The Silent Sister

  I nodded, ignoring how much the question hurt.

  “Alex and Zoe,” she said. “I wish you could meet them. Daddy was so good with them at the wedding. I think he had a great time. He even jammed with the band. I hadn’t seen that lighthearted side to him since I was a kid.”

  “I never got to see it.” My voice trembled. My father’s heart was already heavy by the time I was old enough to truly know him. Danny was right: Lisa and her fake suicide had destroyed our family.

  Lisa bit her lip. “Oh,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, Riley.”

  I drew in a breath, knowing I was about to make myself totally vulnerable. “When I saw those wedding pictures,” I said, “I felt so left out.”

  She looked stunned. “Oh, baby.” Her chair was close enough that she could lean over and touch my hand. “Of course you did!” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  I didn’t want to cry. My mind scrambled to find a safer subject, but there were precious few. I thought of Matty. “After Jeannie told me you were my mother,” I said, “I tried to call Matthew Harrison, but he’s in Japan with a group of kids. Are you in touch with him at all?”

  She looked puzzled. “Why would you call Matty?”

  “He’s my father, isn’t he?”

  She shook her head slowly. “Oh, no, honey,” she said. “That was a boy I met in Italy. I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even know his name.”

  “Oh.” I felt so disappointed. I’d wanted it to be Matthew. Someone I might have been able to meet. To know and to like. I sank lower into the chair, my hands still wrapped around Violet’s case. Lisa didn’t seem to know what to say any more than I did, and the silence filling the room was suffocating.

  “Danny…” I said. “I never would have told him anything if I’d known he’d start digging for more information on you. I didn’t realize there was so much to hide, and by the time I did, it was too late. He wants to see you pay. You have no idea how much he … hates you.”

  She tightened her lips when I said the word hate. “Please don’t blame yourself,” she said, but the look in her eyes was distant, and I knew she wasn’t thinking about me at that moment. She let out a sigh. “I’ll be back to looking over my shoulder every second, I guess,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had to do that.” She shut her eyes as if collecting her emotions, and when she opened them again, her face was pained. “This is so frustrating, Riley!” she said. “I want time with you and I don’t know how to get it.”

  Her words lit a spark of anger in me—anger I hadn’t even known was there.

  “You could have had all the time in the world with me if you hadn’t left.” I tried to speak softly to take the sting out of my words, but she still looked hurt.

  “I didn’t want to be your mother from behind bars,” she said.

  “Maybe you wouldn’t have had to serve that much time if you’d stayed for the trial,” I said. “I know what happened was an accident.”

  “Please, Riley.” She slowly shook her head. “Let’s not waste our time together talking about this,” she said. “Let’s not talk about things that can’t be changed.”

  “But if you’d had a good attorney, he—or she—could have defended you. They could have made the case it was an accident.” I couldn’t seem to let this go. I was suddenly so frustrated! I set Violet on the floor and stood up, pacing across the room. “Why didn’t you stay?” My voice cracked. “Everything would have been so much better! You might have had to do some time, but I could have visited you. I could have known you. Danny would never have gone off the rails the way he did when he was a teenager. Maybe he never even would have gone to Iraq.”

  “Oh, Riley.” She bit her lip again. “Maybe that’s true,” she said, “but I was too scared to take the risk. Daddy saw a way out for me. I trusted him to know what was best. And it ultimately turned out well for me. Until now.”

  “You mean until your daughter shows up and ruins everything.” I sounded young and stubborn, like one of the adolescent kids I worked with, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “That’s not what I—”

  “Do you regret it?” I stood in front of her. “Running away?”

  She hesitated long enough to tell me she didn’t. “My life is far better than I deserve,” she said, “but there’s always been a huge hole in it. For you. For my family. I’m not just saying this because you’re here. I thought I was doing the best thing for you. Giving you two loving parents. I didn’t know Mom would die so young. I didn’t know Danny would enlist and get hurt and suffer so much. I thought leaving was the best thing for you. The publicity … all the talk … it was already taking a toll on Danny. I didn’t want it to take a toll on you, too.”

