“He’s made some mistakes, but I don’t think he’s as…bad as he once was.” After she’d stopped sleeping with him, Isaac had gone from one girl to the next. Word of his “sexcapades” had spread all over town. There’d even been rumors that he was having an affair with Claudia Hampton, a rich older woman whose husband, the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, stayed in Houston most of the time she’d lived in Pineview and rarely bothered to visit.
“You’re convinced he isn’t a womanizer anymore? Just because he made you dinner without taking you to bed?”
Leanne didn’t believe a man like Isaac was likely to change, and she was probably right. But Claire refused to concede the point. “I’m saying we don’t really know, so why judge?”
“He makes his true self impossible to miss!”
“Maybe he uses his hard-ass image to hide who he really is.”
“And why would he do that?”
“It’s a defense mechanism. If everyone thinks the worst of him he has no expectations to meet and no disappointment to face.”
“Where did you learn that psychobabble bullshit?” she said with a laugh.
It was just something she’d been thinking about now that she was older and could look at the situation from a perspective less affected by her own unfulfilled desires. But even if she was right, understanding the reason for his sharp angles didn’t make them any less capable of cutting anyone who ventured too close, and she wasn’t about to forget that. “Could you lay off? What he does isn’t any of our business.”
“Whatever you say, as long as you realize that it doesn’t matter whether or not he helped you out last night. Isaac Morgan hasn’t changed as much as you want to believe. He’s done everything he can to earn his reputation.”
And Leanne was earning hers, which made it ironic that she was the one pointing a finger. But Claire wasn’t going to make an issue of it. Her sister had reasons for her behavior, too. “I’ve got to shower. My first appointment will be here in forty minutes.”
“Wait a second. I came over because…I want to explain something before you…jump to the wrong conclusion.”
Her halting words alerted Claire that Isaac was no longer the subject of their conversation. “I’m listening.”
“What you asked me yesterday about…about being out of school on the day Mom went missing.”
Claire stiffened. Thanks to what Tug had told her, she didn’t want to discuss this. She was surprised Leanne had even brought it up. “Yes?”
“I know you’ve been told.”
Their stepfather must’ve felt too guilty to keep his indiscretion to himself. Claire kneaded her forehead so she wouldn’t have to look at her sister. “Is it true?”
“I had a crush on Joe, thought I was in love with him.”
“That’s a yes.”
Silence.
Claire had to look at Leanne now. “He was married. And two and a half times your age. What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t thinking. I was thirteen, okay?”
“But…how did you even get hold of a video camera?”
“I borrowed Mom’s. Dad had just given it to her for Christmas, remember, and I was using it for a school project at the time. I’m embarrassed, and I have been for years, but…there’s more to what happened than my stupid mistake. That’s the part you need to hear if you want to find Mom.”
A chill ran up Claire’s spine. “Tell me.”
“Mom was having an affair with Joe.”
Claire curved her fingernails into her palms. “No.”
“Yes!”
“What makes you so sure?”
“That’s why she freaked out. She considered him her man, her guilty pleasure, and was afraid he’d been messing around with both of us. So the confrontation at his place involved as much accusation as anything else. That’s why he showed her the tape. So he could blame it all on me.”
Claire grappled to understand how such a situation might have played out. “She thought he acted on your…overtures?”
“Worse. He exposed himself to me first.”
Remembering how charitable she’d been feeling toward Joe at the bar, Claire stepped back. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No. We’d been flirting for weeks. A thirteen-year-old girl doesn’t do something that bold out of the blue, without some expectation that it’ll be welcomed.”
That made sense, but… “Mom wouldn’t believe it?”
“Of course not. Not after that tape.”
Claire shook her head. “I can’t believe what you’re saying, either.”
Leanne’s jaw dropped. “What part of it?”
“All of it. That he came on to you. That you and he had a relationship. That Mom was jealous instead of hurt and sickened by what you’d done.”
“You don’t trust me? Just because I didn’t want to tell you I masturbated on video for a man I thought I loved?”
Squeezing her eyes shut, Claire pressed cold hands to her hot face. “I’m saying you’ve been keeping secrets about that day for a long time. How do I know even this is the full truth?”
“Because I don’t have anything to hide anymore! I’ve told you the worst of it!”
But she wasn’t as embarrassed as she should’ve been. She was almost…defiant or…or proud in some perverse way. As if she thought it was some kind of feather in her cap that she could interest a married man at such a young age—or compete with her own mother. “You’re reacting to the rumors, that’s all. Maybe you’re projecting. It’s easy to tell yourself you have no reason to feel bad for what you’ve done when someone else has misbehaved, too.”
At that, Leanne started to laugh. “I saw the way they were together that day, the way his eyes followed her around the room, the way he tried to touch her. It wasn’t how you’d expect an acquaintance to behave.”
“She was probably heartbroken to think her young daughter would make a pornographic video, and he was trying to comfort her.”
Leanne threw up her hands. “This is a waste of time. You see Mom through rose-colored glasses and no amount of reality will change your mind.”
“Where is the video?” Maybe there was something on that, something Leanne had said or done to preface her actions that would clarify the situation. It wasn’t what Claire wanted to view and yet she couldn’t judge what Leanne was thinking back then without seeing at least the beginning.
“Mom destroyed it. She ripped out the tape, then set fire to it in our fireplace.”
Claire was down to twenty minutes before her first haircut showed up, but she couldn’t pull herself away. “Why are you telling me now?”
“Because you need to understand that Mom left. Remember when they searched the house and discovered a suitcase was missing? Where do you suppose it went?”
Who could say? Claire had always feared it’d been used to dispose of her mother’s body. Alana hadn’t taken a damn thing. She hadn’t even packed. None of her clothes were missing, none of her toiletries. And her car had been sitting in the drive, the engine cold. “If she’d been carrying a suitcase, someone would’ve noticed her walking down the street. A woman toting luggage isn’t a sight you see every day, especially in a community as small as this one.”
“She could’ve had a friend pick her up at the house.”
“What friend, Leanne? If she was having an affair with Joe, why would she leave with someone else?”
“Because he wouldn’t sacrifice his marriage for their love—or whatever it was. Mom was as upset about that as she was about the video.”
The person Leanne described wasn’t the person Claire had known as her mother. “So how would she have met this other…friend?”
“Maybe it was an old boyfriend, a high school sweetheart from California.”