"Okay," Lydia said, because she hadn't come here to smile. She took a deep breath and slowly let it go. She pressed her hand to her chest to still her heart. And then she started talking.

"You were wrong," she told Paul, because he had been a pedantic asshole who thought he was right about everything. "You said I would be dead in a gutter by now. You said I was worthless. You said that no one would believe me because I didn't matter."

Lydia looked up at the dark sky. Drops of rain tapped insistently against the umbrella.

"And I believed you for so many years because I thought I'd done something wrong."

Thought, she repeated silently, because she knew that no one could punish her as viciously as she punished herself.

"I didn't lie. I didn't make it up. But I let myself think that you did it because I asked for it. That I'd sent you the wrong signals. That you only attacked me because you thought I wanted it." Lydia wiped tears from her eyes. She had never in her life wanted anything less than Paul's advances. "And then I finally realized that what you did wasn't my fault. That you were just a cold, psychotic motherfucker, and you found the perfect way to push me out of my own family." She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "And you know what? Fuck you, Paul. Fuck you and your stupid piece-of-shit Miata and your Goddamn graduate degree and your blood money from your parents' car accident and look who's standing here now, asshole. Look who got gutted in an alley like a pig and look who's dancing on your fucking grave!"

Lydia was practically breathless from finally getting it all out. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She felt hollow, but not from her outburst. There had to be something else. For so many years, she'd dreamed of confronting Paul, taking him down, beating him with her fists or kicking him with her feet or stabbing him with a rusty knife. Words were not enough. There had to be something more to do than just scream at his grave. She looked out at the cemetery as if an idea would strike her like lightning. Rain was coming down so hard that the air had taken on a white haze. The ground was saturated.

Lydia dropped her umbrella.

The ground could probably be wetter.

Her bladder was still full. Nothing would give her greater pleasure than pissing on Paul's grave. She yanked back the green carpet. She hiked up her dress and bent over so she could pull down her underwear.

And then she stopped because she wasn't alone.

Lydia noticed the shoes first. Black Louboutins, approximately five thousand dollars. Sheer hose, though who the hell wore pantyhose anymore? Black dress, probably Armani or Gaultier, at least another six grand. There were no rings on the woman's elegant fingers nor a tasteful tennis bracelet on her birdlike wrists. Her shoulders were square and her posture was ramrod straight, which told Lydia that Helen's admonitions had been followed by at least one of her daughters.

"Well." Claire crossed her arms low on her waist. "This is awkward."

"It certainly is." Lydia hadn't seen her baby sister in eighteen years, though in her wildest imagination, she had never dreamed that Claire would turn into a Mother.

"Here." Claire snapped open her two-thousand-dollar Prada clutch and pulled out a handful of Kleenex. She tossed the tissues in Lydia's general direction.

There was no graceful way to do this. Lydia's underwear was down around her knees. "Do you mind turning around?"

"Of course. Where are my manners?" Claire turned around. The black dress was tailored to her perfect figure. Her shoulder blades stuck out like cut glass. Her arms were toned little sticks. She probably jogged with her trainer every morning and played tennis every afternoon and then bathed in rosewater milked from a magic unicorn before her husband came home every night.

Not that Paul Scott was ever coming home again.

Lydia pulled up her underwear as she stood. She blew her nose into the tissue, then dropped it on Paul's grave. She kicked the Astroturf back in place like a cat in a litter box.

"This was fun." Lydia grabbed her umbrella and made to leave. "Let's never do it again."

Claire spun around. "Don't you dare slink off."

"Slink?" The word was like a match to kindling. "You think I'm slinking away from you?"

"I literally stopped you from pissing on my husband's gave."

Lydia couldn't talk in italics anymore. "You'd better be glad I didn't take a shit."

"God, you're so crass."

"And you're a fucking bitch." Lydia turned on her heel and headed toward the van.

"Don't walk away from me."

Lydia cut between the graves because she knew Claire's heels would sink into the wet grass.

"Come back here." Claire was keeping up. She had taken off her shoes. "Lydia. God dammit, stop."

"What?" Lydia swung around so fast that the umbrella swiped Claire's head. "What do you want from me, Claire? You made your choiceyou and Mom both. You can't just expect me to forgive you now that he's dead. It doesn't change anything."

