I reached the Kyles’ dented old motor home. Their car was gone and I was afraid they weren’t home, but as I neared the RV, the door opened and Verniece Kyle stood beneath the striped awning.
“Hello, Riley!” she called. “How are you, love?”
“I’m good.” I smiled. I loved her sweetness. “Do you have a minute?”
“Of course. Tom’s fishing and I’d enjoy the company. Don’t you have the prettiest hair, the way the sun’s shining on it.”
“Thanks,” I said, climbing into the RV.
“How about some coffee and we’ll sit out on the patio?”
I’d already had two cups that morning, but I liked the idea of sitting with her, sipping coffee and chatting. Verniece wasn’t much older than Jeannie, but I had a completely different response to her. Frankly, I liked having someone call me love, even if she probably used that endearment for everyone from her husband to the checkout clerks at the grocery store.
We carried our mugs out to the patio and sat down on a couple of blue-webbed lawn chairs.
“Do you get lonely out here?” I asked, nestling the mug in my lap.
“Oh, no,” she said. “No more than any other housewife gets lonely. I like meeting all the newcomers to the park and of course there are those folks who come back year after year. It’s a lot of fun. Plus, I’m really involved with the church. That’s not Tom’s thing. I need to be around people more than he does.”
We sipped our weak coffee and talked about a few of the people who had checked in the night before. Then I put my cup on the plastic table next to me and reached into my purse for my key ring.
“I stopped by my father’s RV on my way here, and I wondered if you and Tom would like to have it,” I said. I worked the RV’s key free of the ring and set it on the table. “I know it’s not in the best shape, but I figured you could sell it or rent or…” I shrugged.
“You don’t want it?” she asked. “What about your brother?”
“He doesn’t want it,” I said. “I looked through it to be sure there wasn’t anything I should keep, and it seemed like my father hadn’t been inside it much in a while. Has someone else been using it, do you know?”
She shook her head. “Not that I know of. Your father was there a couple of times a month, I’d say. He liked to be close to the water, like Tom.”
“Speaking of Mr. Kyle,” I said, glad for the opening, “when I was going through my father’s checkbook, I realized he’s been paying Tom five hundred dollars a month and I don’t know what that’s for. I don’t know if my father owed him money or what.”
She stared at me blankly. I’d flummoxed her. “I have no idea,” she said. “Are you sure about that? Maybe it was for…” Her voice faded away as she shook her head. “Well, I have no earthly idea what it was for, actually. Every single month?”
I nodded, but wished I’d kept my mouth shut and waited to talk to her husband about it. I had a terrible feeling I’d told her something no one had wanted her to know.
“Maybe Tom would want my father’s fishing gear that’s in the RV,” I said, to change the subject.
“Sure.” She let me change it, but her eyes were still cloudy with confusion. “I’ll tell him to look it over and see what he wants,” she said.
We had a few more quiet sips of coffee.
“Did you remember who you had me mixed up with?” I asked after a while. “When you thought I was adopted?
“Oh, you’re not still thinking about that, are you?” she said. “I should have kept my fool mouth shut. And it doesn’t matter, does it, Riley?” she asked. “Adopted or not, you had wonderful parents and you turned out fine.”
“You sound like you still think I was?”
She looked toward the creek, breathing loudly enough for me to hear. “I’m going to tell you something, Riley,” she said, very slowly, as though her head and her mouth were not in agreement about what she had to say. “I don’t know what your parents would think of me telling you this, but I’m a firm believer in knowing the truth about where you come from. I like to think your father would have done it at some point, but then he waited too long.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“We told Luke right from the start that he was adopted,” she said. “He looked for his birth parents when he was nineteen, with our blessing. We felt we should be totally open with him about it. No secrets. I know your parents felt differently, but—”
“Verniece!” I said, exasperated. I was beginning to think Tom Kyle was right about her lost marbles.
