The Silent Sister Read online

  “Exactly,” Verniece said. “He was just guessing.”

  Tom lifted his beer and took a long pull on it. He glanced at his wife. “They found more than one set of footprints in the area where her car was parked, like she had help,” he said.

  “Tom,” Verniece protested.

  “Like someone helped her fake her suicide,” he added, in case I wasn’t following him. I was. Very well.

  “How do you know about the footprints?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I read it in the paper somewhere. Your sister’s so-called suicide was written up all over the damn place.”

  “My father cut out a ton of articles about what happened,” I said. “I read them all. There was nothing about two sets of footprints.”

  “Well, he must have missed one,” he said. “I didn’t pull it out of thin air. What’s it matter, anyway?” He narrowed his eyes at me. “You want a murderer in your life? You want to have to split your inheritance with someone like that?”

  “Tom…” Verniece had red splotches on her throat.

  “If my sister is alive, I want the chance to know her.” I felt the threat of tears behind my eyes.

  “Oh, see now what you’ve done?” Verniece snapped at her husband. “Stop teasing her. What’s wrong with you, old man?”

  Tom leaned back in the chair with a sigh. “I didn’t mean to get you all worked up.”

  “He didn’t mean it, Riley, truly,” Verniece said.

  “But … you honestly don’t believe she killed herself?” I couldn’t let it go. I would keep the possibility alive as long as I could.

  “No, I don’t,” he said. “I think she’s probably still alive and free as a bird somewhere.”

  “Stop it!” Verniece leaned over to smack him on the arm. “She’s vulnerable. Can’t you see that? I told her about her adoption and upset her to bits and now you’re filling her head with all sorts of crap!”

  “I’m not adopted,” I said tiredly, then looked at Tom again. “It’s just the way you said it. You know, when you were in your car before you drove off? Like you knew for sure.”

  “I was pissed off,” he said. “But that doesn’t change what I believe. About her being alive.”

  We were both ignoring Verniece, who was making tsking sounds of distress.

  “Verniece told me my father said he was going to give you the park,” I said, “but there’s nothing about that in his will. There’s nothing to indicate that at all, and I’m sorry if you had your hopes up. I honestly think the pipe collection was pretty generous.”

  The look he gave me was evil. “You have no fucking idea.” He got to his feet so quickly I drew back in my chair, afraid. Picking up his half-empty beer bottle by the neck, he walked away from us toward the creek. I watched him go, wishing I hadn’t mentioned the park. Wishing I hadn’t come at all.

  I looked at Verniece. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize it was such a sore subject.”

  She let out a long sigh and brushed a fly away from her damp face. “We’re hurting for money a little right now,” she said. “That’s all. You know how it is … well, you don’t know, actually.” She smiled. “But you reach a certain age. You’re on a fixed income, yet expenses keep going up. Your house is falling apart.” She laughed mirthlessly, pointing to the dented RV behind her. “It gets a little frightening.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. I felt wealthy, my share of Daddy’s money on its way to my own bank and more to come when I sold the house and the park. I’d done absolutely nothing to earn that wealth. “You know you can stay here without paying any rent until I sell the park.” Oh, God. Where would they go then? “I hope the pipe collection will give you a little bit of a cushion.”

  She wore a sad smile, reaching over to touch my hand. “I’m sure it will,” she said. “And don’t you worry, now. We’ll be fine.”

  * * *

  I felt far worse as I drove away from the Kyles’ motor home than when I’d driven toward it half an hour earlier. I wanted to believe my sister was alive, and yet I knew there was a good chance Tom was toying with me.

  Two sets of footprints, he’d said. Was he making it up? Even if he wasn’t, what did it mean?

  All I knew was that I didn’t want to be alone with this possibility another minute. I drove past the exit of the RV park and onto the rutted lane that would take me to my brother’s trailer.

  MARCH 1990

  21.

  San Diego

  Jade

  She played the violin in bed at night.

