Pretty Girls

Claire sat back on her heels. She knew the name Penelope Ward. Branch Ward was running against Congressman Johnny Jackson for his seat. Jackson was the same congressman who’d started Paul on his road to success. He was also the reason Jacob Mayhew had given Claire for his presence at the house the day of the burglary.

Mayhew had told her, “The congressman asked me to handle this personally,” and Claire’s mind had wandered into kickbacks and fraud because she had assumed Jackson was covering his ass. Was there another reason? If Mayhew was involved, did that mean that Johnny Jackson was, too?

Lydia asked, “What?”

Claire didn’t share the revelation. They could let the various state agencies figure this out. Instead, she looked back up at the house. “I don’t want Julia’s tapes to be part of it.”

Lydia nodded again. “What are we going to tell Mom?”

“We have to tell her that we know Julia is dead.”

“And when she asks how we know?”

“She won’t ask.” Claire knew this for a fact. A long time ago, Helen had made a conscious decision to stop seeking out the truth. Toward the end of Sam’s life, she wouldn’t even let him mention Julia’s name.

Lydia asked, “Do you think it’s Paul’s father in the video?”

“Probably.” Claire stood up. She didn’t want to sit around trying to figure this out. She wanted to call in the ­people who could actually do something about it. “I’ll get the tapes with Julia.”

“I’ll help.”

“No.” Claire didn’t want to put Lydia through seeing any part of the video again. “Start making the phone calls. Use the landline so they can trace the number.” Claire walked over to the wall-­mounted phone. She waited for Lydia to pick up the receiver. “We can put the Julia tapes in the front trunk of the Tesla. No one will think to check there.”

Lydia dialed 911. She told Claire, “Hurry. This isn’t going to take long.”

Claire walked into the den. Mercifully, the picture on the television was black. The videotapes were stacked on top of the console.

She called to Lydia, “Do you think we should drive back into town and wait?”

“No!”

Claire guessed her sister was right. The last time she’d left this to the police, Mayhew had managed her like a child. She pressed the EJECT button on the VCR. She rested her fingers on the cassette. She tried to summon into her brain an image of Julia that wasn’t taken from the movie.

It was too soon. All she could see was her sister in chains.

Claire would destroy the videos. Once they were safe, she would spool out all the tape and burn them in a metal trash can.

She slid the cassette out of the machine. The handwriting on the label was similar to Paul’s but not exactly the same. Had Paul found the tape after his father died? Was that what had first sparked his interest? Julia disappeared almost a year before his parents’ car accident. Five years later, Paul was wooing Claire at Auburn. They were married less than two months after her father had killed himself. Claire could no longer cling to the idea of coincidences, which begged the question: Had Paul designed all of this from the moment he recognized Julia in his father’s videotape collection? Was that what had set him on the path toward Claire?

Absent a written explanation, Claire knew that she would never know the truth. Julia’s death had haunted her for the last twenty-­four years. Now the mystery of what had really gone wrong with her husband would haunt her for the remaining decades.

She slid the tape back into the cardboard sleeve. She wrapped the rubber band around the stack of cassettes.

She smelled Paul’s aftershave.

The scent was faint. She put her nose to the tapes. She closed her eyes and inhaled.

“Claire,” Paul said.

She turned around.

Paul stood in the middle of the room. He was wearing a red UGA sweatshirt and black jeans. His head was shaved. His beard had grown in. He had on thick plastic glasses like the ones he’d worn back in college.

He said, “It’s me.”

Claire dropped the tapes. They clattered at her feet. Was this real? Was this happening?

“I’m sorry,” Paul said.

Then he drew back his fist and punched her in the face.

v.

I must confess, sweetheart, that I have been neglecting my wall of clues. My “useless gallimaufry,” your mother called it on the one and only occasion she deigned to look at my work. I sagely agreed with her observation but of course I went running to the dictionary as soon as she was gone.

