Page 68 of Everyone Is Lying to You

“Look. I don’t know where she is right now. She’s been in a motel over in Krieger for the past few days. But she’s not answering the phone. It’s been twelve hours since I talked to her, and she never goes that long without talking to the kids. I called the front desk. They said she’s not there anymore.” Katie bites down on her bottom lip. “I’m worried.”

“Where are the other kids? Are they all in the bedroom?” I joke, and nod to the back of the suite.

“Just Alice. She gets ear infections and she wanted a good night’s sleep away from the others. They’re with my husband and his mother. She lives about a hundred miles away.”

“Have they been there the whole time?”

She nods.

“So you knew that Bex was going to murder her husband? You knew and you took her children and hid them?” My voice rises and Katie shushes me again.

“Please don’t wake Alice up. She just fell asleep. She needs rest. The infections keep getting worse. We think she’s losing some of her hearing in her right ear. And if she does, well…who knows what that would mean for her future. She’s an incredibly talented musician.”

“You didn’t answer me.”

“Rebecca didn’t kill him.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she told me she didn’t.”

“Why do you believe her?”

“Because she’s never lied to me.”

“Doesn’t she lie to everyone?”

“Not to me.”

The way she says it, I know she believes it even if it’s not true. I switch gears slightly.

“How long have you been with the family?”

“A long time. Since Willow was born. Rebecca wasn’t well afterward. Depression and anxiety. There were days she couldn’t get out of bed at all. The birth was hard. She tore, badly. Lost a ton of blood. At least that’s what she told me later. Gray didn’t want to bring anyone in the house to help with Alice and the baby, but he didn’t have a choice. Someone had to watch over them while Rebecca healed and I was dating JC at the time—he’s the ranch foreman, Juan Carlos. He suggested to Gray that I just hang out with Alice. That’s how he put it and it seemed acceptable. I wasn’t going to be a nanny exactly. I was just a body hanging out with the children. Gray allowed it. I loved her from the very beginning.”

“Bex?” The whiskey is getting to me. But Katie offers up a feeble laugh.

“Alice. Rebecca took longer. But we eventually got there. We’ve been through a lot together. Both of us.”

I wait for her to continue, but she stays quiet. How could Bex hide this beautiful woman and all the care and love she gave her children from her audience of millions? Why didn’t she just reveal she had help? Would anyone attack her for that? Why flatten Katie’s work and her labor? Why pretend she doesn’t exist? I’malmost bold enough to ask it when Katie picks up the landline and punches in some numbers.

“It’s going straight to voicemail. It’s off.” I know she’s talking about Rebecca’s phone.

“I’ve been calling her for days and no answer,” I say.

“She isn’t using that phone. She has a prepaid one. I was texting with her right before we left for the dinner.”

“When did you take the kids?”

She hesitates before answering.

“They’ve been at Juan’s mom’s house since two days before the conference. But it isn’t what you think. She had a plan to get away from him, and Gray wasn’t going to like it. She wanted the kids to be far away from him and the house when she made her announcement. And he agreed because he couldn’t take care of them on his own while she was gone and I made up something about how I couldn’t sleep over. I knew what Rebecca had planned for this conference. I know all about you, Lizzie. I know all about your past with Rebecca. So I’m gonna trust you here because I also know we’re working for the same things. We want Rebecca to be safe. We want those kids to be safe. She entrusted the kids to us because she was about to announce her big deal and she knew Gray was going to lose it. That’s the only reason. But then the night before she was set to make the announcement…Well, you know what happened.”

“I don’t know what happened,” I snap.

“That’s not what I meant. Look, I don’t know what happened either. Something went very wrong that night. I just don’t know what it was. But I trust Rebecca. Maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I’m being naïve and maybe I’m just hoping she didn’t do it because I don’t want those kids to have a dead father and a psychopathmother, but I’ve practically lived in that house for a decade. I’ve watched Gray and Rebecca. He’s terrible. It’s gotten so much worse the bigger and more successful she’s gotten.”

“How long has he been hitting her?” I know Katie is taken aback by the bluntness of the question and that’s what I want, to catch her off guard. But she recovers quickly.

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