She looked up at the sky through the canopy of trees and let out a long sigh. “Do you want to know the truth?” she asked.
I felt a chill run up my back. “Yes,” I said, “though I think I do know the truth. I mean, I still think you have my family mixed up with someone else.”
She scratched her cheek, slowly. Thoughtfully. She looked out toward the creek again. “I met Tom in 1980 when I was thirty-two years old,” she said. “I was a police dispatcher in Maryland back then. Now that was a job!” She gave me a rueful smile. “We were married a year later and immediately started trying to have a baby. It took a while for us to get pregnant and we were thrilled, but I miscarried right at twelve weeks.”
“I’m sorry.” I had no idea where she was going with this.
“I got pregnant again and miscarried again. Five times, Riley.” She looked at me, the pain of those miscarriages still in her eyes. “It was a nightmare. I finally carried a baby to term, only to have her be stillborn.”
“Oh, no,” I said, trying to imagine it. “What a terrible blow for you.”
“Terrible doesn’t begin to describe it,” she said. “I met your mother right after it happened. There was some function … your father and Tom worked together, did you know that?”
“No,” I said. “Tom worked for the U.S. Marshals Service?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I didn’t even know my father did until I met with his lawyer.”
“Really?” she said. “Your family…” She shook her head. “Not very open with one another, were they?”
I started to speak, but didn’t know what to say. It seemed she was right.
“Well, anyhow,” she continued, “Tom and your father worked together, and there was … I don’t remember exactly what it was—a big picnic or some outdoor get-together that was important for us to attend. Tom had trouble dragging me out of the house. I was extremely depressed after the stillbirth and could barely function. But for some reason, I went with him. Your father was his supervisor and I think there was some expectation everybody turn out for this”—she waved her hand through the air—“this picnic or whatever it was. Oh! It was a retirement party for one of the marshals. This would have been ’88. Or I guess ’89. Anyway, there were lawn chairs and I ended up sitting next to your mother, who I didn’t know very well at all, and all I could do was cry. She was a very kind woman, and when she saw how upset I was, she took my hand and walked me away from the crowd and we sat under a tree and I told her everything and sobbed and sobbed. And sobbed some more. She had a lot of sympathy. Empathy’s a better word for it. A lot of empathy. She held my hand while we talked. I was a stranger to her, but you know how women can sometimes get close very quickly.”
I nodded, suddenly choked up. I missed my mother.
“After I’d told her everything, she asked me if we’d consider adoption and I said we were too old, but she shook her head. And that’s when she told me.”
“Told you what?”
“That she and your father had wanted more children because there was such a gap between your older brother and sister. They wanted Danny to have a sibling. But they weren’t getting pregnant. Then they looked into private adoption and found a baby girl being put up for adoption here in North Carolina and they were able to get her. Get you.”
Was she crazy? Or could she possibly be right? “This doesn’t make any sense.” I tried to keep my voice calm, b
ut I felt it rising.
“She gave me hope. She said they planned to tell you when you were old enough to understand, but it sounds like they never got around to it. It never occurred to me that you still didn’t know.”
“This is insane,” I said, but I was more aware than ever before of my dark hair and dark eyes.
“I’m so sorry if I’ve upset you, Riley. The last thing I’d want to do is turn your world upside down. But like I said, it doesn’t really matter if—”
“Are you absolutely sure it wasn’t someone else you talked to that day? That it was my mother?”
“Honey, I’ll never forget your mother. Not even a year after that day, she lost your sister and they moved down here. They were running away, coming down here, but you can’t run away from some things.” She shook her head. “You don’t forget a woman who went through something like that.”
“I’m still having trouble believing this,” I said. I didn’t believe it. My parents had not been the most open people in the world, but I couldn’t imagine them keeping this from me.
“Do you wish I hadn’t told you?” Verniece looked worried. “Tom said I should butt out.”
“No, I’m glad you told me. I just…” I gave my head a shake, trying to clear away the crazy doubts that were filling it. “I’m still not sure it was my mother you were talking to.”