Gallimaufry: a hodgepodge; a confused jumble of various ­people or things; any absurd medley.

Oh, how I adore your mother.

These last ten months that I have been visiting Ben Carver at the prison, I have gone to bed many times without giving my gallimaufry a second glance. The collection has become so mundane that my mind has turned it into a piece of art, more a reminder that you are gone than a road map to getting you back.

It wasn’t until I read Ben’s inscription inside the Dr. Seuss book that I remembered a note from Huckleberry’s files. It’s been there from the beginning, or at least since I started my annual reading ritual on the anniversary of your birthday. Why is it that we always neglect the things that matter most? This is a universal question, because through the days and weeks and months and years after your disappearance, I understood that I did not cherish you enough. I never told you that I loved you enough. I never held you enough. I never listened to you enough.

You would likely tell me (as your mother has) that I could rectify this deficit with your sisters, but it is human nature to yearn for the things we cannot have.

Have I told you about Claire’s new young man, Paul? He certainly yearns for Claire, though she has made it clear that he can have her. The match is an uneven one.

Claire is a vibrant, beautiful young woman. Paul is neither vibrant nor particularly attractive.

After meeting him, your mother and I had some fun at the boy’s expense. She called him Bartleby, after the well-­known scrivener: “pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn.” I likened him more to some form of rat terrier: arrogant. Easily bored. Too smart for his own good. Partial to ugly sweaters. I opined that he is the kind of man who, absent the right kind of attention, can do great harm.

Is this last sentence revisionist thinking? Because I can clearly remember sharing your mother’s Bartleby appraisal the first time we met Paul: annoying and harmless and likely to soon be shown the door.

It is only now that I see the meeting in a more sinister light.

Claire brought him home during the Georgia–Auburn game. In the past, I have always felt slightly sorry for any man Claire brings home. You can see it in their eager eyes that they think this is something—­meeting the girl’s parents, touring the town where she grew up, just around the corner is love, marriage, the baby carriage, etc. Sadly for these young men, the opposite tends to be true. For Claire, a trip to Athens typically heralds the end of a relationship. For your baby sister, this town is tainted. The streets are tainted. The house is tainted. Perhaps we—­your mother and I—­are tainted, too.

Pepper had warned us in advance about Claire’s new beau. She seldom approves of her sister’s boyfriends (likewise, Claire never approves of hers; I feel certain you would have been their tie breaker), but in this instance, Pepper’s description of Paul was not only alarming, but also spot-­on. I have rarely had such a visceral reaction to a person. He reminds me of the worst kind of student I used to have—­the kind who is certain that they already know everything worth knowing (which invariably leads to an animal’s unnecessary suffering).

If I am being honest, the thing about Paul Scott that bothered me the most was the way he touched my daughter in front of me. I am not an old-­fashioned man. Public displays of

affection are more likely to make me smile than blush.

And yet.

There was something about the way this man touched my youngest child that set my teeth on edge. His arm linked through hers as they walked up to the house. His hand stayed at her back as they climbed the stairs. His fingers laced through hers as they walked through the door.

Reading back that last paragraph, it all sounds so innocuous, the typical gestures of a man who is making love to a woman, but I must tell you, sweetheart, that there was something so deeply unsettling about the way he touched her. His hand literally never left her body. Not once the entire time they were in front of me. Even when they sat on the couch, Paul held her hand until she was settled, then he threw his arm around her shoulders and spread his legs wide, as if the girth of his testicles had turned his kneecaps into oppositely polarized magnets.

Your mother and I exchanged several glances.

He is a man who is comfortable airing his opinions, and confident that every single word that comes out of his mouth is not just correct, but fascinating. He has money, which is evident from the car he drives and the clothes he wears, but there is nothing moneyed about his attitude. His arrogance comes from his intelligence, not from his wallet. And it must be said that he is clearly a brilliant young man. His ability to at least sound informed on any subject matter points to a voracious memory. He clearly understands details if not nuance.