Pretty Girls (54 page)

What was Lydia doing? She looked down at her hand. The fingers had all but disappeared inside what was left of Paul’s knee. She could feel his tremors resonating straight into her heart.

Into her soul.

She forced herself to withdraw her hand. Taking away his pain was one of the hardest things she had ever done. But no matter what hell Paul Scott had visited on Lydia and her family, she wasn’t going to turn into Paul, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to let her baby sister.

“Where is she, Paul?” Lydia tried to appeal to what little humanity Paul had left. “You’re going to die. You know that. It’s just a matter of time. Tell us where Julia is. Do one decent thing before you go.”

A thread of blood slipped from Paul’s mouth. He told Claire, “I really did love you.”

Lydia asked, “Where is she?”

Paul would not look away from Claire. “You were the only good thing I ever did.”

Claire tapped the muzzle of the gun against her leg.

He said, “Look at me. Please, just one more time.”

She shook her head. She stared out at the field behind the house.

He said, “You know that I love you. You were the only part of me that was normal.”

Claire shook her head again. She was crying. Even in the rain, Lydia could see the tears streaming down her face.

“I was never going to leave you.” Paul was crying, too. “I love you. I promise, Claire. I love you with my dying breath.”

Claire finally looked down at her husband. Her mouth opened, but only to take in air. Her eyes tracked back and forth like she couldn’t quite understand what was in front of her.

Was she seeing the old Paul in this moment, the insecure grad student who so desperately wanted her to love him? Or was she seeing the man who had filmed those movies? The man who for twenty-four years had kept the dark secret that had haunted her family?

Paul reached up to Claire. “Please. I’m dying. Just give me this. Please.”

She shook her head, but Lydia could tell her resolve was breaking.

So could Paul. He said, “Please.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Claire knelt down beside him. She let the gun fall to the grass. She placed her hand over his. She was helping him staunch the wound, helping him stay alive.

Paul coughed. Blood spit between his lips. He tightened his grip on his wounded neck. “I love you. No matter what, always know that I love you.”

Claire held back a sob. She stroked his cheek. She brushed the hair out of his eyes. She gave him a sad smile and said, “You stupid asshole. I know you put Julia in the well.”

Lydia would have missed Paul’s shocked looked if she hadn’t been watching his face. He quickly rearranged his expression into one of open delight. “My God, you were always so clever.”

“I was, wasn’t I?” Claire was still leaning over him. Lydia thought she was going to kiss him, but instead, Claire peeled his hand away from his wounded neck. Paul struggled to resist, to stop the flow of blood, but Claire held tight to his hand. She pushed him onto his back. His strength was gone. He couldn’t stop the blood. He couldn’t stop Claire. She straddled his waist. She pinned down both of his wrists. She kept looking him in the eye, drinking in every change that crossed his face—the disbelief, the fear, the desperation. His heart was frantically pounding. Every beat sent out a fresh spray of arterial blood. Claire did not look away when his mouth gaped open, or when rain thumped the back of his throat. She held his gaze as the spray from his neck turned into a steady flow. As his hands unclenched. As his muscles relaxed. As his body slackened. Even when the only indication that Paul was still alive was the heavy wheeze of his breaths and the pink bubbles between his lips, Claire did not look away.

“I see you,” she told him. “I see exactly who you are.”

Lydia was dumbstruck. She couldn’t believe what was happening right in front of her. What she had allowed her sister to do. They couldn’t come back from this. There was no way Claire would ever come back from this.

“Come on.” Claire was talking to Lydia. She stood up. She wiped her bloody hands on her pants like she’d just come in from the garden.

Lydia still couldn’t move. She looked at Paul. The bubbles had stopped. She could see the flames from the house reflecting in the glassy black of his irises.

A drop of rain hit his eyeball. He didn’t blink.

“Liddie.”

Lydia turned away. Claire was in the back yard. The rain was really coming down now. Claire didn’t seem to notice. She was kicking at the grass, pushing her way through the overgrowth.

“Come on,” Claire called. “Help me.”

Somehow, Lydia managed to leverage herself up. She was still in shock. That was the only reason the pain didn’t stop her. She forced herself to put one foot in front of the other. She made herself ask Claire, “What are you doing?”

