The Silent Sister

  “I wasn’t sure how much you’d been able to find out on your own, but the way you’ve been avoiding me the last few days made me think you knew plenty,” he said. “And when I opened the door a few minutes ago and you heard the music … Your face gave you away.”

  “Have you talked to Harry about it?” I’d lowered my hands to my lap and was anxiously rubbing them together.

  “Not yet.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  He didn’t hesitate. “I’m going to tell Harry he can solve a cold case the night of that concert. He can be a hero, and Lisa will finally get what she has coming to her.”

  “Danny”—I was very close to crying—“she’s not hurting anyone.”

  I might as well have been speaking Greek. “You don’t seem to get it, Riley,” he said. “Leaving aside all the crap she put our family through, she killed a man. If it was an accident—which I think is bullshit—she’ll finally get to have her day in court. It’ll be complicated by the fact that she ran off, of course, but still. And if you sincerely want to help her, you might line up a good criminal lawyer for her in Virginia.”

  “Damn it!” I pounded my fist on the table. “Can you leave it alone? Please! It’s not only Lisa’s life you’re tampering with,” I said. “It’s her children’s. It’s her family’s.”

  “Most criminals have families,” he said. “That doesn’t give them a ‘get out of jail free’ card.” He reached out to touch my fist, gently unfolding my curled fingers until they lay flat on the table. The gesture felt tender and it gave me hope. “What is it you want from her, Riles?” he asked quietly.

  “I want to meet her,” I said. “That’s all I want. Just to meet her. What I don’t want is to hurt her.”

  He withdrew his hand from mine with a sigh. “She killed someone,” he said again, sounding tired. “That’s the bottom line. She killed someone and she has to pay.”

  I stood up and walked to the door. “Will you promise me something?” I asked. “Just one thing?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Think about this awhile longer before you talk to Harry.”

  “The concert’s only a couple of days away,” he reminded me.

  “I know. But you can wait, can’t you? What difference will it make if you tell him tonight or the day of the concert?” I opened the door. It was dark outside now, and when I turned to look at him, the trailer light illuminated the sharp angles of his face and the translucent blue of his eyes. “It’s important that you think it through before you act,” I said.

  “I don’t need to,” he said. “I’ve done enough thinking.”

  I looked at his computer where it rested on the counter, the image of Jasha Trace a bright light in the dim trailer. Lisa stared at me from the life I was no part of.

  I turned back to my brother. “There’s something you don’t know,” I said quietly, using the only card I had left to play. “Something you couldn’t have figured out, no matter how skillful you are at searching the Internet.”

  “What’s that?” he asked

  I swallowed hard. “Lisa’s my mother,” I said.

  Two sharp lines creased the space between his eyebrows. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “It’s the truth,” I said. “Jeannie told me. Lisa’s my mother. She had me when she was fifteen. Mom and Daddy adopted me.”

  “Shit,” he said, and his face softened, but only by a small degree.

  I knew that wasn’t going to be enough.

  50.

  When I left Danny’s trailer, I drove straight to Jeannie’s small, one-story white brick house in the DeGraffenried neighborhood. She was dressed in a blue robe when she opened the door, and it only took a glimpse of my face in the porch light to let her know something was very wrong.

  She reached for my hand and drew me inside. “What is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”

  “Danny knows everything.”

  “You told him?” She looked shocked, and I told her how he’d come to learn the truth about Lisa. I spoke so quickly that my words tumbled over one another.

  “Will he go to the police?” she asked.

  “He hasn’t yet, but I know he plans to.”

  We were still standing by the front door, and now she motioned me into the room. “Come in,” she said. “Let’s calm down so we can think.”

  I walked into her softly lit living room and felt a jolt at seeing our old baby grand piano nestled in the bay window. I dropped onto an armless upholstered chair, my head tipped back to look at the ceiling. “I have to warn her,” I said. “He plans to tell Harry Washington … do you know him?”

  She nodded. “He’s a good guy. Why Harry?”

  “They’re friends. He wants Harry to arrest her … or at least apprehend her at the New Bern concert. I’m not sure what Harry will do exactly, but if Danny tells him, I’m sure he’ll have to do something.”