She smiled. “I understand,” she said. “I’m sure I’d feel the same way if I were you. But it was, Riley. I can promise you that.”
* * *
I felt nauseous as I walked back to my car. The scent of bacon still clung to that one spot along the gravel lane and this time I rushed to get past it. I was nearly to my father’s trailer when I spotted Tom walking toward me, carrying his fishing rod and basket.
“Hi, Mr. Kyle,” I said when he was close enough to hear. “I have a question for you.”
“What’s that?” he asked. He had a stubble of gray beard I hadn’t noticed the other day and he looked no happier to see me now than he had then.
“My father was paying you five hundred dollars a month,” I said. “What was that for?”
“Doesn’t matter now,” he said. He started to walk past me and I could smell beer on him, as I had the other day. I wondered how much of a problem he had with alcohol.
“Tom?” I said, and he turned around, looking at me without a word.
“Do you think I was adopted?”
He scowled. “You need to stay away from here,” he said. “Stay away from Verniece. She’s not in her right mind and it upsets her, seeing you.”
“What are you talking about?” I almost shouted. “If anyone should be upset, it should be me.”
“Just stay away, all right? For your own good.”
I opened my mouth to speak again, but he’d already turned away, leaving me with many more questions than answers.
10.
As I got back into my car next to Daddy’s RV, I wished I could talk to my brother again. He’d been four when I was born. If I’d been adopted, was there a chance he would know? But I’d just promised him I’d stick to the present and put the past behind us—or at least, behind him—so I forced myself to turn left out of the park, away from Danny and his trailer.
My whole body felt different all of a sudden, as though my genes were reorganizing themselves inside me as I drove back to the house. Verniece Kyle seemed so sure of what she’d told me! Not the least bit crazy. She struck me as a woman who saw kindness in honesty. As a counselor, I agreed with her: truth was always better than a lie. As Riley MacPherson, whose grasp on sanity wasn’t all that strong these days, I wasn’t so sure.
When I reached the house, I struggled to figure out how to set up the dusty old VHS player so it would work with Daddy’s relatively new flat-screen TV in the living room. I had to go online to figure it out, setting my laptop on the rolltop desk, and while I was on the Internet, almost without thinking, I Googled “how to learn if you’re adopted.” Talk to older relatives, one site suggested. Well, I would if I had any. Danny was my only hope there. Search birth records. Not as easy as it sounded, I quickly discovered. Birth records were not simply sitting on the Internet waiting to be found. Check your birth certificate for place of birth. My birth certificate was somewhere in my Durham apartment. I had no idea where. I’d probably been a teenager the last time I looked at that thing. I couldn’t remember anything unusual about it.
When I finished searching the Internet, I sat in front of my laptop, my hands folded in my lap. I was nervous about watching the tapes. I had no memory of my sister from when she was alive. In all my memories of her, she was frozen in time in a photograph. I didn’t know how I’d feel, seeing her in action. I was afraid of the grief. The loss. Danny complained about having to listen to her play far too often. I would have traded a year of my life to hear her just once.
According to the instructions I’d found on the Internet, I needed a particular cable to hook up the VHS player to the TV. I knew there was a drawer in the kitchen filled with all sorts of cables. I sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the drawer, pulling apart the tangle of cords and cables until I found the one I needed. Back in the living room, I had no problem connecting the tape player to the TV. I slipped the older of the two tapes—1980—into the player, sat on the sofa, and hit play.
The tape began, and I sat forward on the edge of the sofa, clutching the remote in my hand. The image was grainy, but clear enough that I could see a little girl dwarfed by a cavernous stage as she lifted a violin to her chin. I wasn’t even sure it was Lisa, but as she began to play the camera zoomed close enough that I could see the fair hair. She would have been seven in 1980, I thought. A tiny, skinny, fragile-looking seven, and although her features were indistinct, I imagined the concentration in her face as she played. I didn’t know the piece, but it was clearly complex and tears filled my eyes.
