Chapter 31

Chapter Thirty-One

ERIKA

W hen I get back home, Jason says Liam hasn't come out of his room since the cops left, so I decide to check on him. It's a relief when I knock on the door and he tells me to come in.

Strangely enough, I find him at his desk, hunched over one of his textbooks. He's reading and outlining the book, as if this was any other day. As if the police hadn't been here, only hours earlier, essentially accusing him of murder.

"Liam?"

He doesn't look up from his textbook. "Yes?"

"What are you doing?"

"Studying. I have a history test tomorrow."

"Could you stop for a few minutes? I'd like to speak with you."

If it were Hannah, she would have moaned about how I shouldn't interrupt her when she's trying to study, even though she gets distracted every five minutes by her phone when she's studying anyway. But Liam obediently turns away from his history book and looks up at me, blinking his brown eyes innocently.

"What is it, Mom?"

I take a deep breath. My hands are shaking, and I feel like I'm about to burst into tears. I remember back when Liam was younger and he used to see that psychotherapist. She used a term that I had contemplated but was afraid to ever say out loud:

Sociopath.

He doesn't feel empathy like you do. He doesn't feel love. He's just faking it.

As a mother, it was one of the worst things anybody has ever said to me. Your son doesn't love you. He's not capable of it. At the time, I refused to believe it. But as the years passed, I realized how true everything Dr. Hebert told me was.

"Where is she, Liam?" I say. "Where is Olivia?"

He looks me straight in the eyes, the same way he did to the officers as he lied to their faces. "I don't know."

"Liam…" A tear escapes from my right eye and I wipe it away before he can see it. Being vulnerable in front of a person who has no empathy is always a mistake. "The police know what they're doing. Whatever you've done… They 're going to find out. If you tell me where she is, I can help you. I'll let her go. I can pretend I just stumbled onto her…" I take a shaky breath. "But if you kill her…"

"Mom." His lip juts out, which makes him look younger. "I swear to you. I didn't do anything to Olivia."

"I don't believe you, Liam."

His eyes darken. There are moments when I feel frightened of my son. Such as when I found him with that hamster when he was only six. He let it starve to death right in front of his eyes. The poor hamster was so withered, you could see all of its little bones sticking out. You could tell it had suffered. And Liam didn't care. No, worse—he enjoyed it.

"I didn't do it, Mom." His voice is firm, almost angry. "I don't know where she is. Now can I go back to studying?"

I nod wordlessly, and Liam swivels on his chair to turn back to his history book. He starts outlining again, like his mother wasn't just in the room, accusing him of kidnapping and murder. That's how Liam is. He doesn't let anything bother him.

After Dr. Hebert came up with a diagnosis, I asked her how this could have happened. Liam grew up in an upper-middle-class, happy household. We provided firm, but very fair discipline. He had a wonderful childhood. How could he turn out this way?

"There's often a genetic component," she had said.

But that didn't explain it any better. Jason and I were about as boring and normal as you could get. It didn't make any sense. How could a nice, normal couple like us produce a child like Liam? I never got it.

Not until this morning. When I found out my father had been in jail for murder for over forty years.