“The only thing that’s really changed is the length of the khaki shorts.”
“Didn’t the Taco Stand used to be here?”
“We parked right in front of it.” Claire indicated the direction with a tilt of her head.
Lydia craned her neck. She saw more tables and chairs crisscrossing the sidewalk. No one was sitting outside because it was too cold. There was a woman standing with a broom and dustpan, but instead of sweeping up the debris left over from the night before, she was checking her phone.
Claire said, “He never asked me for anything weird.”
Lydia turned back to her sister.
“I remember when I first saw the movie on his computer—just the beginning of it with the girl chained up—I had this strange feeling, almost like a betrayal, because I wanted to know why he didn’t bring it to me.” She watched a jogger slowly cross the street. “I thought, If that’s what he’s into, chaining people up and leather and blindfolds and that kind of thing, even though I’m not particularly into it, why didn’t he ask me to give it a try?” She looked at Lydia like she expected an answer.
Lydia could only shrug.
“I probably would’ve said yes.” Claire shook her head as if to contradict herself. “I mean, if that’s what he really wanted, then I would’ve tried it, right? Because that’s what you do. And Paul knew that. He knew that I would’ve tried.”
Lydia shrugged again, but she had no idea.
“He never asked me to dress up like a maid or pretend to be a schoolgirl or whatever else it is you hear about. He never even asked for anal, and every man asks for anal eventually.”
Lydia glanced around, hoping no one could hear.
“She was younger than me,” Claire continued. “The first woman—when I saw her, I had this split-second thought that she was younger than me, and that hurt, because I’m not young anymore. That’s the one thing I couldn’t give him.”
Lydia sat back in her chair. There was nothing she could do but let Claire talk.
“I wasn’t in love with him when I married him. I mean, I loved him, but it wasn’t …” She waved the emotions away with her hand. “We were married for less than a year, and Christmas was coming up. Paul was working on his masters and I was answering phones for a law office and I just thought, I’m out of here. Being married felt so pointless. So tedious. Mom and Dad were so full of life before Julia. They were such passionate, interesting people. Do you remember that? How they were before?”
Lydia smiled, because Claire had somehow unlocked the memories with that one question. Even twenty-two years into their marriage, Sam and Helen Carroll had acted like teenagers who couldn’t keep their hands off each other.
Claire said, “They went dancing and to parties and out to dinner and they had their own interests and they loved talking to each other all the time. Remember how we weren’t allowed to interrupt them? And we didn’t want to interrupt them, because they were so fascinating.” Claire smiled, too. “They read everything. They saw everything. People vied to spend time with them. They’d have a party and strangers would show up at the door because they’d heard the Carrolls were so much fun.”
Lydia felt it all come rushing back—Helen spraying cheese on celery stalks and Sam singeing his eyebrows off at the grill. Games of charades. Heated political debates. Lively discussions about books and art and movies.
Claire continued, “They were always kissing each other. Like, real kissing. And we’d say it was gross but wasn’t it nice, Pepper? Didn’t you see them and think that’s what love was all about?”
Lydia nodded. She felt intoxicated by the long-forgotten memories.
“That first year with Paul, that’s what we didn’t have. At least, I didn’t think we had it.” Claire swallowed so hard that her throat moved. “So I rode my bike home from work that night thinking that I was just going to be honest and tell him it was over. Rip off the Band-Aid. Don’t wait for all the Christmas parties and New Years to come and go. Just say it.” She paused. Tears rolled down her face. “But I got home, and Paul was in bed. I thought he was taking a nap, but he was covered in sweat. I could hear him wheezing. His eyelids fluttered every time he blinked. I made him get up and I took him to the hospital. He’d had a cold for weeks, but it turned into walking pneumonia. He could’ve died. He almost did.” She wiped away her tears. “But here’s the thing: I was terrified. I couldn’t think about my life without him. Hours before, I was ready to leave him, but then I realized that I couldn’t.” She shook her head vehemently, as if someone had asked her to. “He was in the hospital for almost three weeks, and I never left his side. I read to him. I slept in the bed with him. I bathed him. I had always known that Paul needed me, but I never realized until I almost lost him that I really, really needed him.”
