Not that Claire was completely heartless. She’d checked on him dozens of times before. She’d run into his room with her heart in her mouth and found him writhing in bed with the sheets tangled around him. He was always embarrassed. She was always conscious of how useless she was to him, how Helen should’ve really been there, but this was the reason that Helen had left in the first place.
“Kind of makes me love your mom less to hear that,” Paul had said when Claire finally told him what life was like after Julia.
Paul.
He had always been Claire’s biggest champion. He always took her side. Even the day he’d bailed her out of jail when everything that had happened was clearly a shitstorm of her own making, Paul had said, “Don’t sweat it. We’ll get a lawyer.”
Eighteen years ago, Lydia had told her that the problem with Paul Scott was that he didn’t see Claire as a normal, imperfect human being. He was blind to her faults. He covered her missteps. He would never challenge her or scare her or infuriate her or stir up any of those fiery emotions that made it worthwhile to put up with a man’s bullshit.
“Why are you saying all of that like it’s a bad thing?” Claire had demanded, because she was desperately lonely, and she was tired of being the girl whose sister had disappeared, or the girl whose sister was an addict, or the girl whose father had killed himself, or the girl who was too pretty for her own good.
She wanted to be something new—something that she chose to be on her own. She wanted to be Mrs. Paul Scott. She wanted a protector. She wanted to be cherished. She wanted to be clever. She certainly didn’t want someone who made her feel like the ground could shift under her feet at any moment. She’d had quite enough of that in her early life, thank you very much.
Besides, it wasn’t like Lydia had found a better alternative. She thrived on insecurity. Every part of her life had been tied up in being popular. She’d started taking pills because all the cool kids were into them. She’d snorted coke because a boyfriend told her that all the fun girls snorted coke. Time and again, Claire had watched her sister ignore the nice, normal guys so she could throw herself at the flakiest, best-looking assholes in the room. The more they ignored her, the more she wanted them.
Which is why it was not surprising to Claire that a month after they had stopped talking to each other, Lydia had married a man named Lloyd Delgado. He was very handsome in a snaggle-toothed kind of way. He was also a cokehead from South Florida with a series of petty arrests on his record. Four months after they married, Lloyd was dead of a drug overdose and Lydia had a court-appointed guardian assigned to protect her unborn child.
Julia Cady Delgado was born eight months after that. For almost a year, they lived in a homeless shelter that offered daycare. Then Lydia got a job at a vet’s office cleaning cages in the back. Then she got promoted to grooming assistant and was able to afford a hotel room that she rented by the week. Dee went to private preschool while Lydia skipped lunch and sometimes dinner.
After two years as an assistant, Lydia got promoted to head groomer. Almost a full year later, she was able to buy a reliable car and rent a one-bedroom apartment. Three years after that, she opened her own grooming business. At first, she would go to clients’ houses in a dilapidated Dodge van with red duct tape for taillights. Then she got a better van and turned it into a mobile grooming venture. Eight years ago, she opened her own storefront. She had two employees. She had a small mortgage on a small ranch house. She dated her next-door neighbor, a man named Rick Butler who looked like a younger, less sexy version of Sam Shepard. She had several dogs and a cat. Her daughter attended Westerly Academy on a scholarship arranged by an anonymous donor.
Well, not really anonymous anymore, because according to the paperwork Claire had found in Paul’s office, he’d been using a shell organization to foot the thirty grand a year for Julia “Dee” Delgado to attend Westerly Academy.
Claire had found Dee’s scholarship essay in the same set of files along with thirty other entries from students all over the metro area. Obviously, the contest was rigged, but Dee’s paper was remarkably cogent compared to the others. Her thesis dealt with how difficult the state of Georgia made life for convicted drug felons. They were denied food and housing assistance. They couldn’t vote. They faced employment discrimination. They were denied scholarship opportunities. They often had no family support system. Considering they had served their time, paid their fines, completed parole and paid taxes, didn’t they deserve the right to full citizenship like the rest of us?
The argument was compelling, even without the benefit of the photographs Claire had on her desk in front of her.
And thanks to the private detectives Paul had hired to track Lydia over the years, there were plenty of photographs for Claire to choose from.
A frazzled-looking Lydia carrying Dee in one arm and a bag of groceries in the other. A clearly exhausted Lydia standing at the bus stop outside the vet’s office. Lydia walking a pack of dogs down a tree-lined street, her face relaxed for a brief moment in time. Climbing into the beat-up Dodge van with the red tape on the taillights. Behind the wheel of the Ford van with the mobile grooming equipment inside. Standing proudly in front of the new storefront. The photo was clearly taken on grand opening day. Lydia was using a giant pair of scissors to cut a yellow ribbon while her daughter and hippie boyfriend proudly looked on.
Dee Delgado. Claire put the pictures in order. Lydia’s child looked so much like Julia that it took Claire’s breath away.
Paul must have thought the same thing when he saw the photographs. He’d never met Julia, but Claire had three scrapbooks full of family photos. She wondered if it was worth putting them side by side and doing a comparison. And then she worried that she hadn’t opened the scrapbooks in years, and if she did so now, would she find something that told her Paul had looked at the scrapbooks, too?
She decided there was no way he hadn’t. Clearly, Paul was obsessed with Lydia. Every September for the past seventeen and a half years, he’d hired a private detective to check in on her. He’d used different agencies each time, but they had all delivered the same type of detailed reports, cataloging the minutiae of Lydia’s life. Credit reports. Background checks. Tax returns. Court orders. Parole reports. Court transcripts, though the legal side had dried up fifteen years ago. There was even a separate note detailing the names and types of animals she owned.
Claire had had absolutely no idea that he was doing this. She imagined that Lydia was likewise clueless, because she knew without a doubt that Lydia would die before she took one red cent from Paul.
The funny thing was that over the years, Paul had occasionally suggested that Claire try to get in touch with Lydia. He’d made noises about how he wished he had family left he could talk to. How Helen wasn’t getting any younger and it might be good for Claire to heal old wounds. Once, he’d even offered to try to look for her, but Claire had said no because she wanted to make it clear to Paul that she would never forgive her sister for lying about him.
“I will never let another person come between us,” Claire had assured him, her voice shaking with the righteous indignation she felt on behalf of her wrongly accused husband.
Had Paul manipulated Claire with Lydia the same way he’d manipulated her with the computer passwords and bank accounts? Claire had easy access to everything, so she felt compelled to look for nothing. Paul had been so very, very cunning, hiding all of his transgressions in plain sight.