Claire asked, “What if, twenty-four years ago, two women had information about what happened to Julia— who took her, exactly what was done to her— and they kept their mouths shut because they were too afraid to get involved?”
Lydia tried to give an honest answer. “I hope I would understand that they had to think about their own safety.”
“Because you’re so understanding?” Claire shook her head, likely because she had known Lydia all of her life and she knew better. “Look at what not knowing did to Dad. Do you want Bob Kilpatrick’s suicide on your conscience? Do you want to carry around Eleanor Kilpatrick’s misery on your shoulders?” Her tone had become strident. “I have nothing to lose, Liddie. Literally—nothing. I don’t have children. I don’t really have any friends. My cat is dead. I own a house I don’t want to go back to. There’s a trust to take care of Grandma Ginny. Mom will survive because she always survives. Paul was my husband. I can’t just walk away from this. I have to know. There isn’t anything left in my life except finding out the truth.”
“Don’t be so damn dramatic, Claire. You still have me.”
The words hung between them like weighted balloons. Did Lydia really mean them? Was she here for Claire, or was this ludicrous road trip really about proving that Lydia had been right about Paul all along?
If that was the case, then her point had been made long ago.
Lydia closed her eyes for a second. She tried to get her thoughts in order. “We’ll go by the house.”
“Now who’s being dramatic?” Claire sounded as irritated as Lydia felt. “I don’t want you to do this. You’re not invited.”
“Tough.” She checked the mirrors before pulling back onto the road. “We’re not going in.”
Claire didn’t put her seat belt back on. The warning started to chime.
“Are you going to jump out of a moving car?”
“Maybe.” Claire pointed up ahead. “That must be it.”
The Fuller house was thirty yards past a shiny silver fire hydrant. Lydia tapped the brake. She coasted the car past the white clapboard house. The roof was new, but the grass in the yard was winter brown. Weeds shot up through cracks in the driveway. There were weathered sheets of plywood nailed across all the doors and windows. Even the mailbox had been removed. A lone four-by-four post stuck up like a broken tooth at the mouth of the driveway.
Of all the things Lydia expected to find, this was not it.
Claire sounded just as puzzled. “It’s abandoned.”
“For a long while, it looks like.” The plywood boards had started to peel apart. The paint was chipping from the vertical wood siding. The gutters were full.
Claire said, “Turn back around.”
The road was sparsely traveled. They hadn’t seen another car since Lydia had pulled over ten minutes ago. She executed a three-point turn and drove back toward the house.
Claire said, “Pull into the driveway.”
“It’s private property. We don’t want to get shot.”
“Paul’s dead, so technically, it’s my property.”
Lydia wasn’t so sure about the legalities, but still she made a wide turn into the driveway. There was something sinister about the Fuller house. The closer they got, the stronger the sensation got. Every bone in Lydia’s body was telling her to go back. “This doesn’t feel right.”
“How is it supposed to feel?”
Lydia didn’t answer. She was looking at the large padlock on the metal garage door. The house was isolated. There wasn’t another structure for miles. Large trees forested the areas on either side of the house. The backyard was about fifty feet deep, and beyond that were acres of empty rows waiting for spring planting.
Lydia told Claire, “I have a gun.” As a convicted felon, she could’ve gone to jail for possessing a weapon, but Lydia had been a single mother living in some very sketchy neighborhoods when she’d asked a guy at work to get one for her. “I buried it under my back porch steps when we moved into the house. It should still work. I put it in a Ziploc bag.”
“We don’t have time to go back.” Claire drummed her fingers on her leg as she gave it some thought. “There’s a pharmacy off Lumpkin that sells guns. We could buy one and be back here in thirty minutes.”
“They’ll do a background check.”
“Do you think anyone’s watching background checks? Mass murderers buy machine guns and enough ammo to take down twenty schools and no one bats an eye.”
