The Silent Sister

  When the camera closed in tight on Lisa’s face, I leaned forward and saw the long fair lashes above her closed eyes, the delicate crease between her eyebrows, as if the music pained her. I wished so much that Danny was watching the tape with me. That I had someone to share the emotions with.

  I made it through the first movement of the concerto before I needed to turn off the tape. I sat in front of the TV, crying until I could cry no more, overwhelmed with grief for the sister I’d never gotten to know. It had only been a couple of hours since I’d started watching the tapes, but it may as well have been a month for how changed I felt. Even though I’d never had the chance to know her, she’d been such an influence on my life and I was full of love for her. Yet I realized now that I’d made her up. I’d had to imagine what she’d been like because I had no way of knowing. Now suddenly, I’d seen her face. I saw how hard she worked. She’d been just a kid. Practically a baby in that first tape and a young and hopeful teenager in the second. All anyone would be able to see as they watched her perform was the skill and perfection; no one could see the toll her career was taking on her heart and soul.

  What was it that caused her to break apart? That conductor—had he demanded perfection of her? Had my parents? Had the fame been too much for her? I ran my fingers through my hair, my tears falling all over again. I wished I could hug her! Hold her tight. I wished I could tell her she didn’t need to be perfect; she only needed to be Lisa. I wanted to reach inside those tapes and tell that delicate young angel to hold on. Someday, I would promise her, it will be all right.

  11.

  “You’ll be shocked what people will buy at an estate sale,” Jeannie said as we poked through the items in my mother’s china cabinet in the dining room. In my hand, I held an old green bowl that had clearly been broken in two and glued back together “Christine will want you to leave everything just as it is.”

  “Even broken dishes?” I asked, holding the bowl so she could see the crack.

  “Absolutely,” she said. “Artists use them to make jewelry and all sorts of things you can’t imagine. So we want to leave everything in place. You don’t need those boxes.” She pointed to the three empty boxes I’d found in the basement. My plan had been to fill them with things to donate, but Jeannie had a different idea. “I do want to get a closer look at the collections and figure out what sort of appraisers we need to call,” she said. “If there are any things you want to keep—items with sentimental value, for example—just set them aside. We can make a place for them in your father’s upstairs office. For now, you can clean out those cabinets in the living room where he kept all his paperwork.” She took the green bowl from my hand and put it back in the china cabinet. “Let’s go take a look in there,” she said, and I followed her into the living room. She stood in the middle of the room, hands on her hips, and both of us faced the ten built-in cabinets that ran the entire length of the living room beneath the windows. “I know he would just stuff insurance forms and all sort of things in there that can probably just be shredded. That can be your job.”

  “All right.” I dreaded even opening those cabinets. I’d seen how Daddy crammed papers into them with as little care as if he was tossing them in the trash.

  “Look at those hydrangeas!” Jeannie took a step toward the windows that overlooked the side yard. “How your father loved them,” she said. “I wish he could have had one more summer. He was looking forward to it. His favorite season.”

  I hadn’t known that about my father and it irked me that she did. But I was determined to be nice to her today. I really needed her help.

  “What the hell…?” She suddenly noticed that the sliding glass doors were missing from the pipe collection. “Where’s the glass?”

  I thought of making something up, but decided to tell her the truth. “Danny was over the other night and he got upset about something and threw a beer bottle at them,” I said.

  “That’s terrible!” she said. “Your father always insisted Danny wasn’t violent.”

  “He’s not.” I remembered Danny saying he’d put on his PTSD act for Jeannie, whatever that meant. “He was just angry. He’d never hurt a person.”

  “Are you very close to him?”

  “I was when we were young. He was more withdrawn as he got older and we didn’t talk as much. He became more like my father, I guess. Very introverted.” I missed the Danny I’d grown up with.

  “I don’t think of your father as all that introverted,” Jeannie said.

  I worked hard to produce a smile. I was sick of her thinking she knew Daddy so much better than I did. “I guess we experienced him differently,” I said.

  “Oh, well.” She smiled. “We both know he was a good man, and that’s what counts.”

  I nodded. I would let it go at that.

  Jeannie walked over to the pipes and lifted one of them from its ledge in the display case. “I’ve always been drawn to this one,” she said. The barrel of the pipe was carved in the shape of a bird’s head, complete with ruffled feathers and green beads for eyes. I noticed a serious tremor in her hands as she held the pipe. Was she nervous or ill? Whatever the cause, seeing that small weakness in her made me feel slightly sympathetic toward her. You never knew what demons people were dealing with.

  “Would you like to have it?” I asked.

  She looked surprised. “Oh, no,” she said. “I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I have to say, though, that I still can’t get over Frank leaving this collection to the Kyles.”

