46. Laura

To those I've lied to,

My job as a mother was to protect my children... but I think I took it too far. My husband and I both did. We wanted the world for our kids, and we were willing to destroy it, just so they could have it. I've lived with this for over twenty years, and I know I'll die with it too, but I won't take it to my next life. In death, I want to be free of it. This is the truth of what happened to Emma Harper, Christie Roberts, Charles Gallagher, and my husband, Brian Thomas. This is the truth of what we did.

On the evening of June 15, 1999, my husband, Brian, told me Emma Harper was dead, and we needed to get rid of her body. He didn't tell me why. He didn't tell me what happened. He just told me it needed to be done. Somehow, I went along with it. It's strange how quickly we can do the things we thought we never would. It only takes a second to make the wrong decision. After we buried her, I knew it wouldn't be the end of it, but I thought the hardest part was behind us. It wasn't. Seeing Emma's parents, Susan and Eddie, go through the grief of not knowing where their child was, that was far worse.

In order to know what happened to Emma, we have to skip ahead to Charles. Brian called in the anonymous tip. I was overcome with guilt that he was suffering because of us, so I planted Emma's bicycle. Despite Charles's acquittal, Eddie was convinced he had something to do with Emma's disappearance. He killed Charles in a fit of drunken rage after leaving the Boar's Nest on December 27, 1999. The night Charles was murdered, I learned the truth of Christie Roberts's disappearance and what happened in Emma Harper's final moments. Eddie couldn't let it go. So, he took matters into his own hands. He beat Charles to death in the Allen's Grove park. Brian cleaned up the mess and made sure Eddie wouldn't go down for it. How could he not? It was our fault that Charles was dead and that Eddie was now a murderer. Grief makes you do things you normally wouldn't do, the kind of things that splinter your soul.

What happened to Emma in her final moments? You'd have to ask my son, Michael, about that, but I know he would lie to you, just like he did to Brian. Michael told Brian it was an accident. That he and Emma were playing down by the creek, just being kids. That she'd fallen from the bridge when he startled her. He told us he panicked and didn't know what to do, so he dragged and hid her body under the bridge, covering her with branches and long grass. Then he went back up to the house and showered like nothing had happened.

I remember making dinner that night. I prepared pork chops, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob. Brian and I even split a bottle of sauvignon blanc to celebrate how well Groovin' in the Grove had gone. He and I clinked our glasses, sipped on the crisp zesty wine, and took our seats at opposite ends of the table, completely smitten with one another. Michael sat to my right. Beth and Nicole sat to my left. I smiled at each of them, and I remember asking myself how I got so lucky. I really took in the moment, not realizing I'd never have one like it again. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. We were just a happy family enjoying a home-cooked meal together. After learning the truth, that's what disturbed me most of all—that nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

It wasn't until much later that evening, after we had been informed Emma was missing and after we'd spent the night looking for her, that Michael finally confessed to Brian what had happened. I think Brian knew Michael wasn't being honest or—at the very least, deep down in his gut—he knew. That little pang of doubt is why Brian was convinced he couldn't call the police.

Brian didn't learn the truth of what had actually happened to Emma until Christie Roberts knocked on our door a couple months later. She showed Brian a roll of developed film, tucked in an envelope from the Kmart photo department. Inside was a stack of 4x6 photos. Brian said if you viewed them in quick succession, it looked like one of those old flip-books, the images animating a dark truth and uncovering the lie our son had told. She hadn't fallen on her own. Michael had shoved her right off the bridge. We don't know if Michael meant to push her so hard. You can't tell from a picture. But he did splash water onto the blood that poured from her skull, making sure it seeped into the dirt. Then he dragged her body under the bridge, covering her with vegetation. He never even checked for a pulse or to see if she was breathing. Fifty photos captured all of it.

Christie didn't say anything, didn't tell anyone what she had seen. I don't know why. Maybe she was scared, or maybe it was because she had something else in mind. She didn't take the photos to the police. She took them to Brian and made him an offer. She said he could have them if he paid her five thousand dollars and helped her get out of town. For her, her freedom was more important than the truth. It took Brian a while to scrounge up the money, because we didn't have much as it was. He sold most of his guns, picked up extra shifts at work, emptied out a chunk of his 401(k). He was smart about it because I didn't even notice. Then he paid her off, helped her get a fake ID, and put her on a train heading south from Harvard, Illinois. I do remember Brian being tired and run-down. I figured the guilt was eating him away too, but then Christie went missing, and I knew he had something to do with it. I thought she was dead, just like Emma, but last I checked, she was living in the South under the new name Brian helped her obtain. She's married with two kids, experiencing a life she never would have if Michael hadn't taken Emma's. Christie is the only one that got a happy ending out of all of this. They say it's the truth that will set you free, but they never specify whether telling the truth or knowing the truth will give you your freedom.

