chair beside his grandmother’s bed when you were taken.
And yet, Kerry Lascala says that she heard him say otherwise.
Your mother would call this kind of thinking crazy-making, and maybe she’s right. I no longer tell your sisters about my leads. The Taco man, the garbage man who was arrested for flashing a grade-schooler, the gardener peeping Tom, the night manager at the 7-Eleven who was caught molesting his niece, are all strangers to them. I have moved my collection of clues into the bedroom so they won’t see it when they visit.
Not that they visit much, though I cannot blame them. They are young women now. They are building their lives. Claire is around the same age as you were when we lost you. Pepper is older, though not wiser. I see her making so many mistakes (the drugs, the uncaring and unavailable boyfriends, the anger that burns so hot she could light an entire city), but I feel like I don’t have the authority to stop her.
Your mother says that all we can do is be there for Pepper when she falls. Maybe she’s right. And maybe she’s right to be worried about this new man in Claire’s life. He tries too hard. He pleases too much. Is it our place to tell her? Or will she figure it out on her own? (Or will he? She has your Grandma Ginny’s wandering eye.)
It’s strange that your mother and I are only ever whole when we talk about your sisters’ lives. We are both of us too wounded to talk about our own. The open sores of our hearts fester if we are together too long. I know your mother looks at me and sees playhouses I built and touch-football games I played and homework I helped with and the millions of times I lifted you in my arms and swung you around like a doll.
Just as when I look at her I see the growing swell of her belly, the gentle look on her face when she rocked you to sleep, the panic in her eyes when your fever spiked and you had to have your tonsils out, and the vexed expression she would get when she realized that you had out-argued her.
I know that your mother belongs to another man now, that she has created a stable life for my children, that she has managed to move on, but when I kiss her, she never resists. And when I hold her, she holds me back. And when we make love, it is my name she whispers.
In that moment, we are finally able to remember all of the good things we had together instead of everything that we have lost.
FIVE
Claire was still soaking wet from her graveside confrontation with Lydia. She sat shivering in the middle of the garage holding a broken tennis racket in her hand. Her weapon of choice. It was the fourth tennis racket she had broken in as many minutes. There wasn’t a cabinet or a tool or a car in the garage that hadn’t met the hard edge of a graphite tennis racket. Bosworth Tennis Tour 96s, custom designed to Claire’s stroke. Four hundred bucks a pop.
She rolled her wrist, which was going to need ice. The hand was already showing a bruise. Her throat was raw from screaming. She stared at her reflection in the side mirror dangling from Paul’s Porsche. Her wet hair was plastered to the shape of her skull. She was wearing the same dress she’d worn to the funeral yesterday afternoon. Her waterproof mascara had finally given up the ghost. Her lipstick had long been chewed off. Her skin was sallow.
She could not remember the last time she had lost her shit like this. Even on the day she’d ended up in jail, Claire had not lost this volume of shit.
She closed her eyes and breathed in the silence of the large room. The BMW’s engine was cooling. She could hear it clicking. Her heart was giving six beats for every one click. She put her hand to her chest and wondered if it was possible for your heart to explode.
Last night, Claire had gone to bed expecting nightmares, but instead of dreaming about being chained to a concrete wall, the masked man coming for her, Claire’s brain had given her something far worse: a highlight reel of some of her most tender moments with Paul.
The time she’d twisted her ankle in St. Martin and he’d driven all over