“You were drunk too. Maybe it was you.” Clara stared, the blood draining from her face, and Izzy felt she’d pushed something she shouldn’t have, but she was too irritated to back down. She shrugged. “Maybe you mentioned Liv?”
A weighty silence filled the room, and when Clara finally spoke, her voice was soft and cool, but clear. “I do not talk about what happened with Liv. When I do, it’s for good reason. In this case, the reason is this: The very possibility that something is not right with Paul should be enough to keep you away. The stakes are too high. I’m telling you, from personal experience I wish I didn’t have, that the best line of defense against men who are programmed this way is not to get involved with them from the start. Once you do, it can be incredibly hard to get away. Maybe impossible. Look at Liv. Look at Kristin.”
Izzy considered Clara—who always seemed so thoughtful, so self-possessed, if a bit scattered at times. But she didn’t seem that way now.
“Do the police know about this … this thing you were involved in?”
Clara sighed. “They do. I’d been interviewed as a witness, subpoenaed to testify, though it never went to court. He ended up pleading to a lesser charge.”
“A lesser charge?”
“Eighteen years from now, he could get out. Depending on what the parole board decides. These people, they’re out in the world, Izzy. They don’t always get what they deserve—not even when they get caught.”
She could see how Clara would be overcautious. She could. But she could also see how Clara would be paranoid. Fearful of perfectly harmless men. She didn’t love the idea of her hurling accusations around. Not here in the quiet of her living room, or on the pages of this newspaper, which Izzy tapped with a brusque finger now.
“Your name is on this.”
“I had promised to help Hallie with the paper—in general terms—before I knew what she planned to put in it. When she brought it to me, I told her not to publish it.”
How had Hallie even known? Izzy shook her head. That seemed beside the point, since this was old news to everyone but her. No wonder the girl had frozen up that day in the yard when Paul had appeared. Izzy, as usual, had had no clue.
“I know it doesn’t look good that my name is there,” Clara said, “but frankly I don’t care about that. I care about you. I lost a friend all those years ago, and I lost another when Kristin vanished—for whatever reason. I don’t want to risk losing you too.”
Maybe Izzy really was the only one with any sympathy for Paul. Maybe that was why she always seemed to be the one to cross his path—from that very first day he’d come across the street, worried and confused. Because no one else was interested in being anywhere near it.
“I appreciate the sentiment, but who I choose to spend my time with isn’t up for debate, okay? There’s another side to this in which Paul could really use a friend right now.”
Clara sighed. “I’ll say it again—I don’t care about him either. I care about you.”
“Well, maybe I care about him.” Izzy didn’t know whether it was true on anything but a surface level, but Clara looked as if she’d been slapped. “He’s lonely, Clara. He’s probably the loneliest person I know. He even has me beat.”
Clara’s eyes filled with such pity and concern that Izzy had to look away. “Loneliness is not a bond upon which to build a relationship,” Clara said quietly.
Izzy blinked at her. “Could have fooled me,” she said. “Seen a rom-com lately? They make it seem far less pathetic than it is in real life. Where it happens all the time. Hop on Match and see for yourself.”
“So you’re saying there are plenty of lonely people to choose from, then,” Clara shot back. “If that’s what you want, choose one of them. I’m begging you, Iz. I have a bad feeling. Kristin’s sister did too—all along.”
Izzy sighed. Earlier today, unexpected and strange though the whole motorcycle ride had been, Izzy had gone inside, shut the door, and smiled.
It had felt so good. Just to smile a genuine smile into an empty room. To be a giddy girl home from a date, if only for a moment. She had expected that kissing anyone but Josh would feel like … well, like giving up, she supposed. It was ridiculous, really. He’d given her up long ago. But the fact that she hadn’t felt that defeat but, instead, a spark of energy, had given her a jolt. And a good kind of jolt. Not necessarily one that was specific to Paul—she wasn’t sure about that yet—but one that hit her like the beam of a searchlight.
Now, only a few hours later, she was already ruining the small thrill of the afternoon. She was ruining all of it. Izzy had heard enough.
“I promise, if I get a bad feeling, I’ll stay away.”
She stood to leave. Clara looked defeated, and in spite of her simmering anger Izzy felt a pang. Clara was only trying to be a friend. “I’ll keep all of this in mind,” she added weakly. “I’ll … I’ll think about it.”
Clara bit her lip and nodded. Silently, she walked Izzy to the door.
Izzy was starting down the front porch steps when she caught Clara’s final words in the cold night air.
“Think fast. Please.”
But by the time Izzy turned around, the only thing there was a closed door.
32
As shoppers but also as humans, we have a tendency to confuse wants with needs. Wonderfully, the new charitable shopping initiative at Moondance boutique combines the two.
—Intro to “Much-Needed Moondance for Syria,” in The Color-Blind Gazette
“Mommy? When can I go back to school?” Clara reached to clear Thomas’s empty breakfast plate and he pouted up at her as he had every morning that week. It figured. Most kids wake up asking why they have to go to school, but Clara had the one who wanted to go and couldn’t.
She’d been playing a long game of phone tag with Pam at the Circle of Learning, and Clara, too, was growing restless. Benny had marched down and unleashed a rare fury in the school office the instant Clara had told him what happened, but it only dug them in deeper with the director, who then emphasized the need for a “cooling period.” Still, some three weeks had passed, and the “distractions” had come to a lull—surely enough was enough. Yet Pam persisted in dodging her calls.
“I’m sure it’ll be soon, sweetie. I left another message yesterday. I’m just waiting for them to call back.”
“What about Abby and Aaron? When will they be back to school?
Clara sighed. Her answer was always the same—that she didn’t know and, more gently, wasn’t sure they would be back to school—yet he kept asking.
Halloween decorations had transformed the neighborhood into a mischievous version of its former self, cottony spider webs stretched across porch railings, billowy ghosts dangling from tree branches, jack-o’-lanterns in bay windows, and it had dawned on Thomas that he’d more than likely have to trick-or-treat without his usual companions this year. He’d been especially pouty ever since, and Clara was determined to have him back at school for the class parade and the “Being healthy is a treat—no trick!” party afterward. Though Clara, too, had lost her Halloween compadre in desperately seeking recipes for said party that did not involve candy or, heaven forbid, food coloring. Last year Kristin had saved them both with an idea for scarecrow veggie skewers. She and Clara had giggled as they assembled the awkward creatures, drinking hot apple cider with spiced rum on a Saturday afternoon right here at this table. It might as well have been a lifetime ago.
Maddie triumphantly hurled a handful of Cheerios from her high chair, and for once it was a welcome distraction. Pup-Pup came running in a skittle of nails across tile, and she couldn’t resist a smug smile that for all the new messes the dog had brought into their house, there were also a few she no longer had to clean up.
Frantic squawking cut through the morning air so suddenly that Clara jumped, half expecting to turn and find a gaggle of chickens inside the house. But no, they were sounding through the window she’d cracked when the toaster had unleashed a random burst of superheated aggression on Thomas’s frozen waffle.