Claire stopped to take a shallow breath. “That’s when you fall in love with somebody. The lust and fucking like rabbits and letting your life fall to shit so you can be around him—that’s passion. It’s borderline obsession. And it always burns itself out. You know that, Liddie. That high never, ever lasts. But being in that hospital, taking care of him, I started to realize that what I had with Paul, what I thought I had, that was more than love. That was being in love. It was so tangible I could almost touch it with my hands. I could bite it with my teeth.”
Lydia would’ve never articulated it that same way, but she knew from Rick what her sister was talking about. There was so much of her self that was wrapped up in him: lover, companion, best friend, foil. All of this time she’d been focused on what it would feel like to lose Dee, but losing Rick would be devastating in so many different ways.
Claire said, “Paul knew how it felt for me to lose Julia. I told him everything. Everything. I didn’t hold back one detail. I can’t recall a time in my life when I’ve ever been that honest with a man. I laid it all out—what it was like when Mom turned into a ghost and Dad turned into Don Quixote. How much I needed you to help me get through the day.” She made sure that Lydia was looking at her. “You saved me, Pepper. You were the only thing I had to hold on to when the bottom dropped out.”
Lydia felt a lump in her throat. They had saved each other.
“That’s probably why Paul had to drive us apart, don’t you think? He knew how important you were to me. More important than Mom, even, because I trusted you to be there no matter what.”
Lydia shook her head. There was no way to tell what had been in Paul’s mind.
“He knew from me what Anna Kilpatrick’s family was going through, and he watched those horrible movies despite that. Maybe because of it, because I think that he got off on knowing that Anna wasn’t the only one in pain. There were all these other layers of pain rippling through the family, through the community, and even to us—you, me, Mom, Grandma Ginny. He was constantly asking me about Anna Kilpatrick, or referring to the case, and gauging my reaction. He even brought it up the night he died.” She gave a dry laugh. “I thought he was asking because he cared about me, but now I can see that it was all part of his game. It’s the same kink as raping those women, then having them followed for so many years.”
Lydia didn’t disagree, but she asked, “Why do you think that?”
“Because it’s about control. He controlled me for years by making me think I had everything I wanted. He controlled you by isolating you away from the family. He controlled Mom by making her think he was the perfect son-in-law. He controlled those women in his files by knowing exactly where they were. Hell, he even controlled Grandma Ginny, because she would’ve been in a state nursing home without his money. For all her noble, impoverished-widow bullshit, she loves having a private apartment and weekly maid service. One way or another, we were all under his thumb.”
Lydia gripped together her hands on the table. Why had Claire never seen any of this when Paul was alive? Was he really that good at hiding his darker nature?
Claire said, “God only knows what this Lexie Fuller woman is going through. Maybe he n
ever asked me to do anything weird because he was doing it with her.” She laughed again. “Actually, part of me hopes that he did, because that would mean that I wasn’t completely crazy, because he was so Goddamn normal. I know you saw through him, but you were the only person in his entire life who thought that something was wrong with him. Even Dad was fooled. I told you I read his journals. The worst thing he ever said about Paul is that he loves me too much.”
Lydia doubted her father had paid much attention to Paul. Claire was just getting serious about him when Sam Carroll took his life. Lydia had always assumed the tragedy had escalated their relationship.
Claire told her, “Paul chose to show you that bad side of himself. He worked his ass off to keep it from everybody else, but he showed it to you because he knew that it would split us apart.”
“You let him play you.” Lydia didn’t realize how angry she still was until she said the words. Why did Claire just get to pick up where they left off? She was confiding in Lydia like the last eighteen years hadn’t happened, like she hadn’t been the sole reason Lydia had been shoved out into the cold. She told her sister, “You chose a boy over me.”