"Forgive me?" Claire was so outraged that her voice trilled. "You think I'm the one who needs forgiveness?"

"I told you that your husband tried to rape me and your response was that I needed to get the fuck out of your house before you called the police."

"Mom didn't believe you either."

"Mom didn't believe you either," Lydia mocked. "Mom thought you were still a virgin in the eighth grade."

"You don't know a Goddamn thing about me."

"I know you chose a guy you'd been screwing for two seconds over your own sister."

"Was this before or after you stole all the cash from my wallet? Or from under my mattress? Or from my jewelry box? Or lied to me about 'borrowing' my car? Or told me you didn't pawn Daddy's stethoscope, but then Mom got a call from the pawnshop because they recognized his name?" Claire wiped rain out of her eyes. "I know it was before you stole my credit card and ran up thirteen grand in debt. How was Amsterdam, Lydia? Did you enjoy all the coffee shops?"

"I did, actually." Lydia still had the little canal house souvenir the KLM stewardess had given her in First Class. "How did you enjoy knowing you turned your back on the last sister you have left?"

Claire's mouth snapped into a thin line. Her eyes took on a heated gleam.

"God, you look just like Mom when you do that."

"Shut up."

"That's mature." Lydia could hear the immaturity in her own voice. "This is idiotic. We're having the same argument we had eighteen years ago, except this time we're doing it in the rain."

Claire looked down at the ground. For the first time, she seemed uncertain of herself. "You lied to me all the time about everything."

"You think I'd lie about that?"

"You were stoned out of your mind when he drove you home."

"Is that what Paul told you? Because he picked me up from jail. You're not usually stoned in jail. That's kind of a no-no."

"I've been to jail, Lydia. People who want to get high find a way to get high."

Lydia snorted a laugh. Her goody-two-shoes baby sister had been to jail like Lydia had been to the moon.

Claire said, "He wasn't even attracted to you."

Lydia studied her face. This was an old line of reasoning, but she was saying it with less conviction. "You're doubting him."

"No, I'm not." Claire pushed her wet hair back off her face. "You're just hearing what you want to hear. Like you always do."

Claire was lying. Lydia could feel it in her bones. She was standing there getting soaked in the rain and lying. "Did Paul hurt you? Is that what this is about? You couldn't say it when he was alive, but now"

"He never hurt me. He was a good husband. A good man. He took care of me. He made me feel safe. He loved me."

Lydia didn't respond. Instead, she let the silence build. She still didn't believe her sister. Claire was just as easy to read now as when she was a little kid. Something was really bothering her, and that something obviously had to do with Paul. Her eyebrows were doing a weird zig, the same way Helen's did when she was upset.

They hadn't spoken in nearly two decades, but Lydia knew that confronting Claire always made her dig in her heels deeper. She tried a diversion. "Are you following this Anna Kilpatrick thing?"

Claire snorted, as if the answer was obvious. "Of course I am. Mom is, too."

"Mom is?" Lydia was genuinely surprised. "She told you that?"

"No, but I know she's following it." Claire took a deep breath, then let it go. She looked up at the sky. The rain had stopped. "She's not heartless, Lydia. She had her own way of dealing with it." She left the rest of the sentence unsaid. Dad had his own way of dealing with it, too.

Lydia busied herself with closing her umbrella. The canopy was white with various breeds of dogs jumping in circles around the ferrule. Her father had carried something similar back when he could still hold down his job teaching vet students at UGA.

Claire said, "I'm Mom's age now."

Lydia looked up at her sister.

"Thirty-eight. The same age Mom was when Julia went missing. And Julia would be"

"Forty-three." Every year, Lydia marked Julia's birthday. And Helen's. And Claire's. And the day that Julia had disappeared.

Claire let out another shaky breath. Lydia resisted the urge to do the same. Paul hadn't just taken away Claire all those years ago. He'd taken away the connection that came from looking into someone else's eyes and knowing that they understood exactly what you were feeling.

Claire asked, "Did you have kids?"

"No," Lydia lied. "You?"

"Paul wanted to, but I was terrified of ..."

She didn't have to put a name to the terror. If family planning was the sort of thing Lydia had been capable of in her twenties, there was no way in hell she would've had Dee. Watching how the loss of a child had pulled her parents apartnot just pulled them apart, but destroyed themhad been enough of a cautionary tale.

