keep them from being brainwashed by the public education machine.”
“And made them eat so much soy that their testicles never dropped.”
Claire shuffled around some of her father’s notes. “Oh, no, she wouldn’t have boys. That’s giving in to the patriarchy.”
“Do you think she would’ve vaccinated?”
Claire barked a laugh, because even in 1991, Julia had doubted the veracity of the government-backed pharmaceutical industrial complex. “What’s this?” She picked up a stapled stack of papers from the Oconee County Superior Court.
Lydia squinted at the document. “I found it in a separate folder. It’s a deed for a property in Watkinsville.”
Paul had grown up in Watkinsville, which was just outside of Athens. Claire turned to the second page to find the name and address of the legal owner.
“Buckminster Fuller,” Lydia said, because of course she’d already seen it. “Why does that name sound familiar?”
“He was Paul’s favorite architect.” She handed Lydia the pages because she couldn’t look at them anymore. “Paul grew up on a farm in Watkinsville. He told me that everything was sold when his parents died.”
Lydia stood up from the floor. She retrieved her reading glasses and Claire’s iPad from the kitchen island and sat back down beside her.
Claire felt the building wave of nausea that always accompanied uncovering another one of Paul’s lies.
Lydia slid on her glasses and started to type. Claire stared at the back of the white leather couch. She wanted to rip open the leather with her fingernails. She wanted to break the wood frame, find some matches, and burn down this entire fucking house.
Not that it would burn. Paul had installed the most comprehensive residential fire-suppression system that the county building inspector had ever seen.
Lydia said, “The online records only go back ten years, but Buckminster Fuller’s property taxes are up to date.”
Claire thought about the painting in Paul’s office. His childhood home. She had spent hours getting the shadows and angles just right. He had cried when she’d given it to him for their anniversary.
She told Lydia, “Paul said the guy who bought the property tore down the house so he could farm the land.”
“Did you ever drive by to look at it?”
“No.” Claire had asked several times. In the end, she had respected his need for privacy. “Paul said it was too painful.”
Lydia went back to work on the iPad. This time, Claire made herself watch. Lydia pulled up Google Earth. She typed in the Watkinsville address. Acres of plowed fields showed on the screen. Lydia zoomed in closer. There was a small house on the property. Claire easily recognized Paul’s childhood home. The white wood siding ran up and down instead of across. The barn had been torn down, but there was a car in the driveway and a child’s swingset in the large patch of back yard that separated the house from the farmer’s field.
Lydia said, “There’s no street view. The road doesn’t even have a name.” She asked, “Do you think he’s renting it out?”
Claire put her head in her hands. She didn’t know anything anymore.
“There’s a phone number.” Lydia got up again. She was reaching for her cell phone on the counter when Claire stopped her.
“Use the burner phone. It’s by the chair in my office.”
Lydia disappeared down the hallway. Claire stared out at the back yard. The windows were clouded with condensation. Mist was coming off the pool. She would need to have the heater turned down. They rarely used the pool in the winter anyway. Maybe she should have it covered. Or filled in with concrete. The marble coping was a bitch to keep clean. In the summer, the decking got so hot that you had to wear sandals or risk third-degree burns. Paul had designed the pool to be beautiful, not usable.
If there was a better metaphor for their lives, Claire didn’t know what it was.
She picked up the iPad. The satellite image of the Buckminster Fuller homestead had been taken during the summer months. The field behind the house was lush with fruit vines. The small single-story house still had the same white wood siding that Claire had so carefully tried to render in Paul’s anniversary painting. Board-and-batten siding, he had told Claire it was called—large, vertical planks of wood with smaller strips to cover the seams. There were bright green asphalt shingles on the roof. The yard was neatly trimmed. The swingset at the rear of the lot looked sturdy and overbuilt, two things that Paul always strived for in residential construction.