sheets properly, which I did because I had time with your father. I want you to hear that, Liddie: I had lots and lots of time with your father.”
Lydia’s mind had gone haywire. It was too much. She couldn’t take in what he was saying.
“When Sam woke up, we watched the tape together. You know the tape I’m talking about? The tape with Julia?” Paul rubbed the sides of his face. His beard was growing in. “I wanted us to watch all of the tapes together, but I was worried the neighbors would hear his screams.” Paul added, “Not that Sam didn’t scream a lot at night anyway, but still.”
Lydia listened to the steady in and out of her own breathing. She rearranged his words in her head until they fell into digestible sentences. Paul had drugged her father. He had made her father watch his oldest daughter being brutally murdered.
“At the end, I debated whether or not to tell Sam where Dad and I had dumped Julia’s body. What’s the harm, right? We both knew he was going to die.” Paul shrugged. “Maybe I should’ve told him. It’s one of those questions you still ask yourself years later. I mean, Sam was so tortured, right? All he wanted to know was where she was, and I knew, but I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him.”
Lydia knew that she should rage against him. She should try to kill him. But she couldn’t move. Her lungs were wet with urine. Her stomach was filled. Her body was seized by pain. There were welts on her arms where he’d electrocuted her. The cut on her forehead had been opened. Her split lip had been torn in two. Her ribs were so bruised that she felt like the bones had turned into knives.
He said, “I used Nembutal. You know what that is, right? They use it to put animals out of their misery. And he was miserable, especially after he watched the tape.” Paul had found the notebook he was looking for. “Here you go.” He held up the page so Lydia could see. The bottom half was torn away. “Look familiar?”
Her father’s suicide note had been written on a torn off-sheet of notebook paper. Lydia could still see his shaky words in her head:
To all of my beautiful girls—I love you with every piece of my heart. Daddy
Paul said, “I think I chose a good line. Don’t you?” He put the notebook back in his lap. “I chose it for Claire, really, because I thought that the line was particularly true about her. All his beautiful girls. You were never really beautiful, Lydia. And Julia—I told you I still visit her sometimes. She’s no longer beautiful. It’s been sad watching her decay over the years. The last time I checked in on her, she was just rotten bones with long strands of dirty blonde hair and those stupid bracelets she used to wear on her wrist. You remember those?”
Bangles. Julia had worn bangles on her left wrist and a big, black bow in her hair and she’d stolen Lydia’s saddle oxfords to complete the outfit because she’d said they looked better on her anyway.
Suddenly, Lydia had too much saliva in her mouth. She tried to swallow. Her throat spasmed. She coughed.
“Don’t you want to know where Julia is?” Paul asked. “It’s really the one thing that broke you all apart. Not her disappearance, not her probable death, but the never knowing. Where is Julia? Where is my sister? Where is my daughter? The not-knowing completely destroyed every single one of you. Even Grandma Ginny, though the old bitch likes to act like the past is past.”
Lydia felt herself start to slip back into that in-between space. There was no use listening to him anymore. She already knew everything she needed to know. Dee and Rick loved her. Helen had not given up. Lydia had forgiven Claire. Two days ago, she would’ve panicked if someone had told her that she had a finite amount of time to settle all of her affairs, but when she got down to it, her family was really the only thing that mattered.
“I visit Julia sometimes.” Paul was studying her face to gauge his words. “If you had a dying wish, wouldn’t it be to know where Julia is?”
Apple Macintosh, dot-matrix printer, five-inch floppy disks, duping machine, disk burner.
“I’m going to read you some selections from your father’s journals, and then I’m going to waterboard you again