Claire realized he was dismissing her. She stood up. “Thank you.”
Mayhew stood up, too. “The best thing you can do for yourself is forget about this, all right? Your husband was a good guy. You had a solid marriage. Almost twenty years and you still loved each other. That’s something to hold on to.”
Claire nodded. She was feeling sick again.
Mayhew placed his hand on the hard drive. “Looks like you took this right from his computer.”
“Sorry?”
“The drive. It was connected directly to his computer, right?”
Claire didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Good.” Mayhew put his hand to her back and led her out of the office. “We wouldn’t want any copies floating around. Like on a back-up? Or another computer?”
“I checked. It was only on the hard drive.”
“What about his laptop? Didn’t Quinn say something about Paul’s laptop?”
“I already checked it.” She had no idea where the damn thing even was. “There’s nothing else.”
“All right.” His fingers curved around her waist as he steered her toward the last corridor. “You let me know if anything else comes up. Just give me a call and I’ll head right over and take it off your hands.”
Claire nodded. “Thank you for your help.”
“Any time.” He walked her across the small lobby and held open the glass door.
Claire held on to the railing as she navigated her way down the stairs. The overhead lights sent a glimmer through the rain as she crossed the parking lot. The entire time, she felt Mayhew’s eyes on her. She didn’t turn until she had reached the Tesla.
The doorway was empty. Mayhew was gone.
Was she being paranoid? Claire wasn’t sure about anything anymore. She opened the car door. She was about to get in when she saw the note on the windshield.
She recognized Adam Quinn’s handwriting.
I really need those files. Please don’t make me do this the hard way. AQ
SIX
Lydia lay on the couch with her head on Rick’s lap. Two dogs were on the floor in front of her, a cat was curled into her side, and the hamster was either running a marathon on its wheel or the parakeet in Dee’s room was scraping its beak on the side of the cage. The fish in the fifty-gallon tank were blissfully quiet.
Rick absently ran his fingers through her hair. They were watching the ten o’clock news because they were both too pathetic to stay up until eleven. The police had released a composite drawing of a man seen in the vicinity of Anna Kilpatrick’s disabled car. The drawing was almost laughably vague. The guy was either tall or medium height. His eyes were blue or green. His hair was black or brown. There were no tattoos or identifying marks. His own mother probably wouldn’t recognize him.
The report cut to a taped interview with Congressman Johnny Jackson. The Kilpatrick family was from his district, so by law, he had to milk their personal tragedy for every political ounce possible. He droned on about law and order for a few seconds, but when the reporter tried to pull Jackson into speculation about the girl’s well-being, the man fell uncharacteristically silent. Anyone who’d ever read an airport paperback knew that the chances of finding the missing girl alive dwindled with each passing hour.
Lydia closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see images of the Kilpatrick family. Their haggard expressions had become painfully familiar. She could tell they were slowly coming to accept that their little girl would not be coming home. Pretty soon, a year would pass, then another year, then the family would quietly mark the decade anniversary, then two decades, then more. Children would be born. Grandchildren. Marriage vows would be made and broken. And behind every single event would lurk the shadow of this missing sixteen-year-old girl.
Every once in a while, a Google alert on Lydia’s computer found a story that mentioned Julia’s name. Usually it was because a body had been found in the Athens area and the reporter had reached into the archives to find past open cases that might be relevant. Of course, the body was never identified as Julia Carroll. Or Abigail Ellis. Or Samantha Findlay. Or any of the dozens of women who had gone missing since then. There was a depressingly large number of hits for “missing girl + University of Georgia.” Add in “rape” and the tally climbed into the millions.
Had Claire performed these same types of searches? Did she feel the same kind of nausea when an alert came up that a body had been found?
Lydia had never checked the Internet for information on her baby sister. If Claire had a Facebook page or Instagram account, she did not want to see it. Everything that had to do with Claire had to do with Paul. The association was too painful to invite onto her computer screen. And honestly, the anguish of losing Claire was almost more overwhelming than losing Julia. Whatever had happened to her older sister had been a tragedy. Her rift with Claire had been a choice.
Claire’s choice.
And Helen’s, too. The last time Lydia had talked to her mother, Helen had said, “Don’t make me choose between you and your sister.”
To which Lydia had responded, “I think you already have.”
Though Lydia hadn’t spoken to her mother since, she still kept tabs on her. The last time she’d checked the Athens-Clarke County tax records, Helen still lived in their old house on Boulevard, just west of campus. The Banner-Herald ran a nice story when Helen retired from the library after forty years of service. Her colleagues had said that their grammar would never be the same. The obituary for Helen’s second husband mentioned that she had three daughters, which Lydia thought was nice until she realized that someone else had probably written it. Dee hadn’t made the list because they didn’t know she existed. Lydia would likely never remedy the situation. She could not bear the humiliation of having her daughter meet people who held her mother in such low regard.
Lydia often wondered if her family ever looked online for her. She doubted Helen used Google. She had always been a strictly Dewey Decimal kind of gal. There were so many different sides of Helen that Lydia had known. The young, fun-loving mother who organized dance contests and Sweet Valley High sleepovers. The much-feared, cerebral librarian who humiliated the school board when they tried to ban Go Ask Alice from the library. The devastated, paralyzed woman who drank herself to sleep in the middle of the day after her oldest daughter went missing.
And then there was the Helen who warned, “Don’t make me choose,” when she had clearly already made her choice.
Could Lydia blame them for not believing her about Paul? What Claire had said at the cemetery today was mostly true. Lydia had stolen from them. She had lied. She had cheated. She had exploited their emotions. She had banked on their fear of losing another child and basically extorted them for drug money. But that was the thing. Lydia had been a junkie. All of her crimes had been in the service of getting high. Which begged the obvious question that Helen and Claire had apparently never bothered to ask: What could Lydia possibly gain from lying about Paul?
They hadn’t even let her tell the story. Separately, she had tried to tell each of them about riding with Paul in the Miata, the song on the radio, the way Paul had touched her knee, what had happened next, and they had each had the same response: I don’t want to hear it.