  “Well, I guess they’ve helped him a lot with the park, and they—”

  She made a sound of disgust. “I’ll tell you something,” she said. “I don’t like to gossip, but you should know why this makes no sense to me. Tom Kyle was beholden to your father, not the other way around.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jeannie carefully replaced the pipe in the cabinet. “Your father was his supervisor back when they worked for the Marshals Service,” she said. “Tom had an affair with a client he was supposed to be protecting and Frank found out about it. He should have canned Tom, but he didn’t. He even helped him cover it up. Tom owed him his job and probably his marriage. So why would your father—”

  “He’s been giving Tom checks for five hundred dollars every month, too,” I said.

  Jeannie stared at me, and I saw a blaze starting in her eyes. “You’re joking.”

  I shook my head.

  “He could have given that money to me, if he was so hot to part with it,” she said bitterly. “I’m underwater on my mortgage, and I thought that after a six-year relationship, he—” She shook her head. “Sorry,” she said. “It is what it is.”

  Now I understood her lukewarm reaction to my father leaving her only the piano and ten thousand dollars. And I thought of the hundred thousand that would soon be in my own bank account.

  “I’m sorry, Jeannie,” I said. “How can I help? He left me more than I need right now, and—”

  She bent over and put her hand on mine. “Don’t even think about it, honey,” she said, her features softening. “I’m sorry to lose my composure like that, and I’m fine. Truly. I just wish I understood why Tom and Verniece rated so high in his opinion.”

  “Do you know Verniece well?” I asked.

  “Not all that well. They pretty much keep to themselves out there.”

  “She told me I was adopted.”

  Jeannie’s blue eyes flew open even wider than usual. “What?” she said. “That’s crazy.”

  Had the color left her face or was I imagining it? “She says my mother told her I was.”

  “She didn’t even know your mother,” Jeannie scoffed as she set the pipe back on its ledge again, fingers shivering. “Not really.”

  I hesitated before I spoke again. “Well, she admitted that,” I said, “but according to Verniece, she was upset over losing a baby and my mother suggested that she wasn’t too old to adopt. She said she and Daddy adopted me, and that’s what encou
raged Verniece and Tom to adopt a little boy.”

  “Ludicrous,” Jeannie said. “Just utterly ludicrous. Think about it,” she said. “Even if it were true, your mother wouldn’t tell a near stranger, for heaven’s sake. You know what a private person she was.”

  “Actually, I don’t know that,” I said. “I only know what she was like with me, not what she was—”

  “Listen to me, Riley. I was her dearest, oldest friend and she still wouldn’t tell me half the things that were going on with her. So the idea of her telling a woman she barely knew something that intimate is just plain silly.”

  “I guess.” I felt only slightly relieved, especially with Jeannie admitting that my mother didn’t tell her everything. Maybe my mother’d had a weak moment, touched by Verniece’s pain, knowing she could say something to relieve it. Verniece was so sweet. I could understand how she might have inspired my mother to confide in her.

  “Enough of that nonsense,” Jeannie said. She picked up a notepad from the piano bench where she’d set it when she first arrived at the house. “I’m going to walk through the house and make a list of what needs to be done, starting with the collections upstairs. I can’t wait for you to meet Christine,” she added. “You’re going to love her and vice versa. She really knows the value of things and ways to publicize a successful estate sale.”

  “I found Daddy’s keys for the upstairs cabinets, if you need them.” I thought of the key to his RV that I’d left with Verniece. “Do you happen to know if he let someone else use his RV?” I asked.

  “Heavens, no! He loved that old thing. He called it his man cave. Even I wasn’t allowed inside.”

  “It’s strange,” I said. “He has a bunch of CDs in there, but they’re all bluegrass and country. When have you ever known my father to listen to bluegrass?”

  “I haven’t,” she admitted, “but he knew that wasn’t my thing, so he probably just didn’t play it around me. He had very varied tastes.” She looked at me. “And we’ve already established that you didn’t know much about him, haven’t we?” It wasn’t a question; it was a dig, and the sympathy I’d felt for her moments earlier melted away. I did not like this woman! I didn’t trust her. I just didn’t. “So,” she said, taking me by the arm and leading me over to the wall of cabinets. “You get started here going through your father’s papers, and I’ll work upstairs.”

  I felt steamrollered, but I also didn’t care where I started working in the house. Suzanne had warned me to keep the last three years of my father’s receipts for her to go through, but other than that, everything could be tossed. As Jeannie climbed the stairs, I sat down in front of one of the cabinets and opened the door, groaning when papers slipped from the shelves to my lap. I knew Daddy had a shredder in the upstairs office and I hoped it was heavy-duty. Taking a deep breath, I started piling the papers into a stack. I wondered if, buried somewhere in one of the ten cabinets, I might find documents related to my adoption. I hoped not.

