This Is Why We Lied

Will’s wife, Sara Linton, is one of the main characters in Slaughter’s earlier Grant County series and first appears in the Will Trent series in the third book, Undone. This Is Why We Lied begins just after Sara and Will’s wedding, on the first day of their honeymoon. She’s a medical examiner for the GBI and gets to know Will first on a professional level. Sara is an excellent partner for him on this case until the rest of their team arrives. She’s also especially crucial in this investigation because her relative objectivity balances Will’s obvious bias toward Dave as the killer.

Will calls Sara a “beautiful nerd,” and Faith describes her as “a tall and willowy supermodel” (337). Beyond her role in this specific crime, Will sees her as “incredibly, consistently logical. She [doesn’t] get upset without reason” (183). This characteristic is evident several times during the novel. Understanding the personal importance of the case to Will, Sara is open to delaying their honeymoon, and she’s consistently level-headed in both her part of the investigation and her marriage. In Sara, Slaughter gives Will a partner who is his match in both intelligence and insightfulness.

Mercy is the murder victim and manages McAlpine Lodge, owned and operated by her family. She’s tough and smart, but a lifetime of abuse left her isolated. In addition, Mercy lives with the guilt of believing that she killed her best friend, Gabbie. A large scar cuts down her face, which symbolizes the way the accident psychologically and emotionally scarred her and the guilt and shame she feels about it.

Tough, stubborn, and independent, Mercy doesn’t trust anyone. Even when people like Delilah try to help her, she rejects them. She also rejects Paul’s forgiveness. In both cases, she quickly realizes that she has sabotaged herself but is still unable to backtrack. She can be self-defeating and is aware enough to recognize it:

And here Mercy was, fucking herself over for a single, fleeting moment of pleasure. It was the same bad decision-making that kept her going back to Dave. How many times did she have to keep throwing herself into brick walls before she realized that she could stop fucking hurting herself (94).

Mercy survived a lifetime of trauma from abuse and substance use disorder. She’s also the subject of vicious gossip and long memories of the local community. Nadine points out that how no matter how Mercy changed, people’s view of her never did: “Mercy wasn’t a serial fuck-up with two DUIs trying to ween herself off of heroin with zanies. She was a responsible citizen. She was running the family business. She’d been clean for thirteen years” (20). Her story thematically illustrates How the Past Affects the Present because although she’s a successful business owner, she never transcends people’s opinions of her younger self.

Dave is Mercy’s ex-husband, though he still lives with and works for the McAlpines. Mercy describes him as “just turned thirty-five years old and he looked closer to eighty. His eyes were rheumy. His nose was crisscrossed with burst capillaries. His breath had a wheeze” (14). When Dave was 11, he ran away from the children’s home to Camp Awinita, near McAlpine Lodge. By the time the family found and adopted him, he was 13, but they claimed he was 11. Unfortunately, though Dave found a family with the McAlpines, Bitty abused him, which even Mercy never knew. Dave’s personal history complicates Slaughter’s portrait of him, as does his redemptive act of confessing to the murder to save Jon. Dave is often manipulative and duplicitous, however, as evident in his knowing that Mercy wasn’t responsible for Gabbie’s death but never telling her.

Dave is Will’s foil, illustrating the “path not taken” for Will, and over the course of the novel, Will repeatedly contemplates this. At the children’s home where they both lived as kids, Dave was a bully known as the Jackal. When he sees Will at the lodge, he slips back into that habitual behavior. Will’s deep antipathy for Dave causes him to abandon his usual objectivity. Will is aware that he’s emotional because of Dave’s presence, and “[w]orse, at a very deep level, he blamed the Jackal for this misery. Nothing had ever gone right in Will’s life when that asshole was around […]. The sadistic prick had always been a walking bad luck charm” (6). Dave endured terrible physical and sexual abuse at one foster home, and Will notes that it was after Dave’s stay there that he changed and began bullying Will.

The youngest McAlpine, Jon is Mercy and Dave’s son. He’s 16 years old, and Will observes that he “has the kind of hard muscle that teenage boys packed on simply by existing” (45). Mercy reflects that he has “a quick temper like Dave. He [makes] bad decisions like Mercy” but is “kind” (73). Mercy knows from experience that unlike Dave, Jon has a “temper [simmers] before it [explodes], and […] it [takes] days, sometimes weeks, for him to reset to normal. Or at least a new normal, because Jon [collects] his grievances like trading cards” (85). In many ways, Jon is a typical teenager.