  She had no instrument, of course. She would honor the bargain she’d made with her father, no matter how difficult. She would never play again. But just like a boy without a guitar could play an air guitar, she played the air violin. She’d lie on her back and hold Violet beneath her chin as she stroked the bow across the strings, playing Bach or Mendelssohn, until the instrument grew too heavy for her arms to hold. And then, every single night, she’d cry until her head was stuffy and she’d struggle to fall asleep.

  She missed her violin so much. She’d never been one of those children whose parents had to force them to practice. Instead, they’d had to force her to go outside and play. To Jade—to Lisa—the violin had been a reward. Even when she was eight or nine and the neighborhood kids were out riding their bikes on a Saturday morning, she’d wake up with her fingers twitching, ready to pick up the bow. Her violin had gotten her through some terrible times and now, during the loneliest, scariest time of her life, she didn’t have the one thing that could calm her.

  Sometimes she couldn’t believe what had happened to her life, as though it was a nightmare and she would wake up, excitedly working on her applications to Juilliard and the other schools she’d been applying to. Maybe Juilliard wouldn’t take her, thanks to Steven, but some school would want her. “Oh, Lisa has such a bright future!” everyone said. Now, Lisa had no future at all, and Jade’s looked empty as well. She wondered if there was a way out of her dilemma. Maybe her lawyer hadn’t thought of everything. Now, though, even if there were a way out, her father would end up in prison, too. She couldn’t let that happen.

  In the mornings, she’d eat a piece of toast she wasn’t hungry for and watch the news. Even though a month and a half had passed since she’d left home, she still worried that her face would pop up on the television, but it never did. Each day without any mention of Lisa MacPherson, she grew a bit braver. She walked a little farther through the neighborhoods with their bungalows and wild gardens. When people smiled at her, she made herself smile back, and she doubted anyone knew that it was only her facial muscles making the expression and not her heart. At the beach, she’d watch the surfers ride the waves in their wet suits. She looked with new sympathy at the homeless people who had let her share their beach for a night without harm. A few times, she accompanied Ingrid as she carried her baked goods out to the hungry in the dark. It seemed the least she could do.

  Newport Avenue, the main street in Ocean Beach, ran between Ingrid’s neighborhood and the beach, and both sides of the street were lined with antiques shops and consignment shops and yoga studios and little eateries, but there was one store that drew her in nearly every time she passed it: Grady’s Records. The first time she set foot inside the shop, she spent an hour going through old vinyl and cassettes and new CDs, and for a while, she forgot the ache in her chest. She went through everything—the classical, the rock, the folk, the country, the gospel. Everything. She needed music! How had she survived all these weeks without it? If only she could buy some of the CDs, but she had no way to play them and she was afraid to touch her shrinking bank account. She needed a job, but although she could get onstage in front of thousands of people and perform for hours, the thought of walking into one of the shops along Newport Avenue and asking for work scared her. But Grady, the blond, long-haired owner of the shop, gave her a warm smile every time she came in, and she was slowly working up the courage to ask him if he needed help. If it annoyed him t
hat she spent so much time looking through his albums without making a single purchase, he never said a word.

  Grady’s felt like home to her for another reason that had nothing to do with music. The first time she walked into the shop, her eyes had been drawn to a poster on the wall. Grady had tons of posters, all of rock groups except for this one. It was a photograph of a model, Nastassja Kinski, lying naked on the floor with a python wrapped around her body. It was not the first time Jade had seen that picture. If the police went through her room at home after her “death,” they would find the same photograph tucked deep in her T-shirt drawer. She’d first seen it when she was eleven years old, lying on her stomach on the living room floor, looking through a magazine with Matty. He’d turned the page and there was Nastassja and the snake. “Gross!” Matty had said, contorting his face into the expression of disgust that always made her laugh.

  “Gross,” she’d agreed, but later, when she was alone, she cut out the picture and stared at it for hours before slipping it into her drawer, fascinated by the way the snake coiled around the woman’s body, hiding and exposing, hiding and exposing.