  “And you wanted to be free.”

  “Of course I wanted to be free!” she said, red splotches high on her cheekbones. “But not of you. Never of you. I love you.”

  I shook my head. “You got your freedom, Lisa, but Danny and I got a life sentence, living in a house full of lies.”

  She looked alarmed. “Call me Jade, Riley,” she said as though she hadn’t heard a word I’d said other than her name. “Please. You have to call me Jade.”

  I felt scolded. She could tell me she loved me all she wanted, but her actions said otherwise. They always had. Suddenly, I knew I had to escape that tight little dressing room. It hurt too much to be there with her.

  I pulled the door open and charged out of the room before she could say anything else. I ran across the dark, deserted club floor and pushed through the double doors onto the sidewalk, gulping in the thick summer air. I started running toward my car as if I were afraid she might come after me, my feet pounding the sidewalk.

  I was breathless by the time I reached my car, and I leaned against the warm metal door for a moment, my gaze riveted on the dark sidewalk as I watched for her to follow me, but she didn’t.

  Only then did I realize how much I wanted her to.

  54.

  Jade

  She curled up in the chair in the corner of their hotel room while Celia paced the floor. Celia had held her when she got back to the hotel, letting her talk. Letting her cry. But now Celia was anxious to move on. She wanted to figure out their next step, while Jade’s mind was still in that dressing room with Riley. She’d fantasized that one day, far in the future, she’d be able to talk to her daughter. In her fantasy, there was tenderness. Forgiveness and understanding. That had been unrealistic of her. She’d hurt Riley, and Riley was the last person in the world she’d ever wanted to hurt.

  “Well, the first thing we have to do,” Celia said, “is cancel that New Bern gig. We’ll get a lot of flak for it, but we can’t possibly—”

  “No,” Jade said.

  Celia stopped pacing, looking at her like she’d lost her mind. “What do you mean, no?”

  “What’s the point, Celia? Danny hates me and he’s friends with the police. He knows our schedule. He knows where we’ll be. Even if we cancel the rest of the tour altogether, he knows how to find me now.” She scratched at a little stain on the arm of the chair. “It’s over for me.”

  Celia sat down on the corner of the bed. “It’s not just you this is affecting,” she said. “It’s me, too. Shane and Travis. Not to mention our kids.”

  She was right. Many years ago, Jade had spared herself and her family from a long-drawn-out trial and months—or years—of hurtful publicity, only to threaten her new family with something worse now. But you could only run so far from your mistakes.

  “I know.” Her voice came out as a whisper. “I’m so sorry. I know this messes things up for Jasha Trace.”

  “It kills Jasha Trace.”

  She cringed. Celia had been full of sympathy and comfort for the last hour. Now she was angry and Jade didn’t blame her.

  “I know it’s going to be terrible for Alex and Zoe.” Her voice broke on Zoe’s name, but she kept talking. “There’s just no way out.” How would she ever explain it to their
children? Would she be imprisoned in Virginia, thousands of miles from them? Her hand shook as she wiped tears from her eyes, and although she kept her own gaze on the arm of the chair, she felt Celia staring at her.

  “There’s got to be a way around this,” Celia said.

  “She’s so hurt that I left her,” Jade said. Those final moments with Riley were still on her mind. I felt so left out, Riley had said. She’d broken Jade’s heart with those words. “She doesn’t understand why I didn’t stay so I could be involved in her life.”

  “Did you tell her the truth?”

  Jade shook her head. “Never,” she said. She wondered how Celia could even ask.

  “Maybe it would make a difference,” Celia said. “Maybe she’d understand then. Right now, she’s upset with you, and that’s only going to make things worse for us.”

  “How can they be any worse for us?”

