nail. “I wish she were here to see you, Claire. Did you want to come inside? I have some juice I could open up. Or a wine cooler.”

  “That’s very kind. Thank you. But I should get going. I’m sorry for your loss,” I add genuinely.

  When I reach the street, I turn back to find
Serena’s mother still watching me. She lifts a hand in goodbye, frozen in the doorway. Once I’m past the sight line of her house, I remove my camera, then take a photo of the trees, the home’s rooftop just visible and missing several shingles.

  I walk quickly to the light-rail station, hoping a train arrives the moment I do, listening for vengeful footsteps behind me. Now, instead of imagining Serena’s heavy gait, my ears strain for the sound of a stranger racing toward me, unhindered, with no intention of stopping.

  Twenty-Nine

  The second light-rail pulls away from the station, and I wait for the air to clear before inhaling a breath. Without an obvious direction to travel in, I take refuge on a nearby bench. Removed from the stark knowledge that Serena killed herself, and that I may have precipitated her sense of loneliness, the knots in my stomach release, if only by a small margin.

  My phone pings. Another news alert from the Portland Post. I click on the link, and a video pops up, showing Chet exiting Karin’s pink convertible. A box of doughnuts is visible in the back seat. Did they stop by Jenessa’s work? Voices shout at Chet, asking him what he is doing there and what he is going to do now that he’s on parole.

  He turns and faces the camera. His hair is combed and gelled, unlike when I saw him a few days prior, and he appears rested, fresh faced. Fooling a board of prison officials into believing you’ve learned from your abusive ways will do that.

  “I’m simply happy being free for the first time in twenty years,” he says with a modest shrug.

  I’m just a regular person. Right.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to say hi to someone very special.” He turns and walks into the lobby of an apartment building. In the corner, visible through the glass wall and beside a faded chair, a lily of the valley potted flower adds a splash of white and green to the brick wall.

  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.

  A train approaches with the chime of a bell. Using the framed map of the waiting area, I find the most direct route to my next stop, knowing the only way forward is to confront Nora. Pose her these questions directly and—if needed—ensure she goes to prison for all the pain she’s caused.

  Across the street from a tucked-away road, a trio of boutique shops advertises their wares. Sweat moistens the skin beneath my arms and under my breasts, but the four-block walk in light rain was otherwise subdued. Two unknown numbers called me. Several cars passed me on the side streets I took. No one stopped to arrest me.

  The storefronts have changed over time, but Nora’s flower shop has always occupied
the middle of the three. An OPEN sign hangs in the glass door, while Mrs. Hernandez, the longtime manager who does everything short of owning the place, fixes a bouquet on the counter. Although the area has become more industrial and the foliage thinner, I had to ask directions to this main road only once.

  The small home Nora bought with her portion of the settlement sits opposite the shops. White paint on the cottage-style house contrasts the bright blue of the front door. I duck beneath the awning of a cannabis shop and withdraw my camera from my bag. Using my zoom, I search the windowpanes for signs of movement.

  The steady flow of traffic breaks, and I jog across the street. At the steps of the front porch, I turn and take a poplar-lined sidewalk to the row of houses behind. Nora’s red roof is visible despite a tree with thick branches in a bordering yard, and I sneak up the alleyway, keeping close to the fence. A security camera attached above the next house’s gutter is angled toward the front driveway, but I duck down and keep going.

  A double layer of tall cedar fencing marks Nora’s yard. I hop over it, bracing myself against the flat top. I land between hydrangea bushes, then pause to catch my breath. Listen. Figure out what the hell I do next.

  Approaching from the front seemed like an idiot move, but I’m not sure what I planned, sneaking in the back. My fists clench the closer I slink, from flower bed to flower bed. Cramps form in my feet, gripping the soles of my sneakers as I try not to slip on the wet grass. I take the steps up to the back porch, exhaling when the new wooden boards don’t creak under my weight.

  I press on the handle of the screen door, and it gives without so much as a whine. My mouth waters from dehydration and the tension that flexes every muscle in my body. I wipe my face, try to gather my thoughts.

  Someone moves from where I remember the bedrooms are to the right. A bird caws in the neighborhood, louder in its staccato cadence than the low hum of street traffic. No knickknacks or dirty dishes line the kitchen counters, and the circular breakfast table beneath the window is set for two. Tile shines beneath me, the scent of bleach lingering in the air; even the grout has been scrubbed white. Harassment and murder must bring out Nora’s homemaking skills.