Pretty Girls

“Claire?” Lydia had relaxed her stranglehold on the steering wheel. “I think we need more information.”

Just the thought made Claire cringe. “What do you mean?”

“The county’s online records only go back ten years. Has Paul always owned the house?”

“Does that matter?”

“I just wonder if there were other Mrs. Fullers.”

Claire stared at the road. The problem with being around Lydia was that she easily thought the worst of Paul. “You think he buried them in the backyard?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.” Claire leaned her head into her hand. She didn’t want Lydia here, but she couldn’t imagine doing this without her. She had forgotten how annoying it was to have a sister.

Lydia signaled to merge onto the interstate. By way of an olive branch, she offered, “Dad always hated driving on Sundays.”

Claire didn’t want to, but she smiled. When her father was teaching her to drive, he’d warned her that Sunday was the most dangerous day to be on the road. He’d said that ­people were tired and grumpy from sitting in church for hours in scratchy clothes, and that they drove like bats out of hell when they were finally released.

Lydia asked, “What were you doing at the McDonald’s yesterday?”

Claire told her the truth. “Wondering if it would be impolite to throw up in the bathroom without ordering something.”

“I think they’re used to it.” Lydia accelerated into the fast lane. For someone who had complained so much about the car, she seemed to be enjoying the ride. “What do you think Nolan’s going to do when you don’t show up at his office?”

“I guess it depends. If what he’s doing is legitimate, then he’ll put out an APB on me. If it’s not, then he’ll start calling me again, or go by the house.”

“You left the garage door open. All he has to do is go inside and look at Paul’s laptop.”

“Let him.” Claire couldn’t see the point of trying to hide the movies. She was the one who’d turned them over to the police in the first place. “The same rules apply. If Nolan is there legitimately, then he’ll have a search warrant. If he’s not, then he can take the hard drive and shove it up his ass.”

“Maybe he’ll be there when Adam picks up the USB drive.”

“Great. They can watch the movies and jerk off together.”

Lydia didn’t laugh. “Can I ask you something?”

Claire studied her sister. She wasn’t the type to ask for permission. “What?”

“What do you do all day? Do you have a job or what?”

Claire sensed a loaded question. Lydia probably assumed she sat around all day eating bonbons and spending Paul’s money. To be fair, sometimes she did, but other times Claire felt she made up for it. “I volunteer a lot. The humane shelter. The food bank. The USO.” She might as well be making a list of all the things that were important to her father. “I was helping at the Innocence Project for a while, but a case came through with Ben Carver’s name on it.” Ben Carver had been one of two serial killers who had strung their father along. “I took French and German to travel on. I still play the piano. I cut the grass if it needs it and it’s not too hot. I used to play tennis three or four hours a day, but for some reason no one will play with me anymore.” She asked Lydia, “What about you?”

“I work. I go home. I go to sleep. I get up and work again.”

Claire nodded, as if she didn’t know otherwise. “You dating anybody?”

“Not really.” Lydia darted around a slow-­moving Mercedes. “Does Mom know you’ve talked to me?” She acted like the question was spontaneous, but the rawness in her voice gave her away.

“I didn’t tell her,” Claire admitted. “But only because I was upset, and I knew if I called her she would hear it in my voice and get the truth out of me.”

“What’s the truth?”

“That you weren’t lying, and that the fact that you weren’t lying meant that Paul was, which means that my eighteen-­year marriage was complete and utter bullshit and my husband was a psychopath.”

Lydia tucked her chin into her neck, but for once, she kept her mouth closed.

Claire realized, “I haven’t apologized to you for what I did.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“I’m sorry,” she tried, but the two words seemed so small compared with the enormity of what she’d taken away. “I should’ve believed you.” Claire knew that wasn’t quite right, either. She couldn’t imagine a scenario at that point in their lives where she might have trusted Lydia. “Even if I didn’t believe you, I should’ve never let you go.”

Lydia had her head turned away. She sniffed.

Claire looked down at her sister’s hand. She didn’t know whether or not to touch her. “I’m sorry, Pepper. I abandoned you. I made Mom abandon you.”

“You couldn’t make Mom do anything she didn’t want to do.”

“I’m not so sure about that.” For the first time, Claire considered the full implications of what she had actually done. She hadn’t just cut Lydia out of her own life.

She had excised her from what was left of her family. “Mom was terrified of losing another child. I knew that and I worked it in my favor because I was so angry at you. I forced her into a Sophie’s choice.” Claire thought this might be the only situation where that phrase was even mildly applicable. “I was wrong. I’m so profoundly sorry for what I did to you. To our family.”

“Well”—­Lydia wiped away tears—­“I was pretty messed up back then. Everything you said was true. I stole from all of you. I lied all of the time.”

“But you never lied about something like that, and I should’ve seen it.” Claire laughed at the gross understatement. “Obviously, I didn’t see a lot of things.”

Lydia’s throat worked as she fought back more tears.

Claire didn’t know what else to say. That she was proud of her sister for getting clean and pulling herself up from dire poverty? That her daughter was beautiful and accomplished and clearly amazing? That her boyfriend obviously worshipped her? Everything she knew about Lydia’s life had come from Paul’s private detectives.

Which mea

nt that even though Claire had bared the dark, rotted soul of her marriage, Lydia still didn’t trust her with the truth about her own life.

“So.” Lydia was obviously ready to change the subject. She waved her hand at the touch screen. “Does this thing have a radio?”

“It can play any song you want.” Claire touched the media icon. “Just say out loud what you want to hear and it’ll find it on the Internet and play it.”

“No way.”

“Welcome to the one percent.” Claire split the display. She felt like the eager young kid at the Tesla dealership as she swiped through the different screens. “You can read your email, see how much battery power you have left, go on the Internet.”

Claire stopped. When she’d touched the Internet icon, the system reloaded the last page Paul had looked at. Feedly.com was a news aggregator that operated along the same lines as Google alerts, but with news stories.

Paul had entered only one name into the search engine.

Lydia asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Pull over.”

“Why?”

“Pull over.”

Lydia gave a heavy sigh, but she still did as Claire ordered. The rumble strips roared inside the car as they coasted to a stop on the side of the interstate.

Lydia asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Paul set an alert for any news on Anna Kilpatrick. The last one came in two minutes ago.”

Lydia grabbed her purse and pulled out her glasses. “What are you waiting for?”

Claire tapped her finger on the most recent alert, a link from Channel 2, an Atlanta ABC affiliate.

The top of the home page showed a black box for streaming video. The red banner read: “LIVE! BREAKING NEWS IN THE ANNA KILPATRICK CASE.” A spinning circle indicated the video was buffering. Claire turned up the sound. They both waited, eyes focused on the spinning circle.