  “You have to e-mail Lisa, then,” Jeanne said. “You really don’t have much of a choice.”

  I looked out the window into the darkness. “Unless I could find a phone number for her,” I said, “but she’s probably unlisted. And she’s on the road right now anyhow.” My heartbeat sped up at the thought of calling her. Telling her who I was. I would scare her to death. What if she hung up on me? I was too chicken to risk a hostile response. Lisa had managed to fly under the radar for over twenty years until I started digging into her life.

  Suddenly, I seized on an idea. “Her tour schedule!” I said. “It’s on their Web site.”

  Jeannie stood up and walked toward the door to get her briefcase. “Let’s look,” she said, pulling her laptop from the case and carrying it to the couch. I moved from my chair to a seat next to her, and we were quiet as I guided her to the Jasha Trace Web site.

  “There’s the schedule,” I said, pointing to the link.

  She clicked on it and I quickly scanned the dates. Tonight they had off. Tomorrow night they’d be at Dulcimer, a little club I’d been to a couple of times in Chapel Hill, and the night after that was the New Bern concert. “I have to go to the one in Chapel Hill,” I said. Chapel Hill was only a few hours from New Bern and right next to Durham. “I can spend the night in my apartment.”

  “What will you do?” Jeannie asked slowly, and I guessed she was trying to imagine the scene, the same as I was. “What will you say to her?”

  I sat back on the couch, gnawing my lip as I thought. “I’ll tell her about Danny,” I said. “That he knows. That he won’t leave it alone and that his best friend’s a cop. She’ll have to decide what to do from there.” I pressed my fingers to my temples, rubbing hard. “And I’ll apologize,” I said. “It’s my fault she’s in danger, Jeannie,” I said. “I never should have tried to find her.”

  “You didn’t know what you were getting into,” she said. “You’re hardly to blame.”

  I stared into space, unconvinced. I doubted Lisa would see it that way.

  “Do you want me to come to Chapel Hill with you?” Jeannie asked.

  I thought about it. It was strange that Jeannie was the person I felt safest with these days. “I should go alone,” I said finally. I tried to imagine approaching Lisa at Dulcimer. I tried to imagine the look on her face. It wouldn’t be welcoming. “I can’t believe I’m going to do this,” I said, my apprehension mixed with excitement.

  “You need to.”

  “I’m nervous.” I glanced at her. She was watching me intently. “I’m afraid she’ll act like she doesn’t know me. Turn me away. That would be the worst. Maybe she’ll sic security on me.”

  Jeannie leaned forward to rest her laptop on the coffee table. “Come with me,” she said, getting to her feet.

  I followed her through the dining room to a small sunroom. A large desk stood at one end of the room, and a love seat and two chairs, upholstered with palm trees and monkeys, sat at the other. Beneath the windows along one wall was a row of white built-in cabinets, similar to tho
se in my father’s living room.

  She turned on a floor lamp, then squatted in front of one of the cabinets. She rooted around for a moment, finally pulling out a small album. “Have a seat.” She nodded in the direction of the love seat as she stood up again. I sat down on the love seat and she pulled one of the chairs close to me and opened the album.

  “I used to be good about putting pictures in albums, before everything went digital,” she said, holding the album so the floor lamp illuminated the pages. “Now I’ve gotten lazy.” She gave a small laugh. “Anyway, these are mostly from a trip I took to California.” She turned the pages without stopping to look closely at the photographs. “But I remember there are a couple from the year Lisa stayed with me, and there’s one in particular I want you to see.”

  She turned a page and I spotted a picture of Lisa, her hair as pale as her skin, decorating a Christmas tree. She wore black leggings and an oversized blue sweater. I pulled the album closer to me. She was clearly pregnant.

  “She was about six months there,” Jeannie said.

  “Oh,” I whispered. Lisa smiled at the camera. It wasn’t a full-blown smile of joy, but it was an expression that told me she was at ease with the photographer. With Jeannie.

  “Unfortunately, that was the only picture I kept of her from when she was pregnant,” Jeannie said. “She was camera shy then, for obvious reasons. But this is the one I wanted you to see.” She turned the page and I saw Lisa in a hospital bed, the requisite blue and white hospital gown slipping off one shoulder, a dark-haired baby in her arms.

