Pretty Girls

Her bladder was still full. Nothing would give her greater pleasure than pissing on Paul’s grave. She yanked back the green carpet. She hiked up her dress and bent over so she could pull down her underwear.

And then she stopped because she wasn’t alone.

Lydia noticed the shoes first. Black Louboutins, approximately five thousand dollars. Sheer hose, though who the hell wore panty hose anymore? Black dress, probably Armani or Gaultier, at least another six grand. There were no rings on the woman’s elegant fingers nor a tasteful tennis bracelet on her birdlike wrists. Her shoulders were square and her posture was ramrod straight, which told Lydia that Helen’s admonitions had been followed by at least one of her daughters.

“Well.” Claire crossed her arms low on her waist. “This is awkward.”

“It certainly is.” Lydia hadn’t seen her baby sister in eighteen years, though in her wildest imagination, she had never dreamed that Claire would turn into a Mother.

“Here.” Claire snapped open her two-­thousand-­dollar Prada clutch and pulled out a handful of Kleenex. She tossed the tissues in Lydia’s general direction.

There was no graceful way to do this. Lydia’s underwear was down around her knees. “Do you mind turning around?”

“Of course. Where are my manners?” Claire turned around. The black dress was tailored to her perfect figure. Her shoulder blades stuck out like cut glass. Her arms were toned little sticks. She probably jogged with her trainer every morning and played tennis every afternoon and then bathed in rosewater milked from a magic unicorn before her husband came home every night.

Not that Paul Scott was ever coming home again.

Lydia pulled up her underwear as she stood. She blew her nose into the tissue, then dropped it on Paul’s grave. She kicked the AstroTurf back in place like a cat in a litter box.

“This was fun.” Lydia grabbed her umbrella and made to leave. “Let’s never do it again.”

Claire spun around. “Don’t you dare slink off.”

“Slink?” The word was like a match to kindling. “You think I’m slinking away from you?”

“I literally stopped you from pissing on my husband’s grave.”

Lydia couldn’t talk in italics anymore. “You’d better be glad I didn’t take a shit.”

“God, you’re so crass.”

“And you’re a fucking bitch.” Lydia turned on her heel and headed toward the van.

“Don’t walk away from me.”

Lydia cut between the graves because she knew Claire’s heels would sink into the wet grass.

“Come back here.” Claire was keeping up. She had taken off her shoes. “Lydia. God dammit, stop.”

“What?” Lydia swung around so fast that the umbrella swiped Claire’s head. “What do you want from me, Claire? You made your choice—­you and Mom both. You can’t just expect me to forgive you now that he’s dead. It doesn’t change anything.”

“Forgive me?” Claire was so outraged that her voice trilled. “You think I’m the one who needs forgiveness?”

“I told you that your husband tried to rape me and your response was that I needed to get the fuck out of your house before you called the police.”

“Mom didn’t believe you either.”

“Mom didn’t believe you either,” Lydia mocked. “Mom thought you were still a virgin in the eighth grade.”

“You don’t know a goddamn thing about me.”

“I know you chose a guy you’d been screwing for two seconds over your own sister.”

“Was this before or after you stole all the cash from my wallet? Or from under my mattress? Or from my jewelry box? Or lied to me about ‘borrowing’ my car? Or told me you didn’t pawn Daddy’s stethoscope, but then Mom got a call from the pawnshop because they recognized his name?” Claire wiped rain out of her eyes. “I know it was before you stole my credit card and ran up thirteen grand in debt. How was Amsterdam, Lydia? Did you enjoy all the coffee shops?”

“I did, actually.” Lydia still had the little canal house souvenir the KLM stewardess had given her in first class. “How did you enjoy knowing you turned your back on the last sister you have left?”

Claire’s mouth snapped into a thin line. Her eyes took on a heated gleam.

“God, you look just like Mom when you do that.”

“Shut up.”

“That’s mature.” Lydia could hear the immaturity in her own voice. “This is idiotic. We’re having the same argument we had eighteen years ago, except this time we’re doing it in the rain.”

Claire looked down at the ground. For the first time, she seemed uncertain of herself. “You lied to me all the time about everything.”

“You think I’d lie about that?”

“You were stoned out of your mind when he drove you home.”

“Is that what Paul told you? Because he picked me up from jail. You’re not usually stoned in jail. That’s kind of a no-­no.”

“I’ve been to jail, Lydia. ­People who want to get high find a way to get high.”

Lydia snorted a laugh. Her Goody-­Two-­shoes baby sister had been to jail like Lydia had been to the moon.

Claire said, “He wasn’t even attracted to you.”

Lydia studied her face. This was an old line of reasoning, but she was saying it with less conviction. “You’re doubting him.”

“No, I’m not.” Claire pushed her wet hair back off her face. “You’re just hearing what you want to hear. Like you always do.”

Claire was lying. Lydia could feel it in her bones. She was standing there getting soaked in the rain and lying. “Did Paul

hurt you? Is that what this is about? You couldn’t say it when he was alive, but now—­”

“He never hurt me. He was a good husband. A good man. He took care of me. He made me feel safe. He loved me.”

Lydia didn’t respond. Instead, she let the silence build. She still didn’t believe her sister. Claire was just as easy to read now as when she was a little kid. Something was really bothering her, and that something obviously had to do with Paul. Her eyebrows were doing a weird zig, the same way Helen’s did when she was upset.

They hadn’t spoken in nearly two decades, but Lydia knew that confronting Claire always made her dig in her heels deeper. She tried a diversion. “Are you following this Anna Kilpatrick thing?”

Claire snorted, as if the answer was obvious. “Of course I am. Mom is, too.”

“Mom is?” Lydia was genuinely surprised. “She told you that?”

“No, but I know she’s following it.” Claire took a deep breath, then let it go. She looked up at the sky. The rain had stopped. “She’s not heartless, Lydia. She had her own way of dealing with it.” She left the rest of the sentence unsaid. Dad had his own way of dealing with it, too.

Lydia busied herself with closing her umbrella. Its canopy was white with various breeds of dogs jumping in circles around the ferrule. Her father had carried something similar back when he could still hold down his job teaching vet students at UGA.

Claire said, “I’m Mom’s age now.”

Lydia looked up at her sister.

“Thirty-­eight. The same age Mom was when Julia went missing. And Julia would be—­”

“Forty-­three.” Every year, Lydia marked Julia’s birthday. And Helen’s. And Claire’s. And the day that Julia had disappeared.