And hired a private detective to follow them around for the rest of their lives so that he could still exert control over them from his lair over the garage.
But was that cheating? Claire knew from her training at the crisis center that rape was about power. Paul certainly liked controlling things. So, was raping women the equivalent of turning all the cans in the pantry label-out or loading the dishwasher with mechanical precision?
“Claire?” Lydia snapped her fingers very loudly. “Look at me.”
Claire tried her best to look at her sister. She’d always thought that Lydia was the prettiest of all of them. Her face was fuller, but she’d aged more gracefully than Claire would’ve thought. She had laugh lines around her eyes. She had a beautiful, accomplished daughter. She had a boyfriend who was a recovering heroin addict who listened to talk radio while he worked on an old truck in his driveway.
Why did Paul need to know that? Why did he need to know anything about Lydia at all? Was it stalking if you hired someone else to do it? And wasn’t watching someone without their knowledge another form of rape?
Lydia asked, “Claire, what did you take?” Her voice softened. She rubbed Claire’s arms. “Sweetpea, tell me what you took.”
“Valium.” Claire suddenly wanted to cry. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had called her Sweetpea. “Some Percocet.”
“How many?”
Claire shook her head because it didn’t matter. None of this mattered. “We had a cat named Mr. Sandwich.”
Lydia was understandably perplexed. “Okay.”
“We called him Hammy, like ham in a sandwich. He was always between us. On the couch. In the bed. He only purred when we were both petting him.”
Lydia tilted her head to the side like she was trying to understand a crazy person.
“Cats know people.” Claire was sure her sister understood this. They had grown up surrounded by animals. None of them could walk through a parking lot without attracting a stray. “If Paul had been a bad person, Hammy would’ve known.” Claire knew she was offering a weak defense, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Isn’t that what you hear, that bad people hate animals?”
Lydia shook her head in confusion. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Claire. Hitler loved dogs.”
“Reductio ad Hitlerum.” Claire couldn’t stop quoting Paul. “It’s when you compare someone to Hitler to win an argument.”
“Are we arguing?”
“Tell me what happened between you and Paul.”
Lydia let out that heavy sigh again. “Why?”
“Because I’ve never heard it before.”
“You wouldn’t let me tell you before. You refused to listen.”
“I’m listening now.”
Lydia glanced around the foyer, making the point that Claire had barely invited her past the front door. What her sister didn’t understand was that Claire could not bear the thought of seeing the cold, soulless house through Lydia’s eyes.
“Please,” Claire begged. “Please, Pepper. Tell me.”
She threw up her hands, as if to dismiss this entire exercise as not worth her time. Still, Lydia said, “We were in his car. The Miata. He put his hand on my knee. I slapped it away.”
Claire realized she was holding her breath. “That was it?”
“You really think that’s it?” Lydia sounded angry. Claire supposed she had every right to be. “He kept driving, and I thought, Okay, we’re just going to ignore that my sister’s loser boyfriend put his hand on my knee. But then he took a turn onto a road I didn’t know, and we were suddenly in the woods.” Lydia’s voice had gone soft. Instead of looking at Claire, she was staring over her shoulder. “He pulled over. He turned off the engine. I asked him what was going on, and he punched me in the face.”
Claire felt her own fists clench. Paul had never hit anyone in his life. Even in the alley when he was fighting the Snake Man, Paul hadn’t managed to land a punch.
Lydia said, “I was dazed. He started to climb on top of me. I tried to fight back. He punched me again, but I turned my head.” She turned her head slightly, an actor trying to convince the audience. “I reached for the door handle. I don’t know how I managed to get it open. I fell out of the car. He was on top of me. I brought up my knee.” She paused, and Claire remembered a self-defense class she had taken. The instructor had drilled it into them that you couldn’t count on disabling a man by kneeing him in the groin because it was more likely you would miss the mark and piss him off even more.
Lydia continued, “I started running. I got about twenty, maybe thirty feet away before he tackled me. I fell flat on my face. And he got on top of me.” She looked down at the floor. Claire couldn’t help but wonder if she was doing it to look more vulnerable. “I couldn’t breathe. He was crushing me. I could feel my ribs bending like they were going to break.” She put her hand to her ribs. “And he kept saying, ‘Tell me you want this.’”
Claire felt her heart stop mid-beat.
“I still have nightmares about the way he said it—whispering, like it was sexy, when it was just so fucking creepy.” Lydia shuddered. “Sometimes, I’ll fall asleep on my stomach, and I’ll hear his voice in my ear and …”
Claire opened her mouth so that she could breathe. She could almost feel the flex in her own ribs from when Paul had pressed her into the brick wall. He had whispered, Tell me you want this, into Claire’s ear. She’d thought it was silly at the time. Paul had never talked to her like that before, but he hadn’t let up until Claire had said the exact words back to him.
She asked Lydia, “What did you do next?”
Lydia gave a half-shrug. “I didn’t have a choice. I told him that I wanted it. He ripped down my pants. I still have scars on my leg where his nails gouged the skin.”
Claire put her hand on her own leg where Paul had scraped away the skin. “And then?”
“He was undoing his belt buckle. I heard whistling, like really loud, whistling. It was a couple of guys. They were walking in the woods and they thought we were making out. I started screaming for my life. Paul jumped up. He ran back toward the car. One of the guys chased after him and the other helped me up. They wanted to call the police, but I told them no.”
“Why?”
“I’d just gotten bailed out of jail for the billionth time. Paul was an upstanding grad student with two jobs. Who would you believe?”
She knew whom Claire had believed. “The two guys—”
“Were gay men looking for a hook-up in a South Alabama forest. The cops would’ve known that the minute they opened their mouths.” She shook her head at the futility of it all. “And I didn’t really care about me at that point. My only concern was getting him away from you.”
Claire put her hand to her forehead. She felt feverish. They were still standing in the foyer. She should’ve invited Lydia in. She should’ve taken her to her office and sat with her. “Do you want a drink?”
“I told you, I’m in recovery.”
Claire knew that. Paul’s detectives had sat in on Lydia’s meetings and recorded her every word. “I need a drink.” Claire found her wine glass on the floor. She swallowed the dregs in one go. She closed her eyes and waited. There was no relief.