  “That’s you,” Jeannie said.

  Lisa’s eyes were closed, her face at peace, her head turned so that her cheek rested on my temple. The gesture spoke volumes. She’d loved me. She’d treasured me.

  Jeannie lifted my chin with her fingertips until I was looking at her through my damp, blurry vision. “She’s not going to turn you away, Riley,” she said gently. “I am completely sure of that.”

  51.

  I tried listening to an audiobook as I drove the two and a half hours to Chapel Hill the following day, but at least two thirds of the novel was lost on me. If Jeannie hadn’t been with a client today, I would have called her to help steady my nerves. She told me to call tonight after I saw Lisa, no matter what time it was. “I’m not going to be able to sleep till I hear from you anyway,” she said.

  I couldn’t believe it: tonight I would see Lisa. I’d gone over and over my plan in my mind, but it depended on so many things working to my advantage. Mostly, it depended on Lisa being willing to see me, and that was a huge unknown.

  The traffic bogged down when I reached the Beltline around Raleigh. I passed the turnoff I used to take to go to Bryan’s apartment, and for the first time since our breakup, the memory of him didn’t tear me in two. I’d barely thought of him in days, I realized. The two years I’d spent waiting for him to officially end his marriage suddenly seemed like a colossal waste of my time.

  A car on my right honked at something or someone, and I hoped it wasn’t at me. I brought my attention back to the road. I was very early. I’d be in Chapel Hill by a little after five and the doors at Dulcimer wouldn’t open until seven. I could spend the extra time finding someplace to have dinner, though the way I felt right now, I doubted I’d be able to eat. I’d sit in my car and wait, instead, thinking through every possible scenario that might come up as I waited to see Lisa.

  * * *

  The rush hour traffic clogged the streets of Chapel Hill, yet I managed to find a parking place only a block from Dulcimer. I turned off the ignition and wondered what to do next. It was five-twenty. My plan was to see the concert and then find Lisa backstage … but maybe I could track her down now, since I was so early? Bad idea, I thought. How could she perform after meeting up with me? Besides, I wasn’t ready yet. I wondered if I would ever be ready. Once Lisa’s world and mine collided, there’d be no going back.

  With the air-conditioning off, my car quickly grew intolerably hot and I lowered all four windows. Chapel Hill was a college town and the sidewalk was filled with students, their chatter loud and lively as they passed by my car. They looked and sounded so much younger than me. In the last couple of months, I felt like I’d aged a decade.

  In the distance, I saw some people in front of Dulcimer and suddenly wondered if the show might be sold out. Even though I’d never heard of Jasha Trace, it was clear from their Web site that they had quite a following. I began to perspire, from both the heat as well as from that new, unsettling thought. I raised my windows, then reached into the backseat for Violet’s case. Bringing her along had been a last-minute impulse. I got out of the car, my purse over my shoulder and Violet in my arms as I headed in the direction of the club.

  It was a little after six and the box office was open. I bought a ticket easily—so easily that I felt sort of hurt for Lisa that Jasha Trace wasn’t going to have a sold-out performance after all. Stepping away from the box office, I looked up and down the street to determine my next move. There was a small music store a few shops away from where I stood and I ducked inside, hoping to find something to occupy my mind until the doors of the club opened.

  I imagined Grady’s record store had been something like this one, cramped and hot. I pictured Lisa working in that tight little space. She’d only been seventeen when she arrived in San Diego and I could only imagine how alone and frightened she must have felt. My own stomach was cramping from nerves right now, and I was twenty-five and not on the run from anyone or anything. How had she survived the fear? How had she survived the guilt of having killed someone?

  I tried to get my bearings in the store, but was overwhelmed by the press of bodies and the eardrum-piercing music. I clutched Violet to my chest as I maneuvered my way through the narrow aisles toward the door. Outside once more, I walked a block to an empty bench on a patch of green lawn, and sat there, Violet on my lap, pulling my phone from my purse every few minutes to watch the time tick closer to seven.

