according to the paperwork Claire had found in Paul’s office, he’d been using a shell organization to foot the thirty grand a year for Julia “Dee” Delgado to attend Westerly Academy.
Claire had found Dee’s scholarship essay in the same set of files along with thirty other entries from students all over the metro area. Obviously, the contest was rigged, but Dee’s paper was remarkably cogent compared to the others. Her thesis dealt with how difficult the state of Georgia made life for convicted drug felons. They were denied food and housing assistance. They couldn’t vote. They faced employment discrimination. They were denied scholarship opportunities. They often had no family support system. Considering they had served their time, paid their fines, completed parole and paid taxes, didn’t they deserve the right to full citizenship like the rest of us?
The argument was compelling, even without the benefit of the photographs Claire had on her desk in front of her.
And thanks to the private detectives Paul had hired to track Lydia over the years, there were plenty of photographs for Claire to choose from.
A frazzled-looking Lydia carrying Dee in one arm and a bag of groceries in the other. A clearly exhausted Lydia standing at the bus stop outside the vet’s office. Lydia walking a pack of dogs down a tree-lined street, her face relaxed for a brief moment in time. Climbing into the beat-up Dodge van with the red tape on the taillights. Behind the wheel of the Ford van with the mobile grooming equipment inside. Standing proudly in front of the new storefront. The photo was clearly taken on grand opening day. Lydia was using a giant pair of scissors to cut a yellow ribbon while her daughter and hippie boyfriend proudly looked on.
Dee Delgado. Claire put the pictures in order. Lydia’s child looked so much like Julia that it took Claire’s breath away.
Paul must have thought the same thing when he saw the photographs. He’d never met Julia, but Claire had three scrapbooks full of family photos. She wondered if it was worth putting them side by side and doing a comparison. And then she worried that she hadn’t opened the scrapbooks in years, and if she did so now, would she find something that told her Paul had looked at the scrapbooks, too?
She decided there was no way he hadn’t. Clearly, Paul was obsessed with Lydia. Every September for the past seventeen and a half years, he’d hired a private detective to check in on her. He’d used different agencies each time, but they had all delivered the same type of detailed reports, cataloging the minutiae of Lydia’s life. Credit reports. Background checks. Tax returns. Court orders. Parole reports. Court transcripts, though the legal side had dried up fifteen years ago. There was even a separate note detailing the names and types of animals she owned.
Claire had had absolutely no idea that he was doing this. She imagined that Lydia was likewise clueless, because she knew without a doubt that Lydia would die before she took one red cent from Paul.
The funny thing was that over the years, Paul had occasionally suggested that Claire try to get in touch with Lydia. He’d made noises about how he wished he had family left he could talk to. How Helen wasn’t getting any younger and it might be good for Claire to heal old wounds. Once, he’d even offered to try to look for her, but Claire had said no because she wanted to make it clear to Paul that she would never forgive her sister for lying about him.
“I will never let another person come between us,” Claire had assured him, her voice shaking with the righteous indignation she felt on behalf of her wrongly accused husband.
Had Paul manipulated Claire with Lydia the same way he’d manipulated her with the computer passwords and bank accounts? Claire had easy access to everything, so she felt compelled to look for nothing. Paul had been so very, very cunning, hiding all of his transgressions in plain sight.
The only question now was how many more transgressions was she going to find? Claire stared at the two heavy file boxes she’d carried down from Paul’s office. They were made of a milky white plastic. The outside of each box was labeled. PERSONAL-1 and PERSONAL-2.
Claire couldn’t bring herself to go through the second box. The first had contained enough hell to end her day on. The file folders inside were color-coded. The tabs were neatly labeled