The Silent Sister

  Danny opened the door as I got closer.

  “Hey, Danny.” I smiled brightly.

  “Hey,” he said. “I wondered when you’d show up.” His expression was flat and hard to read, but there was a spark in his eyes that comforted me. He’d always been a good-looking guy and he still was, his messy collar-length hair a darker blond than it had been when we were kids and his pale blue eyes vivid against his tanned skin. He was too thin, his face all sharp angles and flat planes. I was glad, though, to see that his short beard was neatly trimmed. During the worst times, he let it grow long and scraggly. I’d come to see his beard as an indicator of how he was doing.

  “I stopped by right after Daddy died,” I said, “but I couldn’t find you.”

  “And that surprised you?”

  Okay, I thought. The angry Danny today.

  I held up the bags. “I brought you some food and cigarettes.” I’d bought some fruit for him—peaches and a melon and a pint of strawberries—but one whole bag was filled with the boxed macaroni and cheese he loved along with the Marlboros. I long ago gave up trying to make my brother into a healthy eater. Making him happy was more important to me. I’d stopped short at buying him booze. I was sure he had plenty of that already.

  I reached up to hand him the bags and he took them from me, stepping back to let me in. As always, I yearned to reach out and hug him as I climbed into the trailer, but sometime over the years, our hugging had stopped. He was four years older than me, and until I was ten or eleven, I would have called him my best friend. That’s when adolescence seemed to take hold of him and refused to let go.

  “We need to talk,” I said.

  “Do we have to?” he asked in a way that told me he knew perfectly well we had plenty to talk about.

  “Yes, we have to.” It had been months since I’d been in his trailer and I’d forgotten how it listed to one side, giving me vertigo as I walked into the tiny space. His narrow bed was at one end, the built-in table and benches at the other, and they were no more than five steps apart. I knew he liked the confined space. He once told me he felt safe, contained that way. He was not a complete hermit, though. More than once, I’d come to the trailer to find signs that a woman had been there—lipstick on a coffee cup or a romance novel on the counter. You couldn’t look like my brother without turning heads. My girlfriends used to drool over him when we were teenagers. I liked knowing he occasionally had company out here.

  The window air conditioner cranked out a weak flow of cool air as I began putting away the groceries. I’d never really understood how he had power out here at all, but he’d somehow managed to rig up a generator that kept him cool enough in the summer and warm enough in the winter. The generator also kept his computer running. The laptop on the table was the one truly out-of-place item in the old trailer, which otherwise looked like it came straight out of the fifties. Danny had always been a technology geek. He was glued to that laptop by the fingertips, and I was glad, actually. He kept in touch with some of the guys he’d served with through e-mail, and I thought he needed that camaraderie. I only wished he’d keep in touch with me as well as he did with them. Sometimes I felt as though my e-mails to him went into a vacuum.

  I put the milk in his refrigerator while he leaned against the counter, watching me.

  “Bryan with you?” he asked.

  “We broke up.” I shut the refrigerator door. “It was my doing,” I added.

  “I thought you said he was ‘the one.’”

  I was surprised he remembered me saying that. “Well, I thought he was,” I said. “But he’s been separated from his wife for three years and he still wasn’t doing anything about a divorce and I got tired of waiting.” I was certain Bryan loved me, but as a couple, we were going nowhere. He had two great kids and I knew he still cared about his wife. I had the feeling I was in the way. “The writing was on the wall,” I said. “It just took me a long time to see it.”

  “Good for you.” Danny sounded sincere.

  “I thought you liked him.”

  “I didn’t like how he was stringing you along.” Folding his arms, he leaned back and took a good look at my face. “And you know what?” he asked. “You look great. Like you got rid of a burden that’s been weighing you down.”

  “Oh, right.” I laughed. How could I look great when I felt so miserable? I was touched, though. Under his surly and sometimes caustic exterior, my brother was still a sweetheart.