Claire held Lydia’s gaze. “You’re right. I did. And I don’t know that we’ll ever get past it, because it’s truly unforgivable.”
Lydia was the first one to look away. She had to remind herself who the real villain was. Paul had dedicated his life to manipulating people. Claire had been a naïve and vulnerable teenager when they’d met in college. Helen was still a mess. Sam was on the verge of suicide. Lydia was in and out of jail. Was it any wonder that Paul was able to sink his teeth into her?
And yet, Lydia still could not find within herself the ability to forgive.
Claire asked, “Do you think I should call Captain Mayhew?”
“For what?” Lydia couldn’t keep the alarm out of her voice. The abrupt change in subject slapped her like a cold wind. “He lied to you about the movies. He said they were fake.”
“Maybe he lied because he didn’t want me to leak them to the press?”
“No, he would’ve filed an injunction. Or arrested you for interfering with an active investigation. Or just told you to keep quiet.”
“I’m not going to take this to Agent Nolan,” Claire said. “Who else is left? Huckleberry?” She waved her hand in the general direction of the sheriff’s office. “He did a bang-up job with Julia. I’m sure he’d get right on top of this.”
Lydia felt like they were letting their imaginations get the best of them. “What do we actually know, Claire? That Paul watched the movies. That’s it.”
“The movies are real.”
“We think they’re real.” Lydia tried to play devil’s advocate again. “We think that girl looked like Anna Kilpatrick. We think that she was mutilated in the same way, based on what her mother said and did during a press conference. But are we one hundred percent certain? Or are we just talking ourselves into it?”
“Confirmation bias.” Claire scowled at her own words. “What’s the downside of calling Mayhew?”
“Because he lied to you about the movies. Because he’s supposed to be working the biggest case in the city right now and he stopped everything to go to your house and investigate an attempted burglary. Because he’s a cop and if you piss him off, he can make your life a living hell.”
“What is my life now?” Claire held out her hand. “Give me the burner phone.”
Lydia studied her sister. There was something different about her. She had stopped sounding like a confused bystander and started acting like the person in charge.
Lydia asked, “What are you going to say to him?”
“That he needs to be straight with me. That he needs to explain to me again why the movie isn’t real when, according to Eleanor Kilpatrick, her daughter was abused in the same way as the girl in the movie.”
“That’s a fantastic idea, Sweetpea.” Lydia layered on the sarcasm. “You believe that a high-ranking police officer might possibly be covering up a murder, or maybe is somehow involved in it, or filming it, or distributing images of it, or maybe all of the above, and you’re just going to call him up and say, ‘Hey, man, what’s the what up?’”
“I hadn’t planned on sounding like J. J. Walker, but that’s the gist.”
“Claire.”
She held out her hand for the phone.
Lydia knew her sister’s mind was set. She rummaged through her purse for the phone. The back of her hand hit the bottle of Percocet she’d taken from Claire’s desk. Lydia had told herself she was keeping the pills from Claire, but she had a niggling suspicion that she was keeping them for herself.
“Did you bring it?”
“Yes, I brought it.” Lydia pulled out the phone and handed it to Claire. She snapped her purse closed.
Claire easily found Jacob Mayhew’s business card in her wallet. She dialed the number and pressed the phone to her ear.
Lydia’s body tensed. She counted rings that she could not hear. Her palms were sweaty. The sound of rushing blood pulsed into her ears. She hadn’t been inside a jail house in years, but she was still terrified of the police.
Claire shook her head. “Voicemail.”
Lydia exhaled a long breath as Claire ended the call.
“He’d probably just lie to me anyway.” Claire put the phone down on the table. “Other than you, I don’t know who to trust anymore.”