  To see the same poster on Grady’s wall when it had nothing whatsoever to do with music felt like a sign to her. This was where she wanted to work.

  Surrounding herself with music in the record store wasn’t enough to kill her homesickness, though. Her longing for home, for her family, for Matty, for Violet, seemed to grow bigger and more heartbreaking with each passing day. Back when she thought she’d end up in prison, she’d asked Matty to watch over Riley and Danny for her, and she comforted herself with the thought that he was staying in close touch with them even though he now thought she was dead. She pictured him coming over to the house, acting like a big brother to Riley and Danny. Reading to them. Maybe taking them to the zoo or a movie. If only she could be with them.

  One day, when she couldn’t shake the sense of having lost everything, she went to the bank and changed a twenty-dollar bill for quarters, telling herself she needed the change for the Laundromat, even though she knew that twenty dollars’ worth of quarters was overkill. Then, while her clothes were swooshing around in the washing machine, she walked to the nearby pay phone. She left the door open a crack to cut the urine-and-alcohol scent of the booth, then piled her change on the small metal shelf beneath the phone.

  She stared at the dial. It was five o’clock on the East Coast. Her mother was likely at home, making dinner. Jade only wanted to hear her voice. That was all. Maybe she’d be able to hear Riley chattering in the background. She wouldn’t speak, though. Wouldn’t dare to. But she needed that connection to her family. She needed it desperately.

  She dialed her old home number, adding quarters as the mechanical voice commanded. Holding her breath, she waited through three odd, tinny-sounding rings before someone answered.

  “The number you have reached has been disconnected.” The voice was mechanical and disinterested, and Jade stared wide-eyed at the dial.

  Oh, no. They’d had to change their number twice after her arrest, so she supposed her suicide had caused a new rash of unwanted calls, but her heart sped up at having no way to reach her family. Their new number would be unlisted, for sure. Nevertheless, she had to try. She called information and asked for a Frank MacPherson in Alexandria.

  “There is no number for a Frank MacPherson in Alexandria,” the operator said.

  “You mean, you can’t give it out, right? It’s unlisted?”

  “No, there is no number. There’s a Peter and a J.T.”

  Had they moved? That seemed unthinkable. “What about … Arlington?” she asked. “Anywhere around Washington?”

  The operator had a Fiona, but no Frank, listed or unlisted, and Jade finally hung up in defeat. Where were they? Where was her family? Were they running away from the reporters? Or were they running away from her?

  Did Matty know where they were? Her comforting image of him remaining a part of her family’s life disintegrated. If they’d moved away, how could he stay involved?

  Then, although she hadn’t intended to, she dialed Matty’s number. He had his own phone number, separate from his family’s, and it only rang in his bedroom. She would settle for his answering machine. Anything! She just needed to hear the voice of someone from her old life. Someone she knew cared about her.

  He picked up. “Hello?” he said.

  Oh, my God. She touched the phone as if she was touching him. He sounded so familiar, so close by, and it was all she could do to stop herself from speaking.

  “Hello?” he asked again. “Who’s this?”

  Might he guess? There was no one in the world she was closer to than Matty. Didn’t he know she would never kill herself? She waited, wanting him to say, “Is this Lisa?” Instead, though, he hung up.

  Walking back to the Laundromat, she was in a fog. She tried to picture her house in Alexandria with new people living in it, hurt that her family had moved on without her. Even though she knew it could never happen, she’d fantasized about finding some way to go home. Now “home” didn’t exist anymore. She felt dizzy thinking about it, like she was floating out in space forever.

  In the Laundromat, she opened the washing machine, reaching in for her wet, twisted clothes.

  What had she expected? She had to stop thinking about herself and start thinking about what was best for Riley and Danny and her parents. She’d turned their lives inside out. A move would definitely be the right thing for Danny. He could start fresh at a new school where no one knew about her. And Riley, barely two years old now, would never have to know about her murderous, suicidal sister at all.

  She blotted her eyes with the damp towel in her hands.

  She knew that would be for the best.

  22.