  He pulled a box of cigarettes from the carton I’d bought him, opened it, and lit one. He held the box out to offer me one, as though I might have started smoking since I last saw him. I shook my head as I slid onto one of the bench seats at the table.

  His shotgun was directly in my line of view, propped against the wall next to the counter. He hunted small game in the woods and, as far as I knew, the shotgun was his only weapon. I hoped that was the case. Harry Washington told me that everyone in the police department saw Danny as a “loose cannon.” Harry had served with Danny in Iraq and I knew he kept a protective eye on him. He’d e-mailed me a few weeks ago to tell me Danny’d been permanently banned from his favorite sports bar for getting in a fight with the bartender. He now hung out at Slick Alley, Harry said, a run-down-looking pool hall that gave me the creeps every time I drove past it.

  My gaze lit on that shotgun again. I’d seen my brother’s sudden bursts of anger firsthand, but I wasn’t nearly as afraid of him using his gun against another person as I was of him using it against himself. Although the shattered leg he’d suffered in Iraq had taken a toll, his psychological injuries were far worse. To be fair, though, he hadn’t been in the greatest shape before he went.

  “How are you?” I looked up at him.

  He took a drag of his cigarette, nodding. “Good,” he said through a stream of smoke. Sitting down across from me at the table, he moved his laptop aside and tapped an ash into a jar lid.

  “Are you taking your meds?” I asked.

  “Get off my back, little sister,” he said, and I knew he wasn’t. He hated the cocktail of medications the VA psychiatrist had put him on.

  “Never mind.” I folded my hands on the table as though I were about to start a meeting. “So,” I said, “I’m Daddy’s executrix, as you probably know, and I’m in New Bern for a couple of weeks to take care of his … estate.” The word sounded silly attached to my father, and Danny made a derisive sound in the back of his throat. “You can have his car,” I said. “It’s only a few years old and—”

  “I don’t want his fucking car.”

  “All right.” I backed off again. I’d deal with that later. “What about the house?” I asked. “I think we should sell it, but maybe you could live there if you—”

  “No, thanks.” He took a long slow drag on his cigarette, his eyes narrowed at me as though I’d insulted him by even suggesting he move into our childhood home. “You can decide whatever you want about the house and everything in it,” he said. “All I care about is that this piece of land right here”—he pointed to the floor of the trailer—“right where we’re sitting, is mine forever.”

  “We have to sell the park,” I said, “but I don’t think this area is technically part of it.”

  “It’s not,” he said. “It’s totally separate.”

  “Okay. So I’ll talk to the lawyer about making sure this land goes to you. Can you come with me to see her tomorrow?” I asked. “The lawyer? I’d like you to know what—”

  “No,” he said.

  I nodded, unsurprised and knowing it was probably for the best. He would complicate things. Either he’d be so anxious he’d be unable to sit still, or he’d get angry and slam out of the room. Danny was anything but predictable.

  “Okay.” The smoke was really getting to me, but I planned to tough it out. “I have to clean out the house to be able to put it on the market. Can you help me with that? Not the physical-labor part, but we need to go through everything and—”

  “Why don’t you just hir
e someone to cart everything away?” He tapped the cigarette on the edge of the lid.

  “Because … that’s not the way it’s done.” I fanned away the smoke and leaned toward him. “Look, Danny, I need your help. Do it for me, okay? It wouldn’t be for Daddy. It’s for me. It’ll be a massive job for me to handle on my own.”

  He stood up and squashed out the cigarette in the sink, running the water for a moment. I knew I’d gotten inside him by making the request more about me than about our father.

  “This is so messed up,” he said.

  “What is?”

  “Everything.”

  I tried to imagine what it was like inside my brother’s head. In one of his more vulnerable moments, he’d told me that he always felt afraid. He reacted to every loud sound as though he was under attack. Nightmares put him back in Iraq, where he’d done things he refused to tell me about. You’d never look at me the same way if I told you. Daddy had tried to be there for him, but there was an animosity Danny felt toward my father that I’d never understood. Daddy finally gave up on him and I couldn’t really blame him. But I wouldn’t give up. It was that vulnerable Danny I tried to remember when he was being belligerent.