“Still—”
“Crap, I keep forgetting I’m on parole. I’m sure my P.O. put my name in the system. Where’s the NRA when you need them?”
Lydia looked at her watch. “You were supposed to meet Nolan over an hour ago. He’s probably put out a BOLO on you.”
“I have to do this before I lose my nerve.” Claire opened the door and got out of the car.
Lydia let out a string of curses. Claire went up the stairs to the front porch. She tried to see between the cracks in the plywood covering the windows. She shook her head at Lydia as she walked back down the steps. Instead of returning to the car, she walked around the back of the house.
“Dammit.” Lydia took her cell phone out of her purse. She should text somebody that they were here. And then what? Rick would panic. She couldn’t get Dee involved. She could post it on the Westerly Academy Parents’ Bulletin Board, but Penelope Ward would probably hire a private helicopter and fly down to Athens for the story.
And then Lydia would have to explain why she was sitting in the car like a coward while her baby sister tried to break into her dead husband’s secret house.
She got out of the car. She jogged around the side of the house. Weeds as high as Lydia’s waist had taken over the backyard. The sturdy-looking swing set was covered in moss. The ground crackled under her feet. The storms had not yet made their way over from Atlanta. The vegetation was as dry as kindling.
Claire was standing on the small back porch. She had her foot braced on the side of the house and her fingers curved under the sheet of plywood nailed over the back door. “There’s no basement, just a crawl space.”
Lydia could see that for herself. Claire had kicked in the access panel to the enclosed area under the house. There was less than two feet between the dirt and the floor joists. “What are you doing?”
“Ruining my manicure. There’s a pry bar in the trunk.”
Lydia didn’t know what to do but go back to the car. She opened the trunk and found what looked like MacGyver’s secret stash. A first aid kit. Emergency water and food. Two warming blankets. A safety vest. An ice scraper. A small tool kit. Flares. A bag of sand. An empty gas can, though the car was electric. Two reflective roadside warning triangles. A large pry bar that you could probably use to take off someone’s head.
This was a wrecking bar, not a pry bar. One end had a gigantic hammer head and sharp claw. The other end had a curved edge. The thing had a heft to it, solid steel, about two feet long and easily weighing just shy of ten pounds.
Lydia didn’t stop to consider why Paul would drive around with this kind of thing in his trunk, and as she rounded the corner into the backyard, she tried really hard not to think about the dark joke Claire had made about finding more Mrs. Fullers buried in the overgrown backyard.
Claire was still trying to work the board away from the window. She’d managed to get her fingers between the plywood and the trim around the door. Her skin had broken open. Lydia saw streaks of blood on the weathered wood.
“Move.” Lydia waited for her to get out of the way and jammed the flat end of the bar into the crack. The rotting wood came away like a banana peel. Claire grabbed the edge and yanked the board clean off the house.
The door was the same as every kitchen door Lydia had ever seen. Glass at the top, a thin panel of wood at the bottom. She tried the doorknob. Locked.
“Stand back.” Claire grabbed the pry bar and busted out the glass. She racked the bar around the frame to make sure all the shards were gone, then stuck her hand inside the door and opened the lock.
Lydia knew it was a bit late, but she still asked, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Claire kicked open the door. She walked into the kitchen. She turned on the lights. The fluorescent bulbs flickered to life.
The house felt empty, but Lydia still called, “Hello?” She waited a few seconds, then repeated, “Hello?”
Even without an answer, the house felt like it was ready to scream out its secrets.
Claire tossed the pry bar onto the kitchen table. “This is so weird.”
Lydia knew what she meant. The kitchen looked like a brand-new late 1980s dream kitchen. The white tiled countertops were still in good shape, though the grout had yellowed with age. The two-toned cabinets had veneered walnut exteriors and white painted doors and drawers. The white refrigerator was still running. The matching gas stove looked brand-new. The laminate tile on the floor was a parquet pattern of red and brown bricks. There was no grime in the corners or crumbs of food lost under the toe kicks. In fact, there was very little dust on any of the surfaces. The kitchen felt clean. Despite the house being boarded up, there was no musty odor. If anything, it smelled of Pine-Sol.
