worth was off by several million. He’d only quoted what was in the bank. Paul didn’t believe in the stock market. The house was paid off. The cars were paid for. There was no reason for Paul to steal anything.
She laughed at herself because that was all that she could do. “Why can I believe that Paul is a rapist but not a thief?”
The question stopped Lydia cold. “You believe me.”
“I should’ve believed you years ago.” Claire pushed herself away from the wall. She felt the guilt of dragging Lydia into this mess. She had no right to jeopardize her sister, especially after all that had happened. “I’m sorry I asked you to come here. You should go.”
Instead of answering, Lydia looked down at the floor. Her purse was a brown leather bag the size of a feedsack. Claire wondered if Paul had a photo of her buying it. Some of the pictures had obviously been taken with a telephoto lens, but others were close enough to read the text on the coupons she always used at the grocery store.
Lydia could never find out about Paul’s surveillance. Claire could at least do that for her sister. Lydia had a seventeen-year-old daughter whose school tuition Paul was anonymously paying. She had a boyfriend. She had a mortgage. She had a business with two employees she was responsible for. Knowing that Paul had been there every step of the way would destroy her.
Claire said, “Pepper, really, you need to go. I never should’ve asked you to come here.”
Lydia picked up her purse. She hefted the strap over her shoulder. She put her hand on the door but she didn’t open it. “When’s the last time you took a shower?”
Claire shook her head. She hadn’t bathed since the morning of Paul’s funeral.
“What about food? Have you been eating?”
Claire shook her head again. “I just …” She didn’t know how to explain it. They had taken a cooking class a few months ago and Paul wasn’t half bad, but now, every time she thought about her husband in the kitchen holding a knife, all she could think about was the machete from the movies.
“Claire?” Lydia had obviously asked her another question. Her purse was back on the floor. Her shoes were piled where she’d left them. “Go take a shower. I’ll cook you something to eat.”
“You should go,” Claire told her. “You shouldn’t get involved in this … this … I don’t even know what it is, Liddie, but it’s bad. It’s worse than you could ever imagine.”
“So I gathered.”
Claire spoke the only truth she was certain of. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”
“I don’t forgive you, but you’re still my sister.”
EIGHT
Lydia had texted Rick that she would be home in an hour. She would make sure Claire was bathed and fed, and then she would stand over her sister while she called Helen to come take care of her. Lydia had filled in for her mother twenty-four years ago and she wasn’t going to do it again.
Especially with the FBI involved.
Just the thought of Fred Nolan made her nerves pulse with fear. The man obviously knew things about Paul that Claire did not know. Or maybe Claire knew them and she was just a very good actress. In which case, was Claire lying when she said she finally believed Lydia about Paul attacking her? If she wasn’t, then what changed her mind? If she was, then what was her motivation?
There was no figuring it out. All the sneakiness her sister had exhibited as a child had been honed to adult perfection, so that Claire could be standing right in front of an oncoming train and still insist that everything was going to be fine.
Actually, the more Lydia interacted with this adult Claire, the more she understood she hadn’t grown up to be a Mother. She had grown up to be their mother.
Lydia stared blankly around the kitchen. She had thought that cooking Claire something to eat would be the easy part, but as with the rest of the house, the kitchen was too sleek to be practical. All of the appliances were concealed behind shiny white laminate doors that looked so cheap they had to cost a million bucks. Even the cooktop blended in with the polished quartz countertop. The whole space was part kitchen showroom, part Jetsons. She couldn’t imagine that anyone would actually choose to live here.
Not that Claire was doing much living. The refrigerator was filled with unopened bottles of wine.