Claire said, "Grandma Ginny has dementia. She's forgotten how to be mean."

"Do you remember what she said to me at Dad's funeral?"

Claire shook her head.

"'You're fat again. I guess that means you're not taking drugs.'"

Claire took in Lydia's shape, leaving the obvious question unspoken.

"Seventeen and a half years sober."

"Good for you." There was a catch in her voice. She was crying. Lydia suddenly realized that despite the designer outfit, her sister looked like hell. Her dress had obviously been slept in. She had a cut on her cheek. A black bruise was under her ear. Her nose was bright red. The rain had soaked her through. She was shivering from the cold.

"Claire"

"I have to go." Claire started walking toward her car. "Take care of yourself, Pepper."

She left before Lydia could think of a reason for her not to.

iii.

The sheriff arrested me today. He said that I was interfering with his investigation. My defensethat I could not interfere with something that did not existleft him unmoved.

Years ago, to help raise money for the local humane shelter, I volunteered myself to be pretend-arrested at the county fair. While you and your little sister were playing skee ball (Pepper was grounded for mouthing off to a teacher) all of us villains were held in a roped-off part of the fair while we waited for our significant others to bail us out.

This time, as with the pretend-time, your mother bailed me out.

"Sam," she said, "you can't keep doing this."

When she's anxious, your mother twists her new wedding ring around her finger, and every time I see this I can't help but feel she is trying to twist it off.

Have I ever told you just how much I love your mother? She is the most remarkable woman I have ever known. Your grandmother thought she was a gold-digger, though there was hardly a scrap of silver in my pocket when we first met. Everything she said and did delighted me. I loved the books she read. I loved the way her mind worked. I loved that she looked at me and saw something that I had only ever glimpsed in myself.

I would've given up without hernot on you, never on you, but on myself. I suppose I can tell you this now, but I wasn't a very good student. I wasn't smart enough to just get by. I wasn't focused enough in class. I rarely passed exams. I skipped assignments. I was constantly on academic probation. Not that your grandmother would ever know, but at the time, I was thinking of doing what you were later accused of doing: selling all my belongings, sticking out my thumb, and hitchhiking to California to be with the other hippies who had dropped out and tuned in.

Everything changed when I met your mother. She made me want things that I had never dreamed of wanting: a steady job, a reliable car, a mortgage, a family. You figured out a long time ago that you got your wanderlust from me. I want you to know that this is what happens when you meet the person you are supposed to spend the rest of your life with: That restless feeling dissolves like butter.

I think what breaks my heart the most is that you will never learn that for yourself.

I want you to know that your mother has not forgotten you. Not a morning passes that she does not wake up thinking about you. She marks your birthdays in her own way. Every March 4, the anniversary of your disappearance, she walks the same path you might have walked when you left the Manhattan Cafe that night. She leaves a nightlight burning in your old room. She refuses to sell the house on Boulevard, because, despite her protests, she still holds out the slim hope that one day, you might come walking back up the sidewalk and find your way home.

"I want to feel normal again," she once told me. "Maybe if I pretend I am long enough, it might actually happen."

Your mother is one of the strongest, smartest women I have ever met, but losing you cleaved her in two. The vibrant, caustic, witty, contrary woman I married splintered off into silence. She would tell you she gave in to mourning you for too long, let the pity and self-hate drag her into that black pit that I still crawl around in. If she did, her stay there was temporary. Somehow, she managed to wrench a piece of her former self out of the ground. She tells me that the other, miserable half, the chipped-off, castoff half, still follows at a respectful distance, ready to take over the second she stumbles.

Only through sheer strength of will does she manage to never stumble.

When your mother told me she was marrying another man, she said, "I can't sacrifice the two daughters I have left for the one that I'll never see again."

She didn't say that she loved this man. She didn't say that he moved her, or that she needed him. She said that she needed the things that he could offer: stability, companionship, a glass of wine at night without the drowning sense of sorrow.

I do not resent this other man for taking my place. I do not hate him because I do not want your sisters to hate him. It is remarkably easy for a divorced parent to make remarriage a smooth transition for his or her children. You just keep your mouth shut and let them know that everything is going to be all right.

And I really feel that it will beat least for the remaining part of my family.