  “Do you love me?” I asked now.

  He raised his head sharply. “Of course,” he said, and his shoulders suddenly slumped as though that admission had defeated him. He sighed as he turned to face me. “What would I need to do?” He suddenly sounded like a little boy, wanting to please me, yet afraid of my answer.

  “Let me talk to the lawyer tomorrow and then figure out exactly what we need to do.” We. I’d make this about both of us. “How about I get you a prepaid phone so we can communicate while I’m here?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if he meant “don’t get me a phone” or “don’t make one more suggestion or I’ll lose it.” Either way, I thought we’d both had enough of a visit for one day and I stood up.

  “You look good, Danny,” I said, getting to my feet. “I love you so much.” I did. He was all the family I had left.

  * * *

  I made up the double bed in my old bedroom that night. I could have slept in my parents’ much larger room with its queen-sized bed, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. It still felt like their private space to me. I wasn’t ready to invade it.

  In the two weeks since I’d split from Bryan, bedtime had become the hardest part of the day for me. That was when we used to talk on the phone to say “good night” and “I love you.” I missed those calls so much. For the first week after the split, I talked to Sherise every night instead of Bryan, and how she’d tolerated my whining and moaning, I didn’t know. Now she was unreachable in Haiti, and I was an orphan.

  I was still awake at midnight, staring at the ceiling. I would never sleep. I got up, walked downstairs, and made myself a cup of Sleepytime tea in the microwave. I was carrying it back to the stairs when I spotted my purse on my father’s desk and remembered the purple envelope from the post office box. I took the envelope upstairs with me and climbed back into bed, sipping my tea as I examined the looping handwriting on the purple paper. Fred Marcus. No return address. I hesitated a moment before slitting the envelope open with my finger. The only thing inside was a postcard. On the front was a color photograph of a band. Bluegrass or country, maybe. Two women and two men, all of them carrying stringed instruments. At the bottom of the picture were the words Jasha Trace. The band’s name, I supposed. On the back of the card was a tour schedule, and written where the recipient’s address should go, in that same looping handwriting, Can’t wait to see you! Where should we meet up? xoxo

  Damn. Now I felt really terrible. Whoever Fred Marcus was, he wouldn’t get this card because I’d taken it from his post office box. I should have left it there. Maybe even paid to keep his box open for a while.

  With a sigh, I leaned over to toss the card and envelope into the trash can next to my night table. I had enough to deal with without taking on the problems of a stranger. Fred Marcus would have to figure this out on his own.

  3.

  “So your father drew up this will three years ago.” Suzanne Compton, my father’s attorney, leaned across her desk to hand me a copy of the will. I paged through it on the edge of her desk. While I’d still been in Durham, Suzanne had helped me file information with the court and get into my father’s bank accounts, but I’d put off dealing with his will until now when I could talk to her face-to-face.

  “As I mentioned on the phone,” Suzanne continued, “he split everything fifty-fifty between you and your brother’s trust. The house. The RV park. His bank accounts. The only exception is that five-acre parcel that goes to Daniel alone. You’ll take over as the trustee of his trust now, so we’ll have to talk about your responsibilities in that regard.”

  I nodded. I knew about the trust, of course, but I hadn’t realized I would now be in charge of Danny’s money. He could only spend it on certain things to avoid losing his disability checks. I was relieved that my father had left the land to him.

  “Your father had a small life insurance policy he apparently bought when he worked for the government,” Suzanne said, “and it appears he kept up the premiums, so that’s fifty thousand that also goes to the two of you.”

  “He never worked for the government,” I said, wondering if she had her cases mixed up. “He’s always just run Mac’s RV Park.”

  “Well, it’s an old policy.” Suzanne rubbed the back of her neck beneath her blond chin-length hair. She looked a little sleepy as she flipped through some notes in what I assumed was my father’s file. She couldn’t be half as tired as I was after my mostly sleepless night. “He bought the policy in 1980 when he was with the U.S. Marshals Service,” she said.

