Page 111 of It's One of Us

He runs a hand through his hair, forcing it back from his face. It’s gotten longer in the past few weeks, curling at the ends. She has an absurd urge to run her hand along the same path.

“Well, in a way, yeah. The reporter, Erica Pearl? She came to find me just before I left. She said she knew what Park did in St. Louis.”

“I thought you said he didn’t do anything.”

“I thought he hadn’t. But this reporter, she has a different story. She actually grew up in our old neighborhood. Her mom was in our class. I remember her, Enola Johnson, now Pearl. She was a year behind us. She told her daughter she saw Park alone, days after Annie went missing, near a drainage pipe that led to our baseball field. The same place they just dug out the poor girl’s body. She told the police, but no one believed her. And she saw him again, a few weeks ago. Standing in the same spot. And she swears he was there a few months ago, too.”

“I’m confused. What are you saying? Park was in St. Louis? No way. I would have known.”

“Would you have? You work away from the house. St Louis isn’t too far of a drive, and an even quicker flight.”

Olivia thinks for a moment. “I don’t think he’s flown anywhere. He doesn’t like to fly, it freaks him out. We have to get him loads of Xanax. So no, he didn’t fly.”

“But he could have driven.”

“Yes. But...”

He leans back in his chair, eyes sharp. “What?”

“I’m just trying to think. He did have to go to Jackson, Mississippi, for book research. Right after I got pregnant the last time. Research trips, they’re part of his job. He was going to talk to some historian down there about something, I don’t know. I only remember this particular trip because I was barfing all morning and he offered to cancel. I told him to go.”

“The timing fits. He didn’t go to Jackson. He went to St. Louis.”

“You’re just speculating. Besides, what are you saying, Perry?”

He pushes his plate aside. “First Annie Cottrell, and then Melanie Rich.”

“You think Park killed them?”

“All I know is I talked to Erica’s mother for a long time. She’s unshakeable. She knows what she saw. And then there are the flowers.”

“Flowers?”

“Even though they never found Annie, her parents have a grave for her, with a headstone, at the graveyard of the church they belong to. It has her name on it, Ann Elizabeth Cottrell, her birth date, and the date she went missing. They wanted a spot to visit, a place to be able to have some sort of closure. There were flowers left on her grave the same day Enola swears she saw Park. But here’s the kicker. Someone’s been putting flowers on Melanie Rich’s grave, too. Every year, on the anniversary of the day she went missing.”

Her heart thumps, but she shakes her head. “Perry, I’m not following.”

“Park is sending flowers to the women he killed. He’s assuaging his guilt. Or shoving it in their faces, I don’t know.”

“Perry—”

“Don’t you see? He did it. We need to confront him. We need to get him to admit what he’s done.”

She sighs, breaks a piece of croissant into crumbs. “Do we, Perry? What good will it do? They will still be dead, and Park will have to revisit the wound that has ruined him. And then what? We get him to admit what he’s done and the reporter or someone finds out and calls the police? He’s arrested, goes to jail?”

“Justice is served.”

“He’s your brother.”

“He’s your husband. You want him to get away with murder?”

She dumps the rest of the coffee in the sink, crosses her arms, careful not to jolt the mending collarbone. “No. Of course not. But I don’t see what we have to gain by diving into all of this. Trust me, I’m furious with him. I hate him, in so many ways, for the things he’s done, and the things he hasn’t done. But murder? This is Park we’re talking about. He might be a liar, but he isn’t a killer. He didn’t kill Annie Cottrell, and he didn’t kill Melanie Rich. He just doesn’t have it in him.”

Perry stares out to the water. Small whitecaps are breaking. The wind is picking up.

“I think this has to happen, Olivia. At the very least, we have to talk to him.”

“Even you said you were with him when Annie Cottrell went missing. Unless you were lying, covering for him?”