“Julia was beautiful.” Dee sounded dubious. “Like, really beautiful.”
“You’re really beautiful too, sweetheart.”
“Whatever.” Dee took out her phone, ending the conversation. She slowly sunk back into the Posture (automobile).
Lydia watched the wipers valiantly battle the rain. She was crying again, but not the humiliating, sobby cries that she’d been struggling against all morning. First Paul Scott and now Julia. Today was apparently her day to be overwhelmed by old memories. Though, admittedly, Julia was never far from Lydia’s mind.
Twenty-four years ago, Julia Carroll had been a nineteen-year-old freshman at the University of Georgia. She was studying journalism, because in 1991 there was still such a thing as having a career as a journalist. Julia had gone to a bar with a group of friends. No one remembered a particular man paying closer attention to her than the others, but there must have been at least one, because that night at the bar was the last time anyone ever reported seeing Julia Carroll again.
Ever. They’d never even found her body.
This was why Lydia had raised a child who could change a flat tire in three minutes and who knew that you never, ever let an abductor take you to a second location: because Lydia had witnessed firsthand what can happen to teenage girls who are raised to think that the worst thing that can happen to them is they don’t get asked to the prom.
“Mom, you missed the turn.”
Lydia tapped the brakes. She checked the mirrors and backed up. A car swerved around her, horn blaring.
Dee’s thumbs blurred across the bottom of her phone. “You’re gonna end up killing yourself in a car accident and I’m gonna be an orphan.”
Lydia had only herself to blame for this kind of hyperbole.
She drove around the school and pulled into a parking space in the back. Instead of the Valhalla that was the Westerly Intramural Sporting Complex, the gym behind Booker T. Washington High School in downtown Atlanta was a 1920s red-brick structure that more closely resembled the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.
Lydia scanned the parking lot, because that’s what she always did before she unlocked the doors.
“I’ll get a ride home from Bella.” Dee grabbed her gym bag off the back seat. “See you tonight.”
“I need to go in.”
Dee looked horrified by the prospect. “Mom, you said—”
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
Dee got out of the car. “You pee all the time.”
“Thank you for that.” Between thirty-two hours of labor and the looming specter of menopause, Lydia was lucky her bladder wasn’t hanging between her knees like a cow’s udder.
She turned around to retrieve her purse from the back seat. Lydia stayed there, making sure Dee went into the building. And then she heard the click of the driver’s-side door opening. Instinctively, Lydia swung around with her fists up, screaming, “No!”
“Lydia!” Penelope Ward had her arms over her head. “It’s me!”
Lydia wondered if it was too late to punch her.
Penelope said, “Gosh, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I’m fine,” Lydia lied. Her heart was down by her bladder. “I was just dropping off Dee. I can’t talk right now. I have a funeral to go to.”
“Oh, no. Whose?”
Lydia hadn’t thought that far ahead. “A friend. An old teacher. Miss Clavel.” She was really talking too much. “That’s all there is. There isn’t any more.”
“Okay, but a quick word.” Penelope was still blocking the open door. “Remember how I told you about the International Festival?”
Lydia bumped the gear into reverse. “Just send me whatever recipe you want and I’ll—”
“Super! You’ll have it by three o’clock today.” Penelope was good about setting her own deadlines. “But, listen, are you still in touch with the band?”
Lydia edged her foot toward the gas.
“It jogged my memory when you said you grew up in Athens. I went to UGA.”
Lydia should’ve guessed by the pastel sweater sets and blowjobby pucker to her lips.
“I saw you perform a zillion times. Liddie and the Spoons, right? God, those were the days. Whatever happened to those gals? Probably ended up married with a ton of kids, am I right?”
“Yep.” If you mean incarcerated, divorced four times and keeping a punch card in her wallet from the Women’s Health Center so she can get her tenth abortion for free. “We’re all just a bunch of old ladies.”
“So,” Penelope was still blocking the door, “you’ll ask them, right? What a kick Dee would get out of seeing her mom on stage.”
“Oh, she’d be thrilled. I’ll email you about it, okay?” Lydia had to get out of here with or without the minivan door intact. She eased her foot off the brake. Penelope walked alongside her. “Need to go now.” Lydia motioned for her to get out of the way. “Need to close the door.” She tapped her foot on the gas.
Finally, Penelope stepped back so she wouldn’t get knocked down. “I look forward to receiving your email!”
Lydia hit the gas so hard that the minivan lurched. God, this really was her day to have her shitty past dredged up and thrown like a pile of steaming cow manure at her feet. She’d love to get Penelope Ward and the band together. They would eat her alive. Literally. The last time the Spoons had been in the same room together, two of them ended up in the hospital with severe bite marks.
Was that the first time Lydia had been arrested? It was definitely the first time her father had bailed her out of jail. Sam Carroll had been equal parts mortified and heartbroken. Of course, at that point in his life, there were very few pieces of his heart left that were big enough to shatter. Julia had been gone for five years by then. Her father had had five years of sleepless nights. Five years of suspended grief. Five years of filling his head with all the terrible things that might have been done to his eldest daughter.
“Daddy,” Lydia sighed. She wished that he had lived long enough to see Lydia straightened out. She really wished that he’d met Dee. He would’ve loved her dry sense of humor. And maybe knowing Dee, holding his granddaughter in his arms, would’ve kept his poor, broken heart beating a few more years.
Lydia stopped at a red light. There was a McDonald’s on the right. Lydia still needed to go to the bathroom, but she knew if she went inside, she’d order everything on the menu. She stared at the light until it turned. Her foot went to the gas.
Fifteen more minutes passed before she pulled into the Magnolia Hills Memorial Gardens. She’d told Penelope Ward that she was going to a funeral, but she felt more like she was going to a birthday party. Her birthday party. The Lydia who didn’t have to worry about Paul Scott anymore was officially four days old.
She should’ve brought a hat.
The rain picked up as soon as Lydia stepped out of the van. She popped open the back and found an umbrella that would open. The hem of her dress wicked up rainwater. She scanned the cemetery, which was gardenlike and hilly with lots of magnolias, just as advertised. She pulled a sheet of paper out of her purse. Lydia loved the Internet. She could Google Earth the Mothers’ houses, look up how much they’d paid for their idiotic designer outfits, and, more important to today’s task, print out a map leading to Paul Scott’s gravesite.