I moved to the floor in front of the TV, trying to get even closer to my sister, my throat so tight it ached. What incredible courage she had had to be able to stand on that huge stage in front of … I couldn’t see the audience, but I imagined there were hundreds of people seated in the auditorium. Danny would not have been born yet, and I wondered if it would temper his envy of her to see her at such a tender age and realize the pressure she must have been under during her entire short life.
The tape was a little more than an hour long, and I watched every second of it, mesmerized. It contained bits and pieces of different recitals and concerts. In a couple of segments, Lisa performed with other children, although it was obvious she was the youngest, the tiniest of them all. In one piece, she was the only child in a sea of adult violinists. That segment hurt me the most to watch. Although she played with confidence and skill, I thought I could see the vulnerability in her. The tender innocence that any child of seven would have. How hard had she been pushed? I wondered if she was truly doing what she’d wanted to be doing. She’d never been allowed to have a real childhood.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, reaching forward to touch the screen with my fingertips.
When the tape ended, I sat still for a moment before ejecting it and inserting the second. “Rome Music Festival, June 1987” the label read. Lisa would have been fourteen in 1987. This tape was much clearer, with a professional quality to it. It opened in what looked like the gate of an airport. A group of energetic teens appeared to have taken over the seating area, some of them standing, others sitting, all of them laughing and talking. I searched the faces for my sister. A few frowning adults sat in nearby seats, clearly not amused at finding themselves surrounded by a bunch of rowdy teenagers, probably Lisa’s fellow music students. They were all about the age of the kids I counseled, thirty or forty of them, loud and goofing around while crammed into the waiting area. The scene, full of adolescent hormones and blossoming egos, would have been comical if I hadn’t been so intent on finding Lisa in the crowd.
A brown-haired man appeared on the screen. He held his right arm in
the air, and as if he’d cast a spell over them, the kids stopped what they were doing and looked in his direction. He was tall and slender, with a thin angular face that was just shy of handsome. He gave a slight nod, and the kids pulled their instruments from cases I’d barely noticed till that moment. They began to play. Violins. Violas. Cellos. As usual, I had no idea what music they were playing but it was a happy, bouncy melody that quickly had the sour-faced spectators not only smiling, but clapping.
I finally spotted Lisa. She stood to the side, nearly out of the camera’s view. I recognized the boy next to her from the photographs in my father’s box. Matty, with the curly dark hair. When that piece was over, the conductor or teacher, or whatever he was, motioned to Lisa and she moved forward. He lifted his baton, and she began to play a solo. She looked very much like a feminine version of Danny. She was so pretty. There was a fragility to her features, but it was clear that when it came to her violin, there was nothing fragile about her. She was in complete command. I knew she’d been good—I knew she’d been a prodigy—but I found her incredible talent heartbreaking. Somehow it had cost her. It had cost her everything.
I fast-forwarded through the tape and saw the same group of kids behaving like idiots at the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps and in front of the Colosseum. My sister and Matty were always a little off to the side, talking together. Sometimes laughing. Not quite part of the crowd. Then the group performed with hundreds of other young musicians in front of an audience in an enormous, ancient-looking building with ceilings so high they weren’t on the TV screen, and pillars as big around as the living room I was sitting in. At one point, Lisa stepped forward from the rest of the group as she had in the airport. Dressed in white, she looked like an ethereal angel as she raised her violin and began to play. To the far right of the screen, I saw the tall conductor again, and even though there was quite a distance between him and Lisa, it was as though a fine thread ran from his white baton to her violin, coaxing every note from the instrument. This music I knew: Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor. My father listened to it all the time. The familiar piece used to drift through the rooms of our house until I was numbed by it, but I was anything but numb now, hearing Lisa play it. I swallowed hard, wanting both to turn off the tape and to play it over and over again.