Page 29 of Everyone Is Lying to You

He pauses, as if debating whether to tell me.

“We don’t know,” he finally admits. “They’re gone too.” This sharing of information feels strategic. He will give me something and I’m expected to give him something in return. It’s a classic strategy, one I’ve used as a reporter. “We’re worried about them.”

I am too. The worry scratches at my brain and I can’t stop thinking about Bex’s face as she told me about Alice and how talented she was at the piano. I’d never seen her so flush with pride. Then I remember what she said next, that it was Gray who wouldn’t allow Alice to go away to a special music school.

There’s something else about Bex’s face in the memory that snags in my mind. The heavy makeup under the eye, the bruise she was trying to hide. She had flat out admitted that Gray was controlling, and I know what I saw. I should mention this to the police. Both of those things could be a motive.

For the first time since seeing those pictures of Grayson Sommers after he bled out in his barn, I can imagine my old friend possibly doing it, but maybe she didn’t have a choice.

Jim Walsh watches me intently as I shudder. He knows I have something to tell him and he’s going to wait me out with stony silence. I stare at my hands.Tell him,I think.Give him anything at all that might lead them to those children.

“There is one more thing I should tell you,” I say to the detective.

***

I’m intensely unhinged the entire drive back to the hotel. My heart batters against my ribs like a moth trying to escape through a window. I told the police the truth. I did the right thing. I didn’t flat out say I thought Bex killed her husband. I don’t know if she did.

I know nothing.

All I admitted was that I knew there was tension in their marriage, that maybe he had hurt her because of that tension. Jim Walsh gobbled these details down like a hungry puppy, didn’t even hide his excitement at my admission. He let me go after that and when service returned to my phone in the parking lot it flooded with notifications.

I have thousands more Instagram followers. Every person who followed me before last night was someone I had interacted with in real life. But these new people are all strangers. They don’t know me, only my connection to Bex, and they want that connection by proxy. They are desperate for it.

The comments on my latest post of the nachos from last night are intense.

Where is Rebecca?

Have you seen her?

Who are you?

Peter has left three voicemails and sent a half dozen texts. There’s no way he could know what happened out here yet. Butwhen I listen to them, I learn that Grayson’s murder has somehow made the national news already. I do a quick Google search. It even madeThe Washington Post,which described Grayson as a congressional hopeful about to launch an exploratory committee here. In the same article Bex is described as a stay-at-home mom and lifestyle influencer. No mention of her as the breadwinner of that family, the CEO of a company. The headline inPeoplemagazine reads, “Congressional Hopeful Brutally Murdered, Influencer Wife on the Lam.” The news cycle works fast, and it hates women.

I shouldn’t read the comments on this story. You never read the comments. No one is meaner or more viscerally cutting than an anonymous troll on the Internet, but I do it anyway.

I’m not surprised at all. She seemed like a crazy bitch ready to crack.

Where are you BAREFOOTMAMA????

We all have your back

Girl, Jesus is the only man you can truly trust!

If you need a place to hide out you can stay with me

Rebecca Sommers is a liar and a fraud and a whore. Now everyone will know the truth.

Her husband seemed so wonderful. I am horrified. He was exactly what I wanted in my future man. RIP GRAYSON

I didn’t think someone with that much air between her ears would be capable of pulling something like this off. I almost respect her more.

So much talk of her being crazy and unhinged, a psycho, a whore. All from people who likely followed her every move and post with bated breath until about eight hours ago. All from women who probably bought her expensive baby carrier and matching apron sets. Maybe the same people who posted all of the sycophantic comments on her last reel saying how much they loved her life and wanted to know her toenail color.

It all makes me hate humanity.

It’s twilight and the sky is that pretty swirl of colors I saw last night from my balcony while I was sitting with Bex. My insides are as mixed up as the painting in the sky. I’m ashamed for telling the police such personal things about Bex and confused about my strange role in all this. If she did do it, if she murdered her husband, then was I brought out here as an alibi?

I pull over and answer the phone when Peter calls again.

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