It's obvious we were never the same again after the summer of 1999. It changed our perspective on everything. We no longer tried to protect our children from the world. Instead, we tried to protect the world from Michael. Since the decision was made to hide what he had done, we knew it was on us to make sure he never did it again. We wanted to fix him, rehabilitate him without the law involved. After all, he was just a little boy, and he was our little boy. I had read about children who did very bad things but grew up to be perfectly normal adults. Brian and I wholeheartedly believed Michael could be one of them. So, we kept him busy, enrolled him in coding classes, bought him a computer, and sent him to summer camps, all in an effort to direct his energy toward something else. Brian kept a close eye on him at all times, monitoring everything he did. We smothered him with love and attention, most likely neglecting our daughters in the process. But we had to. We needed to make sure what he did to Emma was a one-off. We needed to protect our other two children. It was our responsibility because we'd covered it up. When Michael made good grades, graduated high school, and was accepted into a great college on a full-ride scholarship, we thought we had done the right thing.

But then he showed up at our doorstep in 2015 completely grief-stricken. He had driven thirty-one hours straight. He said his girlfriend had died in a freak accident and that he needed his parents. He said he took time off from work to process the loss, and that he wanted to grieve at home with us. We hugged him while he cried and fell apart in our arms. I remember exchanging a quick look with Brian while we held our broken boy, and I saw it in his eyes. Regret. Remorse. Shame. Defeat. He believed Michael had killed again. He believed we had failed as parents.

The next day, the two of them got into an argument. Brian kept asking him questions, rapid-fire, one after another about his girlfriend and her death. It was more like an interrogation. Michael grew angrier and angrier, but he answered each one. I tried to get them to cool off, told Brian to take it easy on him, that it could have been an accident. But I think between the guilt Brian had lived with for the previous sixteen years and knowing Michael had lied to him about what happened to Emma Harper, he could never believe him again. He told Michael he had learned the truth about Emma's death. Michael denied it all. They screamed at one another, hurling insults back and forth, saying the most hurtful things they possibly could. I was in the kitchen cooking dinner when the fight turned physical. The yelling stopped. There was a crash in the back bedroom, a struggle, a thud. I turned off the burners on the stove and stomped down the hallway to break it up. But when I got there, there was nothing left to break up.

Brian was lying on the floor, blood seeping from a crack in his skull. Michael stood over him with wide eyes. His neck was a mix of colors: deep purple spreading across his throat, beet red near his jawline, and white circle markings from where Brian's fingers had pressed into his skin. Clutched in Michael's hand was a trophy he'd won at a science camp. His father's blood coated the large wooden base.

I've never cried so hard in my life. I broke a rib while sobbing. Michael said he thought Brian was going to kill him. He said he couldn't breathe, and he wasn't thinking when he struck him in the head. He said he was sorry. That he wished he could take it back. He claimed it was an accident. Then he said it was self-defense. I didn't know what to do. But I knew what Brian would want me to do. He spent his whole life trying to protect his children. Death wouldn't change that priority. So, I told Michael this was it... this was the last time we were going to protect him. We buried Brian's body next to Emma's. It's why I chose to be cremated and have my ashes spread around the property. I knew it was the only way I could lie with my husband in death. I gave Michael the keys to Brian's truck and told him to drive it to Texas and leave it somewhere near the Mexican border. I told him to only use cash, to keep his face covered, and to go back to California when he was done. I told him to pretend that he was never home. Only Brian and I had seen him anyway. I put Michael's car in storage and sold it a year later. Brian had left a note on the kitchen table a week before after we'd gotten into an argument over something silly, I can't remember now.

It said, Laura, I'm sorry. Love, Brian.

When I filed a missing person report the next morning, I used the note from our squabble as evidence that he may have abandoned me. I said he had been suffering from depression but had refused to go and talk to someone about it. I played the role of the concerned wife, but I wasn't concerned. I was grieving. They started an investigation, looking into me first. Because it's always the wife. However, when they discovered his vehicle parked near the border, they stopped the search. After all, it's not a crime to run out on your family.

The last time I saw Michael was the day he left in Brian's truck. I hugged my boy. I told him I loved him, and I told him I never wanted to see him again. He cried. The tears came fast and heavy, streaming down his crumpled face. But I just stared back at him, stoic and emotionless. I had no desire to console my child or dry his tears or tell him everything would be all right. Every motherly instinct within me had evaporated. The maternal bond severed forever. They say the love you have for a child is unconditional. I don't believe that anymore. There are conditions. And the condition I had for Michael was that I would love him forever and always... but only at a distance from that day forward.

I know Brian and I didn't do the right thing on the night of June 15, 1999. We buried a truth that wasn't ours to bury. And I've hated myself ever since. Sometimes you become the monster and sometimes the monster becomes you. Our intentions were just that... intentions, and I'm sorry for ever having them. I'm sorry for what I've done, for what we've done. I've taken these secrets to the grave, but that's as far as I can take them.

Laura Thomas