This Is Why We Lied

Faith arrives at the sheriff’s office. It’s nearly six o’clock in the morning, and she drove for five hours. While driving, she listened to the voice files Will sent her. The first recording was Will’s interview of Delilah, including Mercy’s personal history, from Cecil’s abuse to her dysfunctional relationship with Dave. The second recording is of Will arresting Dave and then apparently kicking him in the groin.

Amanda calls Faith; she’s at the hospital across the street, and so is the sheriff, because Dave is being held there. Faith walks over, and Amanda asks her to handle Dave’s interview. In the hallway, they see Sara and Delilah. Sara tells them that Dave threatened Will with a butterfly knife and they’re analyzing a bloody handprint on his shirt. She also tells them about the backpack and its contents, including the notebook. Sara and Delilah leave to look for Jon in town, while Faith and Amanda go to Dave’s room.

Will meets them outside Dave’s door. Amanda leaves to find Biscuits. Will warns Faith not to underestimate Dave and tells her about their history at the children’s home. Faith points out that according to his rap sheet, Dave is four years younger than Will and wonders why they were grouped together. However, Will knows that Dave is only two years younger and realizes that the McAlpines “aged him down” to keep receiving benefits (224). He also admits that though he’s sure Dave is the killer, Sara isn’t.

Amanda returns with Biscuits, who she says has “agreed” to give them the investigation. Biscuits thinks that Mercy’s death is just the final act in her and Dave’s abusive relationship and that she was always “trouble” and ruined Dave’s life.

Faith and Biscuits interview Dave, and Faith is surprised at how innocuous he looks. Dave still thinks they’re investigating Mercy’s strangling, but Faith tells him that Mercy is dead. He starts to cry. On his phone are missed calls from Mercy, which loaded when he was taken to the hospital.

Faith sees seven missed calls but only one voicemail (from the last call). They listen to it. Mercy, hysterical, pleads for his help. She begins speaking to someone on the scene, asking what they’re doing there. The message cuts off abruptly. Faith realizes that Dave didn’t kill Mercy; in leaving this message, she gave him an alibi.

Sara mentally prepares for the autopsy she’ll be performing on Mercy soon. Will tells her that the lodge’s road was washed out by the rain, and they’ll need utility terrain vehicles (UTVs) to get back there. However, the washout has a positive aspect: Everyone is still trapped there except Penny, the bartender, whom Faith has gone to interview at her house.

Will asks Sara if she wants them to step back from the investigation, and she knows that this is a “marriage-defining moment” (238). She knows he wants to continue, especially to pass Mercy’s last words on to Jon. She agrees to stay, at least for the day. He asks why Sara doesn’t believe that Dave killed Mercy. She points out that several people at the lodge fit the profile of Mercy’s killer. He tells her that Christopher has $200,000 in his bank account, while Mercy doesn’t even have a bank account.

When a trailer truck pulling two UTVs pulls up, Will takes one back to the lodge, leaving the other for Sara to return later. Sara goes down to the morgue, where Amanda is waiting. She briefly interviews Sara as a witness to the scene rather than a medical examiner. Sara tells Amanda that she would guess someone in the family killed Mercy because of the lodge sale.

During the autopsy, Sara is again struck by the attack’s viciousness, as well as the signs of long-term abuse on Mercy’s body. She reflects on all the feelings this investigation must be raising in Will. She counts at least 20 stab wounds, and Nadine begins to cry, feeling that she should’ve done something to help Mercy long ago. Mercy’s X-rays reveal more abuse injuries, and Sara sees a small blur and realizes that Mercy was pregnant.

Faith drives out to Penny Danvers’s house. Faith feels a connection to Mercy: They were both young, single mothers, only Faith was lucky enough to have a supportive family. As she drives, she considers the timeline. She can use Mercy’s calls to Dave to determine how and when Mercy got to the bachelor cottages. She wonders what scared Mercy badly enough to both run and call her ex-husband for help.

A bird flies into Faith’s windshield, and she instinctively swerves. Her car spins and gets stuck in the muddy ditch. She digs it out and she sees a woman and a dog standing nearby. It’s Penny, and Faith drives her and her dog to her house so that she can interview her.

Penny tells Sara that when Mercy got pregnant at 15, the community forced her to leave school. She also remembers how after Mercy got sober and left Dave, Cecil made sure that no one in town would help her. Penny admires Mercy, saying that before Mercy took over, the lodge was barely breaking even. She turned it around, mostly by offering alcohol, which Cecil didn’t, and using the proceeds to renovate the cottages. Penny knows firsthand how hard Mercy worked to stay sober because they were both in recovery and depended on each other.

Faith asks Penny about something she heard in Will’s recording about “Christopher and Gabbie” (271). Penny says that Gabbie was hired from Atlanta one summer. Everyone loved her, but Gabbie and Mercy were best friends. One night, they were drunk, and Mercy drove off Devil’s Bend into a gorge. Gabbie was killed, and Mercy had a sliced face and broken bones. She should’ve gone to prison for it, but Cecil pulled strings, and the incident didn’t appear on her record. Penny tells her that’s when Mercy went into recovery but reflects that it might’ve been better if Mercy had gone to prison instead of moving home, considering how her parents treated her.

Faith’s phone rings, and she steps outside to answer it. Will tells her that Mercy was pregnant. Faith tells Will that Penny sometimes said Mercy had sex with the guests. They consider the ramifications. Faith’s tire is flat, so Penny offers to take Faith to the lodge on her horse, Rascal.