  Celia didn’t answer. She ran her hand over the puffy comforter on the bed, chewing her bottom lip. What could she say? Things were as bad as they could be.

  “I have to try to talk to her tomorrow,” Jade said. “I can’t let things end on a sour note between us like they did tonight.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “I have her address in my contacts.” She looked into Celia’s silvery eyes, so full of hurt. God, she was ruining everything for everybody she loved! “I hoped this would never happen.” She shook her head. “I’m so sorry.”

  Celia stared at her for a long moment. Then she stood up and turned toward the window, looking out into the darkness. It was nearly two in the morning. Chapel Hill was asleep. So were Shane and Travis, in the room connected to theirs by a small living room. The men were blissfully unaware of how everything would change for them in the morning.

  “We need to tell the guys,” Jade said.

  Celia didn’t answer her. Instead, she lifted her backpack from the dresser and walked out of the bedroom into the living room. Was she going to tell Shane and Travis right now? Jade sat woodenly in the chair. She heard Celia moving things around in the living room for a few minutes, but she stayed where she was. Even when she heard the door to the hallway open and close, she didn’t move … but she did breathe a sigh of relief. Celia wasn’t going to tell them yet. Jade knew her well. Celia just needed time alone to think. She needed time to come to the conclusion Jade had already reached: it was over.

  55.

  Riley

  After three weeks away from home, I felt like a stranger in my own apartment. When I got in, I lowered the air-conditioning and made my bed, moving on autopilot, trying not to think about the conversation with Lisa. I needed comfort food but my pantry was nearly empty and whatever I’d left in the refrigerator gave off a rank odor when I opened the door, so I made a cup of chamomile tea in the microwave, then forgot to take it out. Instead, I lay down on the couch and stared at the dark ceiling.

  I kept picturing her face. The pale blue eyes. The sharp features. The lines across her forehead, especially when I’d gotten angry with her. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to happen during our meeting, but feeling anger toward her had been unexpected. Seeing her full life made the current emptiness of my own life stand out. That was hardly her fault, and I wished now that I hadn’t acted like an obstinate adolescent, pushing her away before she could push me.

  My phone rang and I pulled it from the pocket of my capris. Jean Lyons, the caller ID read. I’d wanted to talk to her but thought it was too late to call. I should have known she wouldn’t be able to sleep, either. I was about to answer the call when a knock on my apartment door made me jump, and I sat up quickly. No one knew I was in town. No one except Lisa. And she knew where I lived.

  The knock came again, much harder and more insistent this time.

  I slipped my ringing phone back into my pocket and walked over to the door, leaning close to it.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “It’s Celia, Riley. Please let me in.”

  I rested my hand on the dead bolt for a moment before turning the lock. Opening the door a few inches, I saw Celia alone in the hall light, looking pale and tired. I was sure I looked equally as bad.

  “Why are you here?” I asked through the opening in the doorway.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said. “It’s so important, Riley. Please let me in.”

  I hesitated. “Did Lisa send you?” I asked.

  “No. I found your address in her contacts on her phone. I came on my own.”

  I knew she didn’t like me and I was afraid of her reason for showing up at my door, but we both loved Lisa. We had that in common. I stepped back, opening the door.

  “Come in,” I said.

  She walked into my small living room. She still wore her clothes from the concert, the T-shirt and jeans, but her hair jutted up as if she’d been running a hand roughly through it, and her face had lost every trace of the joy she’d exuded while she was onstage. I would hardly recognize her as the same woman.

  “Can we sit?” she asked.

  I nodded, lowering myself to the couch. Celia perched on the edge of one of the two Ikea chairs in the room, elbows on her knees as she leaned toward me.

  “I’m sorry for how I treated you at the club,” she said. “It’s just that … I know you didn’t mean to, but you’ve really messed up our lives.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that. It was the truth, but their lives had been dangling by a thread for years before I came along.

