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.”