I was angry, you know?”
Lydia shook her head, because she always knew when she was angry.
“I kept repeating Allison’s words back in my head, and the anger just built up and built up. I could feel the pressure of it in my chest, like a tea kettle coming to a boil.” Claire clasped together her hands. “Then the ball came over the net. It was clearly on her side, but I went for it. I remember pulling my arm across my body—I’ve still got a killer backhand—and I watched the racket cut through the air, and at the last minute, I took this tiny lunge forward and I smashed the edge of the racket into the side of her knee.”
“Holy shit.”
“She fell flat on her face. Broke her nose and two teeth. Blood was everywhere. I thought she was going to exsanguinate. I dislocated her knee, which is apparently very painful. She ended up needing two operations to get it back into place.” Claire looked remorseful, but she didn’t sound it. “I could’ve said it was a mistake. I can actually remember standing there on the court with all these excuses running through my head. Allison was writhing on the ground, screaming bloody murder, and I opened my mouth to say what a horrible accident, that I was an idiot, that I hadn’t been looking where I was going and it was all my fault and blah-blah-blah, but instead of apologizing, I said, ‘It’s your own fault for playing tennis.’”
Lydia felt the shock of the act reverberate through the cold kitchen.
“The way the other women looked at me …” Claire shook her head, as if she still couldn’t believe it. “I’ve never had people look at me like that before. There was this wave of revulsion. I could feel their disgust to my very core. And I’ve never told anyone this, not even Paul, but it felt so fucking good to be bad.” This, at least, Claire sounded sure of. “You know me, Liddie. I never let loose like that. I usually just hold it all in because what’s the point of letting it out, but something about that day made me just—” She held up her hands in surrender. “I was absolutely euphoric right up until I was arrested.”
Lydia had forgotten about the egg bread. She moved the frying pan off the eye. “I can’t believe they let you off with parole.”
“We bought our way out of it.” Claire shrugged the shrug of the extremely wealthy. “It took our lawyer a couple of months and a shit-ton of money to bring the Hendricksons around, but they finally told the prosecutor they were okay with parole and a lesser charge. I had to wear an ankle bracelet for six months. I have six more sessions with a court-appointed therapist. I’m on parole for another year.”
Lydia didn’t know what to say. Claire had never been much of a fighter. Lydia was the one who always got in trouble for giving Indian burns or holding Claire down and dangling spit into her eye.
Claire said, “Ironically, the monitoring bracelet was taken off the same day that Paul was killed.” She took the plate of egg bread. “Or is that just coincidence, not irony? Mother would know.”
Lydia had spotted the only coincidence that mattered. “When were you arrested?”
Claire’s tight smile made it clear that she hadn’t missed the connection. “The first week of March.”
Julia had gone missing on March 4, 1991.
“So, that’s why I’m on parole.” Claire picked up the bread with her hands and took a bite. She had told the story of her arrest as if she was relating a funny thing that had happened at the grocery store, but Lydia could see that she had tears in her eyes. She looked exhausted. More than that, she looked scared. There was something about Claire that was so vulnerable. They could just as well be sitting at the kitchen table at their parents’ house three decades ago.
Claire asked, “Do you remember the way Julia used to dance?”
Lydia was surprised by how clearly the memories came back. Julia had loved dancing. She would hear the faintest trace of music and throw herself completely into it. “Too bad she had such shitty taste in music.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“Really, Menudo?”
Claire gave a surprised laugh, as if she had forgotten all about her crush on the boy band. “She was just so joyful. She loved so many things.”
“Joyful,” Lydia repeated, relishing the lightness of the word.
When Julia