  “I wanted to talk to you about your brother and his cop friend. Does he—Danny—care about you?”

  “Of course he does,” I said, “but it doesn’t matter. Believe me, I can’t fix this. If there was some way to do it, I would, but there isn’t.”

  “Can you at least talk to him about it?”

  “I have talked to him. It doesn’t do any good.”

  “Maybe if Jade talked to him?”

  I shook my head. That was a really bad idea.

  Celia looked down at her hands. She twirled her wedding band around on her finger—a nervous-looking gesture—then raised her eyes to mine again. “I care about you, Riley, because you’re Jade’s daughter,” she said. “I care about Jade more, though. I love her so much that I can’t let you go on thinking she acted out of selfishness. No matter what happens to her or to Jasha Trace or to our family … no matter what happens, I can’t let you feel that way about her. She was young. She thought she was doing the best thing for you by leaving you.”

  “I don’t know how to get past that,” I said honestly. “I don’t know how to get past her walking away from me and then starting a whole new family for herself.”

  “Well…” She looked unsure of herself. “Maybe I can help you get past it,” she said.

  “How?”

  She twirled her ring again, her gaze on the floor instead of me. Finally, she raised her eyes to mine.

  “She was afraid of the trial,” she said. “Afraid of what might come out.”

  My skin prickled and I said nothing, not sure I wanted to hear what she was going to say.

  “Jade didn’t ever want you to know any of this,” Celia said. “She doesn’t know I’m here and she’d be furious with me if she knew. But—”

  “What are you talking about? She doesn’t want me to know what?”

  “Do you have a scar on your forehead?” she asked suddenly.

  I nodded slowly. I lifted my bangs and leaned into the light from the table lamp.

  Celia walked over to the couch and bent close to me, squinting. “It’s barely visible, isn’t it. That little scar.”

  I dropped my bangs over my forehead again, and she sat down on the other end of the couch. “What does my scar have to do with anything?” I asked.

  “A lot, actually.” She bit her lower lip, hesitating. Even when she opened her mouth, it was a moment before she spoke. “Steven Davis was your father,” she said finally, the words coming out in a rush.

  It took a few secon
ds for what she’d said to sink in. “Oh, no.” I felt sick. “They were lovers?”

  “No! God, no!” She looked horrified. “She had you when she was fifteen, Riley. He was forty. You could hardly call them lovers.” Celia’s cheeks were scarlet. “He raped her. She didn’t think of it as rape back then. It took her years to realize that’s what it was. Back then, she thought it was her fault. But he had total power over her. It happened when they were at a music festival in Italy.”

  She said something else, but her words were lost on me. I felt nauseous. All I’d eaten since breakfast were those nacho chips and a beer, and now the room began a slow dizzying spin around my head. I remembered the tape of the Italy trip. I remembered Steven Davis pointing his baton in Lisa’s direction. How, at that small gesture, she stepped away from the group of students and performed for him.

  “He asked her to come to his room to talk about a piece of music,” Celia said. “Jade didn’t want to go to his room alone and she got her friend Matty to go with her. But after they were in his room, Steven sent Matty on some errand and Jade was stuck alone with him.”

  The room spun wildly and I wasn’t sure I could make it to the bathroom in time. “I feel sick,” I said, getting to my feet, nearly stumbling as I crossed the living room. I shut myself inside the small hall bathroom, where I sat down on the closed toilet seat, my head lowered to my knees, hoping the nausea would pass.

  I barely knew where I was. Durham? New Bern? My whole body felt strange, as though it no longer belonged to me. I was conceived during the rape of a barely fifteen-year-old girl by a man she’d trusted—a sick and repulsive man who was my father. How had Lisa felt every time she looked at me? Jeannie had said she’d cuddled me. She didn’t want to part with me. Yet how could she not feel revulsion and anger each time her eyes rested on her “little sister”? I had to be a reminder of the worst time of her life.