However, Jon is also Mercy’s killer. He’s driven to murder by a lifetime of lies, manipulation, and abuse, which climaxes in Mercy’s discovering Bitty’s abuse of him. When he kills Mercy, she realizes that “[h]e [sounds] so much like Dave that it nearly [takes] her breath away” (438). She understands that Jon hasn’t escaped the legacy of abuse and that he “had been running alongside her all this time and Mercy hadn’t bothered to notice” (438). His character thematically illustrates How the Past Affects the Present: Even though Jon doesn’t understand the full extent of abuse in his family, it deeply affects him, shaping his character and decisions.

Mercy and Christopher’s father, Cecil, is the head of the McAlpine family. He has a “shock of gray hair and ruggedly handsome features” and is an “active outdoorsman” (25). Sara, however, reflects that “[h]e clearly [loves] being the center of attention. The guests [seem] enthralled by his stories, but Sara [can’t] help but think he [is a] self-righteous blow-hard” (25). Eighteen months before the novel begins, Cecil was in a mountain biking accident that left him in a wheelchair. Since then, he “seethed with anger” over Mercy’s successful management of the property (23). Throughout Mercy’s life, Cecil physically, psychologically, and emotionally abused her, even framing her for the death of her best friend.

Everyone calls Cecil’s wife, Imogene, “Bitty,” a shorter version of Dave’s original nickname for her, “Bitty Mama.” Faith describes her as “an older woman with long, stringy gray hair […] petite, almost doll-like” (304). Mercy notes “something timeless about her appearance. Barely a line etched her face” (24). In the novel’s final revelation, Mercy discovers that Bitty abused both Dave and Jon. Her manipulation of Jon, and her demand that he choose between her and Mercy, is the catalyst for his murdering Mercy. At the novel’s end, Bitty dies by suicide rather than face the accusations, and after she dies, the novel reveals that she had terminal cancer.

Will’s boss, Amanda, is the deputy director of the GBI and is a recurring character in the Will Trent series since the first novel, Triptych. Amanda is Will’s mother figure in more ways than one. As his boss, she directs his work and investigations. She’s abrasive and confrontational, a powerful woman who gets her job done. On a personal level, she has been part of Will’s life since childhood: As a young police officer, she found Will in a trashcan when he was a baby. She values Will highly at work and is normally demanding. In this investigation, however, Amanda shows her care for Will when she encourages him to relinquish the case to other agents and go on his honeymoon.

Faith is Will’s partner at the GBI. Smart, practical, and down-to-earth, she’s a good professional counterpart to Will, who has a quieter demeanor. She uses pop culture references that readers may connect with, from famous horror stories like “The Lottery” and “Children of the Corn” to “Scooby Doo” cartoons. Although Faith offers a hint of humor to lighten the atmosphere, she takes the investigation quite seriously: A single mother, she feels a kinship with Mercy because of their similar backgrounds. She notes how things would’ve been different for her had she grown up in an environment like Mercy’s: “Faith had been lucky that her family had supported her. Without their strength holding her up, she could’ve just as easily ended up like Mercy McAlpine” (257). Like Will, she thematically demonstrates How the Past Affects the Present.

Mercy’s younger brother, Christopher, has the nickname Fishtopher, or Fish. His defining characteristic is his passivity. When the rest of the family attacks Mercy or sides together against her, Christopher never says a word and refuses to participate, even to defend her. The only time Christopher has ever stood up for Mercy was when Chuck sexually assaulted her. After that night, Christopher began punishing Chuck when he upset Mercy by poisoning him with eye drops, which eventually cause his death. In addition, Christopher drugs Chuck at night to make sure he doesn’t bother Mercy, although she doesn’t know it, Christopher takes steps to protect her in the only way he can. His passivity is a reaction to a lifetime of abuse, illustrating how abuse can affect two people, even siblings, completely differently.

Chuck is Christopher’s best friend and, in fact, his only friend, despite Christopher’s distrust of him. Although Chuck is another unwelcome presence in Mercy’s life, she sees him as one of those “[w]ell-meaning, goofy guys who [has] good jobs and [practices] basic hygiene” (56). Chuck spends most of his time living at the lodge, and the novel later reveals that he and Christopher are running a bootleg operation with Christopher. Chuck has been with the family for years and continually subjects Mercy to harassment that occasionally becomes assault.