Page 164 of This is Why We Lied

“Don’t,” Will told him. “Sit down on the bed.”

Jon sat on the corner of the mattress, his shoes flat to the carpet in case he got a chance to run. He was gripping the plastic bag like his life depended on it. Which was true, because it did.

Dave wasn’t Cecil’s accomplice.

Jon was.

Sara had almost caught him right after the murder. Jon was carrying a backpack, ready to make his way down the mountain. He was also hidden in darkness. Sara had only been guessing when she’d called Jon’s name. She’d assumed he was throwing up because he’d been drinking. She had no way of knowing that he’d just murdered his mother.

That the Jackal had made the realization before Will wasn’t surprising. That he had tried to lay down his own life for his son was the only good thing the man had ever done.

Will peeled the Ziploc bag from Jon’s grip. He placed it on the table and sat down in the chair. He said, “Tell me what happened.”

Jon’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

“Sara told me she was looking right at you when your mother screamed for help,” Will said. “Mercy didn’t die immediately. She passed out. She woke up. She must’ve been in agony, disoriented, afraid. That’s why she cried for help. That’s why she screamed please.”

Jon kept his silence, but he started picking at the cuticle on his thumb. Will watched the kid’s eyes tracking back and forth as he desperately tried to think his way out of this.

Will asked, “What did you do to your mother?”

Blood welled around Jon’s cuticle.

“Sara told me that you were carrying a dark-colored backpack,” Will said. “What was in there? Your bloodstained clothes? The knife handle? The money from the safe?”

Jon pressed into the nail, squeezing out more blood.

“After you heard Mercy scream for help, you ran inside the house.” Will paused. “What made you go inside, Jon? Was someone waiting for you?”

Jon shook his head, but Will knew Cecil’s bedroom was on the ground floor.

“Your hair was wet when I saw you. Who told you to take a shower? Who told you to change your clothes?”

Jon smeared the blood down his thumb, across the back of his hand. He finally broke his silence. “She kept going back to him.”

Will let him speak.

“Dave was all she ever cared about,” Jon said. “I begged her to leave him. For it just to be us. But she always went back to him. I didn’t—I didn’t have anybody.”

Will listened to his tone as much as his words. Jon sounded helpless. Will knew the particular anguish of being a child at the mercy of an unreliable adult’s whims.

“No matter what Dave did,” Jon continued. “Beat her, choke her, kick her—she would always take him back. Every time, she always chose him over me.”

Will leaned up in the chair. “I know it’s hard for you to understand now, but Mercy’s relationship with Dave had nothing to do with you. Abuse is complicated. No matter what happened, she loved you with every piece of her heart.”

Jon shook his head. “I was an albatross around her neck.”

Will knew that Jon hadn’t come up with that description on his own. “Who told you that?”

“Everybody, all my life.” Jon looked up at him, defiant. “You guys said it yourself. Mercy was screwing guests, screwing Alejandro, getting pregnant again. Go on and talk to people in town. They’ll tell you the exact same thing. Mercy was a bad person. She murdered a girl. She was a prostitute. Drinking and drugging. Letting somebody else raise her kid. Letting her ex-husband knock the shit out of her. She was nothing but a stupid whore.”

Will said, “It makes it easier to call her those names, doesn’t it?”

“Makes what easier?”

“The fact that you stabbed her so many times.”

Jon didn’t deny it, but he didn’t look away, either.

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