Lydia said, “It feels like the Huxtables are about to walk in.”
Claire knocked the dish soap and the sponge into the sink like a bored cat. She opened cabinets. She pulled out drawers too far so that they dropped onto the floor. Silverware clanged. Grill utensils and tongs clattered. Her fingers were still bleeding. Every surface she touched was streaked red.
Lydia asked, “Do you want me to get the first aid kit out of the car?”
“I don’t want anything that was Paul’s.”
Claire walked into the next room, which was obviously the den. The plywood boards over the windows and front door blocked out any light. She turned on table lamps as she walked around the room. Lydia saw a large couch and a love seat, an easy chair and a television that was the old console kind, more like a piece of furniture. A top-loading VCR sat on a wooden shelf above the TV. The time was not flashing the way every VCR flashed in Lydia’s memory. There were VHS tapes stacked beside the player. Lydia scanned the titles. All the movies were from the 1980s. Batman. The Princess Bride. Blade Runner. Back to the Future.
There were tracks in the thick carpet under their feet where someone had recently vacuumed. Lydia ran her fingers through the light smattering of dust on the table behind the couch. If she had to guess, she would say the place hadn’t been cleaned in a week, which was around the same time Paul had died. “Did he come to Athens a lot?”
“Apparently.” Claire took out the videotapes and checked that the labels matched the boxes. “He worked long hours. He could easily drive here and back in a day without me ever finding out.”
“Can you check the GPS in his car?”
“Look.” Claire had found the answering machine on the table beside the couch. It was ancient, the kind that required two cassette tapes—one for the outgoing message and one for incoming calls. The red LED flashed that there were four messages. There was a tape beside the machine labeled MARIA. Claire popped open the cassette player. The outgoing cassette tape was labeled LEXIE.”
“Two different tapes,” Lydia said. “Do you think it’s a code? You call in and one says you’re safe and the other says you’re not?”
Instead of guessing, Claire pressed the PLAY button for received messages. The machine clicked and whirred to life. The first message was static, followed by heavy breathing. There was a short beep, then the second message played. More of the same, until the fourth message played. Lydia could hear a groan on the other end of the line. She remembered now that Claire had groaned when the message tape had finished.
Claire must’ve recognized the sound, too. She pressed the STOP button. She looked around the family room. “He kept everything the same,” she said, and Lydia knew she meant Paul. “His parents died in ’ninety-two. Sometime in January. I guarantee you this is exactly how they left it.”
“Why would Paul lie about keeping the house?”
Claire didn’t answer, likely because there was no answer. “There’s no Lexie Fuller, is there?”
Lydia shook her head. Maybe there had been a woman who pretended to be Lexie Fuller, but considering what Paul was into, there was no telling what had happened to her.
Claire looked around the room. “This feels bad.”
“The whole house feels bad.”
There were two hallways leading off the den. One went to the left toward what were probably the bedrooms. The other went to the right toward the garage. The door was closed at the end of the hall. There was no padlock, just a hollow-core door with a polished brass knob that required a key.
Claire went to the left, turning on all the lights as she stomped through the house with a determination that Lydia had never seen in her sister. This was the Claire who had kneecapped a woman on her tennis team and destroyed every item in her garage. She pulled open drawers and kicked over boxes and rifled bedroom closets. Bottles were toppled. Lamps were broken. She even upended a mattress. Everything she found indicated people were living here, but only if those people hadn’t aged since the first Bush lived in the White House.
Paul’s boyhood room was a mixture of train sets and heavy metal posters. He’d slept in a twin bed with a dark red quilt neatly draped across the footboard. Every drawer in the bureau was hand-labeled. UNDERWEAR & SOCKS. T-SHIRTS & SHORTS. GYM CLOTHES. As with the den, there was very little dust in the room. The carpet was striped from a recent vacuuming. Even the ceiling fan blades were wiped clean.