“There’s a well!” Claire had to raise her voice to be heard over the rain. She was kicking at the weeds with her bare feet, making wide circles on the ground. “The property taxes said the house was on city water.” Her excitement was barely contained. She had the same breathlessness as when she used to tell Lydia a story about the mean girls at school. “I did a painting for Paul. Years ago. It was from a photograph of the back yard. He showed it to me when we were first dating and he said he loved the view because it reminded him of home, and his parents, and growing up on the farm and there was a barn in the picture, Liddie. A big, scary barn and right beside it was a well with a roof over it. I spent hours trying to get the color right—days, weeks. I can’t believe I forgot about that fucking well.”

Lydia pushed away some tall weeds. She wanted to believe her. She longed to believe her. Could it be that simple? Could Julia really be here?

“I know I’m right.” Claire kicked at the ground under the swing-set. “Paul kept everything the same in the house. Everything. So why would he tear down the barn except to hide the evidence? And why would he cover the well if there wasn’t something in it? You saw his expression when I said that about the well. She has to be here, Pepper. Julia has to be in the well.”

They were all so close, Lydia. Do you want me to tell you how close?

Lydia started kicking through the wet weeds. The wind had changed direction again. She couldn’t imagine a time when she would smell anything but smoke. She looked back at the house. The fire was still going strong, but maybe the rain would keep it from jumping into the grass.

“Liddie!” Claire was standing under the swingset. She banged the ground with her heel. A hollow sound echoed up from deep in the earth.

Claire dropped to her knees. She started digging her fingers into the earth. Lydia dropped down beside her. She used her good hand to feel what her sister had found. The wooden cover was heavy, about an inch thick and three feet round.

“This has to be it,” Claire said. “It has to be it.”

Lydia grabbed handfuls of dirt. Her hand was bleeding. There were blisters from the fire, from the melting foam. Still, she kept digging.

Claire finally moved enough dirt to wedge her fingers underneath the cover. She squatted down like a weightlifter and pulled so hard that the muscles on her neck stood out.

Nothing.

“Dammit.” Claire tried again. Her arms shook from the effort. Lydia tried to help, but she couldn’t make her arm move in that direction. The rain was doing them no favors. Everything felt heavier.

Claire’s fingers slipped. She fell backward into the grass. “Shit!” she screamed, pushing herself back up.

“Try pushing it.” Lydia braced her feet against the cover. Claire helped, using the heels of her hands, putting her back into it.

Lydia felt herself slipping. She dug in the heel of her good hand and pushed so hard that she felt like her legs were going to break in two.

Finally, eventually, they managed to move the heavy piece of wood a few inches.

“Harder,” Claire said.

Lydia didn’t know how much harder she could push. They tried again, this time with Claire beside her using her feet. The cover moved another inch. Then a few more. They both pushed, screaming out the pain and the effort until the cover had moved enough so that their legs were dangling over open earth.

Dirt and rocks fell into the mouth of the well. Rain splattered against water. They both looked down into the endless darkness.

“Dammit!” Claire’s voice echoed back up. “How deep do you think it is?”

“We need a flashlight.”

“There’s one in the car.”

Lydia watched her sister sprint away in her bare feet. Her elbows were bent. She hurdled over a fallen tree. She was so intent on moving forward that she wasn’t stopping to look back at what she had left in her wake.

Paul. She hadn’t just watched him die. She had taken in his death like a hummingbird drawing nectar.

Maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe watching Paul die was the sustenance that Claire needed. Maybe Lydia shouldn’t worry about what they had done to Paul. She should be more concerned about what Paul had done to them.

To their father. To their mother. To Claire. To Julia.

Lydia looked down into the gaping blackness of the well. She tried to listen for the rain hitting the water at the bottom, but there were too many drops to follow the path of just one.

She found a pebble on the ground. She dropped it into the well. She counted seconds. At four seconds, the pebble splashed into the water.

How far could a rock travel in four seconds? Lydia reached down into the darkness. She ran her hand along the rough rocks, trying not to think about spiders. The rocks were uneven. Mortar was chipping away. If she was careful, maybe she could get a foothold. She leaned in farther. She swept her hand back and forth. The mortar felt dry. Her fingers brushed across a vine.

