At least Claire knew that Paul hadn’t lied about the accident that killed his parents. He didn’t like to talk about it, but Claire had heard all of the details from her mother. Despite the 30,000 students attending the University of Georgia, Athens was still a small town, and the main library, like every library in America, was the center of the community. What Helen hadn’t read in the newspaper she’d gleaned from local gossip.
The Scotts were driving home from a church function when a tractor-trailer hit a patch of ice and jackknifed across the Atlanta Highway. Paul’s father had been decapitated. His mother had lived for several seconds. At least that’s what bystanders reported. They had heard the woman screaming as the car was engulfed in flames.
Paul was terrified of fire. It was the only thing Claire knew of that ever scared him. His burial instructions had specifically stated that he shouldn’t be cremated.
“What is it?” Lydia asked. She had the burner phone in her hand.
“I was just thinking about Paul’s burial instructions.” They hadn’t been laminated, but they were similar to all the other instructions Paul had made for Claire’s benefit. She had found the list inside a folder in her desk that was labeled: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.
He wanted to be buried in his family plot. He wanted a headstone that was similar in size and composition to the ones for his parents. He didn’t want make-up or hair gel or to be embalmed or to have his body placed on view like a mannequin because he deplored the artifice surrounding death. He wanted Claire to pick out a nice suit for him, and good shoes, though what did it matter if he wore shoes, good or otherwise, and how would she know if they had put them on him anyway?
Paul’s last request on the list was the one that was most heartbreaking: He wanted to be buried with his wedding ring and Auburn class ring. Claire had been inconsolable, because she had wanted so badly to honor his wishes, but both rings had been taken by the Snake Man.
“Claire?” Lydia was holding out the phone. She had already dialed in the number listed for Buckminster Fuller.
Claire shook her head. “You do it.”
Lydia turned on the speakerphone. The ringing sound filled the room, bouncing off the stark walls. Claire held her breath. She didn’t know what she was expecting until the phone was answered.
There was a clicking sound like an old answering machine whirring to life. The recording was scratchy, but the voice was unmistakably Paul’s.
He said, “You have reached the Fuller residence. If you’re looking for Buck …”
Claire put her hand to her throat. She knew what was coming next because their own voicemail message followed the same script.
A chirpy woman’s voice said, “… or Lexie!”
Paul finished, “Please leave a message at the—”
A long beep blared from the burner phone’s speaker.
Lydia ended the call.
“Lexie,” Claire nearly spat out the word. She sounded younger than Claire. And happier. And stupider, which should’ve been a consolation but Claire was too consumed with jealousy to care.
Claire stood up. She started pacing.
“Claire—”
“Give me a minute.”
“You can’t really be—”
“Shut up.” Claire turned on her heel and walked back across the length of the room. She couldn’t believe this. And then she chastised herself for not believing it because, really, at this terrible point in her life, what difference did it make?
Lydia pulled the iPad into her lap. She started typing again.
Claire kept pacing from one side of the room to the other. She was well aware that her anger was misdirected, but she had proven on more than one occasion that her anger was fairly uncontrollable.
Lydia said, “I’m not finding a Lexie Fuller, Alex Fuller, Alexander Fuller … Nothing in the county records.” She kept typing. “I’ll try in Madison, Oglethorpe—”
“No.” Claire pressed her hand against the wall, wishing she could push down the house. “What if we find her? Then what?”
“We tell her that her husband’s dead.”
“Why do you keep wanting to dump my problems onto other people?”
“That’s not fair.”
Claire knew she was right, but she didn’t care. “So, I knock on this Lexie’s door and introduce myself, and if she doesn’t tell me to fuck off, which is what I would do in her shoes, I tell her, ‘Oh, by the way, in addition to Paul being a polygamist, he’s a thief and probably a rapist and absolutely a stalker and he got off on watching women being tortured and murdered’?” She pushed away from the wall and started pacing again. “Trust me. She doesn’t want to know.”
“Wouldn’t you want to know?”
“Absolutely not.” Claire was surprised by her decisiveness. She flashed back to the first time she’d sat in front of Paul’s computer.
Red pill/blue pill.
If she could go back, would she choose to live in ignorance? Adam might have eventually told her about the stolen money, but the movies and files would’ve probably remained hidden. Would Claire have gone through the storage area in the basement? Paul was the one with an emotional attachment to silly love notes and the ticket stubs from the first movie they’d ever seen. She had already decided that she couldn’t live in Paul’s dream house without Paul. Claire would’ve probably moved to a smaller house, maybe a condo downtown. She could easily imagine her alternate self calling a shredding service to destroy everything rather than pay to have it put into storage or moved.
Lydia asked, “Was Paul away on business trips a lot?”
She shook her head. “Only for a few days at a time, and he usually took me with him.” Claire figured she might as well say what they had both thought when they saw the swingset in the front yard. “If he had a kid, then he’s a really shitty father.”
Lydia said, “Watkinsville is less than fifteen minutes from a campus filled with coeds.” She waited for Claire to turn around. “What if there are more folders? More women?”
Claire’s mind went to an even darker place. “Is there a basement in that house?”
Lydia didn’t move for several seconds. Finally, she started typing on the iPad again. Claire knelt down beside her. Lydia pulled up the tax records for the Watkinsville address. She traced her finger down the descriptions as she read, “Single family home. Wood siding. Built in 1952. Forced air heating. City water. Septic system. No attic square feet. Basement square feet—none.” She looked at Claire. “No basement.”
Claire slid back down to the floor. She stared out the windows. Sunlight bleached the already-bleached room. “The masked man—that’s not Paul. I know his body.”
“Is it Adam?”
The question hit Claire like a punch to the heart. Adam was around the same height as the masked man. He also had the same light coloring. As far as the rest, she didn’t know. Claire hadn’t been in love with Adam Quinn. She hadn’t spent hours lying beside him, touching and kissing his skin, memorizing his body. “We fucked three times. We never took off all of our clothes. It was always standing up.”
“How romantic.” Lydia put down the iPad. “You’re sure that’s Paul’s voice on the answering machine?”