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Chapter Fifty-Two

ERIKA

A fter everything that happened yesterday, I couldn’t summon up the energy to go visit my father. I spent half the night tossing and turning, but then around two in the morning when I kicked him awake, Jason sleepily suggested I take another Xanax. I have rules about how much I can take in one day, and I’m over my limit, but I didn’t want to spend the entire night awake. So I took one, and it did the trick.

I don’t even attempt to make breakfast for the family. When I get into the kitchen, Liam is sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal. But he’s not eating. He’s just sifting it around with a spoon.

“Do you want frozen waffles?” I ask him.

“No.”

“You’ve hardly eaten anything in the last few days.”

“I’m not hungry. ”

“You’ve got to eat. You’ll be sick if you don’t.”

Liam lifts his brown eyes with those long eyelashes that make his sister jealous. “What do you care? You think I’m a murderer.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. What am I supposed to say to that? He’s right. Ever since I found Olivia’s address in our car GPS, there hasn’t been one moment when I didn’t think Liam was guilty.

“I still love you,” is all I can say.

Liam snorts. “Why?”

“Because you’re my son.”

His eyes drop and he crumples up a napkin in his fist. I don’t expect him to understand. That was one thing Dr. Hebert told me repeatedly. Liam is not capable of love. He tells me he loves me, but he’s only saying it because he knows it’s expected of him. And he knows it makes me happy. And it’s in his best interest to make me happy.

I wonder if my father ever loved me.

I’ve got to see him. Somehow I feel like reconnecting with him will be the answer to everything.

I leave Liam in the kitchen, and I head upstairs to shower. Jason is coming out of the bathroom, his hair damp from the shower, a towel wrapped around his waist. After all the running he’s done, he looks so fit. Still very sexy, maybe even more than he was when he was younger. Under different circumstances, I might have been tempted to initiate some morning fun. But under these circumstances, it seems inconceivable.

“Hey,” I say.

He rubs his eyes. He looks tired, and I feel bad for having kept him awake half the night with my restless sleep. “Hey.”

“I was wondering if you could stick around the house with Liam. I… I need to go out.”

“Where?”

“I need to take care of some things at the newspaper.” The lie rolls off my tongue easily. I never told Jason that Brian fired me. “It shouldn’t take too long.”

“Okay.” Jason slips a shirt over his head. “Take your time. I’ll take care of things here.”

He accepts my lie so easily, I feel guilty. Jason is so trusting. He believes me, and he believes Liam. Why am I the cynical one?

I go past him into the bathroom to use the shower. Before I jump in, I stare at myself in the mirror. A week ago, I would have said that I had aged gracefully, but now I look ten years older than my age. These have been the worst few days of my life. When Liam got kicked out of kindergarten, it felt like the worst tragedy ever. What I wouldn’t give to go back to that time.

I squint in the mirror at my brown eyes, which now have purple circles underneath. They are the same brown eyes that Liam has. I say that Liam looks like my father, but really, he looks like me. I look like my father.

Sometimes I wonder what else the three of us have in common.

What am I capable of?