When Parker faces me again, it takes me a moment to realize what I’m hearing: He doesn’t believe Laura Bishop.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Parker says, “It’s just a matter of time before the truth comes out about what she did up there at the yurt. Just need to piece it all together. Then she’s going to go right back inside.”
He shakes his head some more, as if he’s sorry. “It’s a shame, you know, what these institutions do to people; they don’t know how to function on the outside.”
I swallow dryly. I try to nod. I try to look normal.
Parker says, “Maybe when I retire, I’ll become a penologist. Try to get some reform going. Because right now, we’re just putting people back on the street who . . . Well, I’m bending your ear here.” He pats my leg beneath the sheet. “Dr. Lindman, I just thought you should be aware. This woman plans to sue you.”
He shakes his head one last time. “What a world. People coming out of prison and getting into lawsuits. Going after law-abiding citizens. But listen, we’ve got her under wraps; she’s not going anywhere. You’re safe. And we’ll keep you posted. All right?”
I can only stare at him dumbly.
Parker then drifts toward the door. Reynolds opens it and leaves without looking back. Parker stops and turns back with some final words. “Oh, and we’re looking hard for your husband, ma’am. I wanted to ask you — does he have any woodsman skills? Survival skills? Knowing that might help us in our search. Lot of acres out there, lot of wild forest.”
Paul? Survival skills? Maybe in some twisted way, yes. But not as a wilderness survivalist.
Barely able to form the words, I say to Parker, “No, I don’t think so.”
He gives the wall a rap with his knuckles; a superstitious gesture, perhaps. “All right, well. Rest up, Dr. Lindman. Take care.”
The door closes, and I’m alone again in the quiet.
Just me, and my thoughts.
Just me, and the abyss.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
They don’t find Paul.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
It’s mid-September. The first signs of autumn nibble the edges of summer. A cool breeze, a smattering of red and orange in the trees. Here and there: purple.
I have not returned to Bronxville but have stayed holed up in the lake house. I’m waiting for my son to wake up. I’m waiting for the endless parade of cops and reporters to come to an end. I feel like it’s close.
No, they never found Paul. They think he died in the forest. And they still don’t believe Laura Bishop, even though she’s following through with her threat and her lawyer just filed papers in court yesterday. She’s going to sue me. Psychological damages, years lost in prison, plus all the unrecoverable grief of missing her son’s childhood, and the stigma of being a felon. A murderer.
You’d think she’d seek a new trial. An exoneration.
My lawyer explained why not. “You’ve got to consider what that entails. There’s a higher bar for criminal cases than for civil suits. There’s no new physical evidence, for one thing. She’d have to have her son up there to recant. And who’s the one who brought the truth out of him? You are — the exact same therapist she’s claiming was criminally corrupt in your therapy fifteen years ago. And who knows if Michael would be even willing to testify, anyway? I have my doubts. You said he’s still with your daughter?”
“Yes,” I say, and my gaze drifts to the lake. They’re not down there, of course. I’ve seen neither my daughter nor her fiancé for almost a month. I think Joni is trying to sort it all out. Now that the charade is over, and her part in this has helped Michael unveil the truth, she’s examining how she feels about me. Which she should.
And how do I feel about me?
Disgusted. Horrified.
“Michael and Joni are still together,” I say to my lawyer. His name is John Blakely.
“Well,” Blakely says, “from what I’m hearing, Michael is not on Laura’s side.”
“Her side?”
“I know, it’s a . . . touchy situation, Emily, and I don’t mean to . . . Look, at this point, there are sides. Once there’s a court case, it’s binary. Us versus them. So, I’m asking you — do you think he would testify? To say he was . . .”
“Coerced by me? Manipulated? Would he say that a therapist, a professional, a woman who was supposed to be there to protect him, to help him, instead manipulated his mind in order to hide what her husband did?”
My lawyer doesn’t respond. I’ve answered his question with a question. He’s talking about sides, because people have made up their minds. It’s right there on social media. People who believe Michael Rand and Laura Bishop are con artists who took advantage of a family, and people who think Michael is a victim. That Paul and I are the bad guys. But to what extent they think Paul is a murderer and I covered for him greatly varies.
What do I care, anyway? I know what I did. And I know what Paul did, though I was, for a long time, repressing the very thought of it. I was in denial at the same time I was trying to work the situation, cover myself. To steer Michael toward thinking it was the cops who coerced him. Steer him toward seeing Doug Wiseman as the killer.
All these years later, and I was still manipulating him.
I am a horrible, subhuman person.
“Well?” Blakely asks. “How much exposure do you have here? What about your case notes? Things like that?”
My case notes . . .
My case notes constitute a clever covering of my tracks. A subtle throwing of shade on the New York State Police. And they show certain truths: it was true Tom heard his parents arguing that night. And it was true that the police urged Tom to consider the possibility of his mother’s guilt. But these were facts I exploited. Facts that formed a hole in Laura Bishop’s innocence, one I kept widening until it gaped, until it was wide enough to push through the reality I chose.
I chose to psychologically manipulate a young boy into believing his original assessment — seeing someone outside, hearing two men fighting — was just his way to protect his mother. That, in reality, he saw her do it. I took that emptiness he’d seen in her eyes and drew it out and enveloped him with it.
It wasn’t hard. He was eight.
No, I don’t regret the fifteen years that Laura Bishop spent in prison as an innocent woman, because I don’t consider her innocent. She was an adulteress. A would-be homewrecker. Because of her, I spent that same decade and a half in my own prison: the horrible lasting impression of what I did to her son in order to preserve my marriage, my family. To keep my husband from going to jail, I pushed Tom toward a truth favorable to me. Again, it wasn’t hard.