Except it was too delicate to be a vine. It was thin. Metal. A bracelet? A necklace?

Carefully, Lydia tried to pick the chain away from the wall. The resistance changed, and she guessed it was stuck on something. She couldn’t reach her other hand down to pull it away. She looked back over her shoulder. Claire was in the distance. The flashlight was on. She was running. Her feet were going to be cut up from the forest. She probably couldn’t feel it now because of the bitter cold.

Lydia groaned as she leaned farther into the well. She let her fingers walk along the chain. She felt a solid metal piece, almost like a coin, stuck between the rocks in the wall. There was a shape to it, not round but maybe oval. She traced her thumb along the smooth edges. Carefully, Lydia pried out the coin, rocking it gently back and forth until it came loose from the crevice. She wound the chain around her fingers and pulled her arm out of the well.

She looked down at the necklace in her hand. The gold locket was shaped like a heart and engraved with a cursive L. It was the sort of thing a boy would give you in the ninth grade because you let him kiss you and he thought that meant you were going steady.

Lydia couldn’t remember the boy’s name, but she knew that Julia had stolen the locket from her jewelry box, and that she was wearing it the day she had disappeared.

Claire said, “It’s your locket.”

Lydia rolled the cheap chain between her fingers. She had thought it was so expensive. He’d probably paid five bucks for it at the Ben Franklin.

Claire sat down. She turned off the flashlight. She was breathing hard because of the run. Lydia was breathing hard because of what they were about to do. Thick smoke rolled across the faint sunlight. The air was frigid. The condensation from their combined breaths mingled together over the locket.

This was the moment. Twenty-four years of searching, longing, knowing, not knowing, and all they could do was sit in the rain.

Claire said, “Julia used to sing Bon Jovi in the shower. Do you remember that?”

Lydia let herself smile. “‘Dead or Alive.’”

“She always ate all the popcorn at the movies.”

“She loved licorice.”

“And dachshunds.”

They both made a sour face.

Claire said, “She liked that gross guy with the mullet. What was his name? Brent Lockhart?”

“Lockwood,” Lydia remembered. “Dad made him get a job at McDonald’s.”

“He smelled like grilled beef.”

Lydia laughed, because Julia the vegetarian had been appalled. “She broke up with him a week later.”

“She let him get to second base anyway.”

Lydia looked up. “She told you that?”

“I spied on them from the stairs.”

“You were always such a brat.”

“I didn’t tattle.”

“For once.”

They both looked back down at the locket. The gold had worn off the back. “I meant what I told you on the phone. I forgive you.”

Claire wiped rain out of her eyes. She didn’t look like she would ever forgive herself. “I sent out an email—”

“Tell me later.”

There were so many more important things to catch up on. Lydia wanted to watch Dee meet her crazy aunt. She wanted to hear Rick and Helen discussing the inherent evil of eBooks. She wanted to hold her daughter. She wanted to gather up her dogs and her cats and her family and be made whole again.

Claire said, “All Daddy ever wanted was to find her.”

“It’s time.”

Claire turned on the flashlight. The light reached down to the bottom of the well. The body had come to rest in a shallow pool of water. The skin had fallen off. No sunlight had bleached the bones.

The locket. The long blonde hair. The silver bangles.

Julia.

TWENTY-FOUR

Claire lay on Julia’s bed with her head propped up on Mr. Biggles, Julia’s favorite stuffed animal. The ancient, shaggy dog had barely survived their childhood. Jean Nate After Bath Splash suffused his stuffing. His legs had been dipped in Kool-Aid as payback for a purloined book. Part of his nose had been burned off in a stealthy bit of retribution for a stolen hat. In a fit of pique, someone had snipped the fur on his head down to the cotton batting.

Lydia didn’t look much better. Her singed hair was growing back, but six weeks out from their ordeal, her bruises were still a nasty black and yellow. The cuts and burns had only recently started to scab. The area around her fractured eye socket was still red and swollen. Her left arm would be in a sling for another two weeks, but she had become remarkably adept at doing almost everything with one hand, including folding Julia’s clothes.