Details from the mother’s death were coming back. Elizabeth Stockton had a reputation for lying, according to the neighbors. Nothing huge, but dozens of small lies that created her version of the world. Several neighbors insisted Elizabeth could be so convincing because she believed her stories. When she’d accidentally run over a neighbor’s flowerpot while backing up the car, she’d said her brakes had failed. When her daughters missed school, they were sick with the flu. The family dog had died of old age, though when one neighbor did the math, she realized the dog was only four years old.

The Stocktons’ marriage had not been good, and they’d separated several times, most recently three days before Elizabeth Stockton killed herself with a handful of pills. In the end, there was no evidence of foul play. Only Elizabeth Stockton’s prints were on the bottle, and there’d been a very damning suicide note. I’d have to pull the file to refresh my memory, but she had blamed all her unhappiness on her husband’s infidelities.

Maybe the girls had learned from their mother to tell the “truth” that suited them best.

“Can I see my daughter?” Mr. Stockton asked.

“The medical examiner is on the scene now.” I scrawled the ME’s number on the back of my business card. “Call this contact at the medical examiner’s office, and they’ll arrange for a meeting.”

The body would need to be formally identified. The task would have to fall to Mr. Stockton, but Brit was over eighteen and could see her as well. Marisa, at sixteen, wouldn’t be allowed. Maybe later, at the funeral home, her father would permit a viewing. The funeral home would find a way to make the girl’s blackened skin more natural with makeup. Maybe she’d even look peaceful, at rest, like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. But the body I’d see forever was frozen in terror.

I wondered what it was like to see yourself lying in a coffin.

18 MARISA

18

MARISA

Monday, March 14, 2022

9:00 p.m.

Richards’s notes were not the kind of thing I should’ve read alone in the dark. And for all the resentment I’d harbored toward Richards thirteen years ago, I realized the guy’s observations had been spot-on. He’d seen a lot when he’d stepped into our house. A career of summing up people showed.

I hadn’t realized he’d worked on my mother’s case. In those days, I’d been so blurred by pain that I barely noticed the people coming and going from our house: the cops, a minister who was a friend of a friend, and the neighbors bearing casserole dishes, flowers, and offers to cut the grass.