recognize you without a phone in front of your face.”
Dee rolled her eyes. “You’re not coming to my game because we suck, right, not because you’re still mad about the permission slip?”
Lydia felt awful that her daughter could even think such a thing. “Honey, it’s all about your poor performance. You’re just too painful to watch.”
“Okay, as long as you’re sure.”
“Positive. You are terrible.”
“Question answered,” Dee said. “But since we’re being brutally honest, I have something else to tell you.”
Lydia couldn’t handle one more piece of bad news. She stared at the road thinking, pregnant, failing biology, gambling debts, meth habit, genital warts.
Dee said, “I don’t want to be a doctor anymore.”
Lydia felt her heart seize. Doctors had money. They had job security. They had 401(k)s and health insurance. “You don’t have to decide anything right now.”
“But, I kind of do because of the undergrad of it all.” Dee slid her phone into her pocket. This was serious. “I don’t want you to freak out or anything—”
Lydia started to freak out. Sheep herder, farmer, actress, exotic dancer.
“I was thinking I want to be a veterinarian.”
Lydia burst into tears.
“Deedus Christ,” Dee mumbled.
Lydia looked out the side window. She had been fighting tears off and on all day, but this time she wasn’t upset. “My dad was a vet. I wanted to be a vet, but …” She let her voice trail off, because that’s what you did when you were reminding your daughter that a felony drug conviction prevented you from being licensed in any state. “I’m proud of you, Dee. You’ll be a great vet. You’re so good with animals.”
“Thanks.” Dee waited for Lydia to blow her nose. “Also, when I go to college, I want to start using my real name.”
Lydia had been expecting this, but she still felt sad. Dee was making a new start. She wanted a new name to go with it. She told her, “I went by the name ‘Pepper’ until I changed high schools.”
“Pepper?” Dee laughed. “Like Salt-N-Pepa?”
“I wish. My dad said it came from my grandmother. The first time she looked after me, she said, ‘That child has hell and pepper in her hair.’” Lydia saw this required further explanation. “I was a handful when I was a kid.”
“Wow, you’ve really changed a lot.”
Lydia poked her in the ribs. “Julia’s the one who started calling me Pepper.”
“Your sister?” Dee’s head had turtled down her neck. Her voice sounded tentative.
“It’s okay to talk about her.” Lydia willed her lips to turn up into a smile, because talking about Julia was always hard. “Is there anything you want to know?”
Dee obviously wanted to know more than Lydia could tell her, but she asked, “Do you think you’ll ever find her?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart. It was a long time ago.” Lydia rested her head in her hand. “We didn’t really have DNA back then, or twenty-four-hour news cycles, or the Internet. One of the things they never found was her pager.”
“What’s a pager?”
“It’s like text messaging, but you can only leave a phone number.”
“That sounds stupid.”
“Well.” Maybe it sounded stupid to someone who could hold a tiny computer with access to the entire world’s knowledge in her hand. “You look like her. Did you know that?”
“Julia was beautiful.” Dee sounded dubious. “Like, really beautiful.”
“You’re really beautiful too, sweetheart.”
“Whatever.” Dee took out her phone, ending the conversation. She slowly sunk back into the Posture (automobile).
Lydia watched the wipers valiantly battle the rain. She was crying again, but not the humiliating, sobby cries that she’d been struggling against all morning. First Paul Scott and now Julia. Today was apparently her day to be overwhelmed by old memories. Though, admittedly, Julia was never far from Lydia’s mind.
Twenty-four years ago, Julia Carroll had been a nineteen-year-old freshman at the University of Georgia. She was studying journalism, because in 1991 there was still such a thing as having a career as a journalist. Julia had gone to a bar with a group of friends. No one remembered a particular man paying closer attention to her than the others, but there must have been at least one, because that night at the bar was the last time anyone ever reported seeing Julia Carroll again.
Ever. They’d never even found her body.
This was why Lydia had raised a child who could change a flat tire in three minutes and who knew that you never, ever let an abductor take you to a second location: because Lydia had witnessed firsthand what can happen to teenage