The same neatness could be found in the tiny spare bedroom, which had a sewing machine in front of the boarded-up window that overlooked the front yard. There was a McCall sewing pattern laid out on a small folding table. Squares of fabric were beside it, ready to be cut.
The master bedroom was filled with a king-size bed that had a blue satin quilt. The ghosts of Paul’s parents permeated the space. The crocheted doily on the back of a wooden rocking chair. The well-worn, steel-toed boots lined up beside one-inch pumps in the tiny closet. There were two bedside tables. One had a hunting magazine in the drawer. The other contained a plastic case for a diaphragm. The paintings on the wall were the sort of thing you got at a flea market or a starving artist sale: pastorals with lots of trees and a too-blue sky looking down on an unreal tableau of grazing sheep and a contented sheepdog. Again, there were vacuum tracks in the blue shag carpet.
Lydia echoed Claire’s earlier observation. “It’s like he was keeping a shrine to his childhood.”
Claire went into the bathroom, which was as small and tidy as the other rooms. The flowered shower curtain was already pulled back. A bar of green soap was in the soap dish. Head & Shoulders shampoo was on a hanging rack underneath the showerhead. A used towel had been left to dry over the towel bar. The two shag rugs on the floor were neatly aligned, separated by the same amount of space all around.
She opened the medicine cabinet. She pulled out all of the items and tossed them onto the floor. Sure deodorant. Close-Up toothpaste. She held up a prescription bottle.
“Amitriptyline,” Claire read. “It was prescribed for Paul’s father.”
“It’s an older antidepressant.” Lydia was intimately familiar with popular drugs from the late twentieth century. “Pre-Prozac.”
“You’ll be surprised to hear that Paul never mentioned anything about depression.” Claire threw the bottle over her shoulder. “Are you ready to go into the garage?”
Lydia realized she’d been putting it off, too. She tried, “We could still leave.”
“Sure we could.” Claire brushed past Lydia and headed back toward the den. S
he went into the kitchen. When she returned, she was gripping the pry bar in her hands. She walked down the narrow hallway toward the garage. The distance was around fifteen feet, but Lydia felt like everything was moving in slow motion. The pry bar arced over Claire’s head. It hung in the air for a few moments before coming down on the brass knob. The door opened into the garage.
Claire reached in and felt for the light switch. Fluorescents sputtered on.
She dropped the pry bar.
Lydia couldn’t move. She was ten feet away, but she could still clearly see the wall opposite the doorway—the empty chains bolted to a concrete-block wall, the edge of a dirty mattress, discarded fast-food bags on the floor, photographer’s spotlights, a camera on a tripod. The ceiling had been altered so it looked like the room was in a basement. Wires hung down. Plumbing pipes went to nowhere. Chains dangled onto the concrete floor. And there was blood.
Lots of blood.
Claire stepped back into the hall, pulling the door closed behind her. The knob was broken off. She had to wrap her fingers around the spindle. She kept her back to the door, blocking the way, keeping Lydia out of the garage.
A body, Lydia thought. Another victim. Another dead girl.
Claire spoke in a low, controlled tone. “I want you to give me your phone. I’m going to use the camera to document the room while you go to the road and use the burner phone to call the FBI. Not Nolan. Call the number in Washington, DC.”
“What did you see?”
Claire shook her head once. Her color was off. She looked ill.
“Claire?”
She shook her head again.
“Is there a body?”
“No.”
“What is it?”
She kept shaking her head.
“I’m not fucking around. Tell me what’s in there.” Claire tightened her grip on the door. “Video cassettes. VHS.”
Lydia tasted bile in her mouth. VHS. Not DVDs. Not digital files. VHS tapes. “How many?”