  “U.S. Marshals Service? My father? I don’t think…” My voice trailed off as a vague childhood memory came to me. Danny and I were working on a sand castle at the beach, watching a police officer arrest a couple of noisy drunks. Daddy used to arrest people, too, Danny had said. He was a marshal. I remembered the pride in his voice, but I couldn’t have been more than five and had no idea what he was talking about.

  Now I smiled. “When I was little, Danny told me our father used to be a marshal. That must be what he meant. In 1980—when you said he bought that policy—my family lived in northern Virginia outside Washington, D.C., so I guess it makes sense. But I had no idea he ever had a government job. He never talked about it.”

  “Well, it was a long time ago.” Suzanne looked down at the will, clearly wanting to get on with business. “Now, your father was quite the collector, wasn’t he? He told me the violins were the most valuable, but second to that was his pipe collection, and he wants that to go to Thomas Kyle.”

  “Seriously?” I sat back, surprised. Tom Kyle? He and his wife, Verniece, were longtime residents at my father’s RV park, but I barely knew them. Tom always struck me as a grouchy old man, though Verniece was sweet. When Daddy died, I’d asked Suzanne to work out an arrangement so that Tom could temporarily handle the reservations and payments for the park. As far as I knew, that had gone well.

  “Is that something you want to contest?” Suzanne asked.

  I shook my head slowly. “No,” I said. “I’m just surprised. I guess Tom Kyle and my father were closer than I thought. It’s nice my father left him something.” I was glad to know Daddy’d had a friend he cared about that much. The pipes were probably worth a few thousand dollars. “Does Mr. Kyle know?” I asked.

  “No. As executrix, you should notify him. You can have him call me with any questions and I’ll draw up a document you and he will need to sign.” She glanced down at the will again. “The only other thing he’s spelled out here is that he’s leaving his piano and ten thousand dollars to Jeannie Lyons.”

  The name didn’t register right away. I hadn’t heard it in years. “Really?” I asked.

  “Do you know Jeannie? She’s a real estate agent?”

  “She was an old
friend of my mother’s from back when they were kids, but Mom passed away seven years ago.” I remembered that Jeannie and my mother went away together every couple of years when I was growing up. A girls’ getaway, my mother called it. They’d go to the beach or to Asheville, which was where Jeannie lived then, if I had my facts straight. “I didn’t know my father stayed in touch with her.”

  “It’s always possible your mother asked him to leave something to Jeannie,” Suzanne said. “Do you—or your brother—have any problem with her getting the piano or the money?”

  I shook my head. “Not if that’s what my father wanted,” I said. “Besides, Danny lives in a trailer and I have a tiny apartment.” Then I added with a smile, “Plus, neither of us can play.”

  “Then you’ll want to see Jeannie,” Suzanne said. “She can help you with the house and RV park, too, if you plan to put them both on the market.”

  “I do,” I said.

  Suzanne turned to her notes. “I have here that your father had about two hundred thousand in savings at the time he drew up the will. So that, plus the insurance, plus the value of his house and the park, which Jeannie can help you determine, will be split between Daniel’s trust and yourself.”

  The word wow crossed my mind, but it felt wrong to say it. I had six thousand dollars in my savings account at that very moment. I made next to nothing as a school counselor and I thought I was doing pretty well to have put away that much.

  “A word of advice is not to go crazy spending,” Suzanne said. “Sock it away. Find a good financial advisor. I can refer you to someone here, but you’d probably prefer someone in Durham. Just be careful with the money and let it grow. Maybe buy a house of your own. Get out of the tiny apartment. Hopefully this will help your brother out, too. How is he doing?”

  “You know him?” I asked, not really surprised. Nearly everyone in New Bern knew Danny to one extent or another. He elicited a complicated set of emotions in people: gratitude for his military service, compassion for his injuries, and apprehension over his unpredictability.