  * * *

  By five after seven, I was inside Dulcimer, where rows of folding chairs faced the raised platform that served as a stage. The room was smaller than I remembered, and high redbrick walls made it feel even tinier. The occupancy sign on the wall read 150. Both of the concerts I’d seen at the club had been general admission, and Bryan and I had stood shoulder to shoulder with other members of the audience, so I was surprised—and relieved—to see the chairs. I didn’t think my legs would hold me up for the length of a concert tonight.

  Standing near the concession booth, I looked toward the stage. The platform was elevated only a foot or so off the worn wooden floor of the club. A drum set and keyboard had been pushed against the back wall as if unneeded for this particular concert, but a couple of stools and a few microphones were near the front, along with a guitar on a stand. Seeing those props made everything real to me. In less than an hour, Lisa would be up there, only a few yards away from me. Finally.

  I bought a beer and a paper container of nachos I’d have to force myself to eat, but I thought I’d better have something in my stomach to sop up the alcohol. People around me laughed and talked as they greeted one another. It was clearly a crowd of regulars and I was aware of being the odd man out. I looked toward the seats, which were starting to fill. Should I sit in the front row where I’d be way too visible or in the back where I could watch Lisa unnoticed? I compromised, picking a seat smack in the middle of the room, and I sat there feeling very alone as I chewed a tortilla chip that tasted like cardboard.

  The building grew noisier as it filled up, voices bouncing off the brick walls. I noticed that many people wore T-shirts with the letters JT emblazoned on the back, and it took me a good ten minutes to realize that JT stood for Jasha Trace.

  I felt conspicuous, alone in my center row clutching Violet between my knees, but as more and more people filed into the seats, it looked like there would be a decent crowd. The young guy sitting to my right read the back of a Jasha Trace CD,
pointing to something on the case as he spoke to the woman he was with. The seat to my left was empty, and I was glad for that little bit of breathing room.

  To the right of the platform was a door that appeared to be the only way to get backstage. I focused on it, picturing myself walking through it. I was still staring at the door when a burly young guy dressed in black jeans and a black T-shirt took his post in front of it. A yellow plastic badge hung around his neck. Security, I guessed. I would have to get past him to get to Lisa.

  I’d finished my beer and half the nachos by the time the houselights dimmed, and I put the bottle and paper basket beneath my chair, knowing I’d never remember to toss them when it was time to leave. I had the feeling they would be the last thing on my mind.

  A middle-aged woman with a sleeve tattoo and short, bright purple hair took the stage. She talked about the exits we should use in an emergency, told us to silence our cell phones, and then spoke endlessly about the upcoming concerts, and the audience grew restless. Or maybe it was just me. The beer and chips sloshed around in my stomach and I wondered how I’d get out of this row if I needed to be sick.

  Jasha Trace came onstage with zero fanfare—the men with their banjo and guitar, Celia with her mandolin and Lisa with her fiddle—and started right in on a fast-paced song I recognized from one of their CDs. My heart raced along with the music. I couldn’t take my eyes off Lisa. Her hair—a natural-looking blond-streaked brown—hung a few inches past her shoulders, and it was loose and swingy as she played. Her features were sharper than I remembered from the pictures I’d seen of her, and under the harsh lights above the stage, I could see fine lines across her forehead even from where I sat. All four musicians wore jeans and T-shirts. I was pretty sure Shane was the guy with the beard and Travis the one with the shorter cropped blondish hair and glasses.

  Celia no longer wore that short edgy hairstyle that was on their Web site and CD covers. Now her dark hair was in a sort of bob, the razor-cut ends radically layered and choppy. It was a very cool cut that made her look younger and hipper than Lisa, and my heart cracked a little. Lisa’s life hadn’t been easy. Not as a child under pressure to perform, or as a fifteen-year-old giving birth away from her family and friends, or as a seventeen-year-old on the run. Yet when the song was over and she lowered her fiddle, her smile softened her face and I saw the light inside her. The joy over what she was doing. Over the life she’d created for herself. She started playing again, the bounce of her hair like a symbol of the freedom she’d stolen for herself. I looked away from the stage, lowering my gaze to the back of the chair in front of me, suddenly wounded. She had a healthy family and I didn’t. I wanted to be happy for her, but I couldn’t help it. That hurt.