  Riley

  I couldn’t find my brother. When I drove into his clearing after seeing the Kyles, his car was parked next to his trailer but there was no answer when I knocked on the door. He wasn’t suicidal, he’d said, but I couldn’t stop myself from dragging a concrete block over to the trailer so I could stand on it to peer into a window. There was no sign of him inside. Of course, there was no sign of his shotgun, either, which did nothing to ease my mind. He was probably in his favorite place in the woods, but I would never be able to find that oval of grass on my own. I sat on the Airstream’s step, pulled my phone from my pocket, and tried calling him, unsurprised when he didn’t pick up.

  I found a scrap of paper in my car and tucked a note between his door and the jamb. I need to talk to you. Please call. Please let me know you’re okay. I drove away without much hope of getting a response.

  * * *

  That night, I tossed and turned until two A.M., more awake than I’d been when I went to bed. I finally decided to get up and tackle my father’s computer. I had to see what needed saving from the hard drive before I turned it over to Christine. Maybe concentrating on that task would clear Tom and Verniece—and my worry about my brother—from my mind.

  I walked barefoot down the hall to Daddy’s office and switched on his small desk lamp. The house was deathly quiet as I sat down at the computer. When I pressed the power button, the old machine let out a human-sounding gasp that broke the silence and sent a chill up my spine. The clunky monitor was slow to come to life, and once it did, I groaned. It wanted a password. Great.

  In movies, people always managed to come up with the appropriate password to hack into a computer. A child’s name. An anniversary date. Something obvious. I tried every possible combination of letters and numbers I could think of without luck before heading back to bed. Maybe Jeannie would have some idea of a password he’d use, I thought as I lay awake staring at the dark ceiling. She seemed to know everything else about him. If she didn’t know what it was, I’d have to ask Danny for help. He knew everything there was to know about computers, and if anyone knew a way to get into my father’s files without a password, it would be him. How I’d get him to come back to the house, though, was anot
her question entirely.

  And of course, I’d have to find him first.

  * * *

  I was just waking up the following morning when Jeannie and Christine arrived. I heard their car doors slam outside, their muted voices on the front porch as they let themselves in with Jeannie’s key. In a moment, one of them would knock on my bedroom door, badgering me about my father’s cabinets or the computer or whatever. My house was not my own.

  I got out of bed, brushed my teeth, then threw on my running clothes. I managed to escape down the stairs and out the front door without them seeing me, and I headed for the river at an easy jog, still yawning from my mostly sleepless night. When I reached the path along the river, I spotted five kayakers paddling south. I slowed down, then stopped altogether, standing at the railing near the river’s edge as I watched the kayaks cut through the water in a chevron shape. The lead kayak was yellow, like my sister’s had been. Weird timing, I thought, as my mind drifted back to the conversation with the Kyles.

  Two sets of footprints.

  I pulled my phone from my shorts pocket and dialed Danny’s number. No answer. Turning around, I started for home, running now. I went in the back door to find Jeannie rooting around in one of the kitchen cabinets. She looked up in surprise and opened her mouth to speak, but I grabbed my keys from the key rack, gave her a quick wave, and left before she could ask me anything.

  * * *

  Danny was still not in his trailer, but this time his car was gone as well and I guessed he was either at the store or in a bar. I sat in the sweltering heat of my car, remembering the e-mail Harry had sent me about Danny hanging out at Slick Alley these days.

  I turned the key in the ignition, hoping I’d see his Subaru in the Food Lion parking lot rather than at the pool hall, for both our sakes. I jostled my car back and forth in the tight clearing, then headed back to New Bern. Fifteen minutes later, I spotted Danny’s black Subaru in the Slick Alley parking lot. The building itself was a one-story, flat-roofed rectangle of concrete that had once been painted white but now blended into the gray sky behind it. SLICK ALLEY BILLIARDS was hand painted in green letters above the door, and on the side of the building, someone had painted a picture of a busty blond woman as she bent over a pool table to take a shot. Lovely.