Lydia stared down at her hands. Her palms had left wet streaks on the cold, meshed metal. She didn’t want to be here. She shouldn’t be here. She should go back home to Dee. If they left now, Lydia could be back at the house in time to make her family a late breakfast.
“He was at school in March of ninety-one.”
Lydia looked back up at her sister.
“Paul was living at Lyman Ward Academy when Julia went missing.”
Lydia didn’t realize the question had been in her mind until Claire had answered it. “Are you sure?”
“It’s just outside of Auburn. He took me to see the campus one day. I didn’t know why he wanted to go. He hated every minute he was there. But then we got to the school and I realized he wanted to show me off, which was fine, because I like being shown off, but it was a boarding school, and it was very small and very religious and incredibly strict.”
Lydia had made the drive from Auburn to Athens many times before. “Julia went missing at around eleven on a Monday night. It’s only three hours between here and Auburn.”
“Paul was fifteen years old. He didn’t have a license, let alone a car, and they checked on the boys two or three times a night. Most of them were there because their parents couldn’t control them.”
“Is that why Paul was there?”
“He told me that he won a scholarship.” Claire shrugged. “It kind of made sense. His father did a stint in the Navy during Vietnam. Paul was planning on following in his footsteps, at least getting college paid for, until he read a book on architecture and changed his mind.”
Lydia didn’t buy it. “Paul was really smart. Maybe genius-level smart. If he really wanted to be in the Navy, he would’ve gone to NAPS or West Point Prep, not some ultra-strict, conservative Christian boarding school in the middle of Asshole, Alabama.”
Claire closed her eyes for a moment. She nodded in agreement.
Lydia asked, “Are you sure he didn’t sneak out?”
“As sure as I can be,” Claire admitted. “He had perfect attendance the whole time. His picture was still in the trophy case by the headmaster’s office, so there’s no way he skipped class or got disciplined for being off-campus, and Spring Break was a week later.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he went to the Kennedy Space Center to watch the shuttle launch. There was some kind of technical problem, so it didn’t go up. I’ve seen the pictures. He’s standing in front of a big banner with a date on it and you can see the empty launch pad in the distance, and I remember the date was during the second week o
f March because of—”
“Julia.” Lydia looked back at the woman with the broom. She was scraping chairs across the sidewalk as she put together the tables.
Claire said, “That skeevy jackass who got Dad arrested still runs the place.”
Lydia could vividly recall her mother talking about Sam’s arrest in her librarian voice, a furious whisper that could freeze an open flame.
Claire said, “It’s weird, I miss Daddy more when I’m with you. I guess because you’re the only person I can really talk to who knew him.”
The door to the Starbucks opened. A group of kids tumbled out onto the sidewalk. Each carried a steaming cup of coffee. They were visibly hungover as they fumbled for their packs of cigarettes.
Lydia stood up. “Let’s get out of here.”
The Tesla was parked in front of the Taco Stand. Lydia glanced through the restaurant’s front windows. The decor had been considerably updated. The chairs were padded. The tables looked clean. There were napkin dispensers on the tables instead of rolls of cheap paper towels.
Claire asked, “We’re still going to the house, right?”
“I guess.” Lydia didn’t know what else to do but keep moving forward.
She got behind the wheel of the Tesla again. She tapped the brake to start the engine. Rick would enjoy hearing details about the car. The touchscreen. The way the steering wheel vibrated if you crossed the yellow line. She would use the information to soften him up, because when Lydia told him what she and Claire had been up to, he was going to justifiably have a fucking fit.
“Go back up the Atlanta Highway.” Claire entered the Fuller address into the touchscreen. “I remember dancing to ‘Love Shack’ with Julia at one of Mom and Dad’s Christmas parties. Do you remember? It was three months before she went missing.”
Lydia nodded, though her mind was still on Rick. Unfortunately, they didn’t have one of those relationships where they hid things from each other. They laid it all out, no matter the consequences. He would probably stop speaking to her. He might even see her crazy road trip as the final straw.
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