  About an hour later, I was getting bleary-eyed when I heard a sound from upstairs that made me stop my work to listen. Drawers opening and closing? Was she in his bedroom? I got up quietly and moved to the foot of the stairs. I would have thought little of the sound if she’d been slamming around up there, but there was something so sneaky in the slow, quiet sliding of the drawers … or whatever it was. Curious, I started up the stairs.

  She was coming out of my father’s bedroom when I reached the top of the stairs, and she jumped when she saw me. “Oh,” she said, her hand to her throat. “You startled me!”

  “I wanted to see how you were making out.” I really wanted to ask her what she’d been doing snooping through his dresser drawers, but I kept my mouth shut.

  “Oh, fine,” she said, then she nodded toward the bedroom, as if she knew an explanation was needed. “I was looking for a few things I’d left here,” she said.

  She’d gone upstairs with a notepad, but now a white box rested on top of it. It was the size of a small shirt box or maybe the sort a manuscript would fit in. She clutched it and the notepad to her chest.

  “Did you find them?” I motioned toward the box, and she looked down at it as though she was surprised to find it in her arms.

  “Yes,” she said. “Just some things of mine I’d forgotten about. Old … things I’d wanted to show him.” She laughed nervously, and I almost felt sorry for her. From the color in her cheeks, I imagined the box contained a sexy negligee or worse. I remembered Suzanne telling me about her father’s pornography and wished I could erase that thought.

  “How’d you make out up here with the collections?” I asked.

  “I think I know the appraisers we need to call,” she said, heading for the stairs. She didn’t let go of the box even to hold on to the handrail.

  “It’s going to take me a week to clean out those cabinets,” I said from behind her on the stairs.

  “I can imagine.” She’d reached the last step. “We should get those pipes appraised before turning them over to the Kyles, too. And, oh, my God”—she chuckled—“we need to get a sense of how many vinyl albums he has so I can tell Christine. Do you know if he has more squirreled away anywhere? The attic, maybe?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, though I didn’t know what, if anything, was in the attic.

  We worked quietly for a short time, me sitting on the floor, Jeannie looking over the albums, but my mind was numb from hunting for the dates on medical bills and bank statements.

  “I think I’ve had it for tonight,” I said, getting to my feet. “Glass of wine?”

  She let out a tired breath. “Just a half,” she said. “More than that and I’ll be asleep when I drive home.”

  I went into the kitchen and pulled two wine glasses from the cabinet above the dishwasher. Jeannie came into the kitchen, walking past me toward the powder room by the back door. She knew her way around this house as well as I did.

  She was still in the bathroom when I carried the glasses into the living room, and I spotted her notepad and the box she’d been holding on the ledge by the pipe collection. I bit my lip, curiosity getting the better of me, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what was inside that box. What if she’d stolen something? She was hurting for money and mad at my father for not leaving her more than he had, and she’d had access to his collections for a good hour upstairs.

  I listened for any sounds from the powder room, but heard none. Then I moved her notepad aside and worked the cover of the box loose. The box was half filled with yellowed newspaper articles. The headline of the one on top read LISA MACPHERSON ASSUMED DROWNED IN APPARENT SUICIDE.

  I let out my breath in a miserable “Oh.” Why had he felt the need to save articles about Lisa’s suicide? I ached for him and my mother. How must they have felt, knowing they’d been unable to prevent their daughter from taking her own life?

  I heard the bathroom door open, but didn’t make a move to cover the box.

  “Oh, Riley, no!” Jeannie rushed toward me when she walked into the room.

  I lifted the box in the air and turned my back to her, and she stopped, lowering her hands to her sides. “Honey, you don’t want to do that,” she said. “There’s no good that can come from it.”

  “Why did he keep these?” I asked, tipping the box down again so I could look inside. I lifted the top article about her apparent suicide, and my hand froze when I saw the next headline. The font was huge, the letters thick and black, and I stared at them, confused and disbelieving as I tried to absorb what I was seeing: ACCUSED MURDERER LISA MACPHERSON ASSUMED DEAD.

  12.

  Slowly, I turned to look at Jeannie. She stood next to me, her hands now pressed to her face, her blue eyes brimming with tears.

  I nodded toward the article, still in the box. ACCUSED MURDERER LISA MACPHERSON ASSUMED DEAD. “What is this?” My voice was a whisper.

  She reached for the box and gently worked it free of my grip. “He never wanted you to know,” she said, setting it back on
the ledge. “I was hoping to get that box out of here before you stumbled across it. He would have wanted me to do that, but I wasn’t sure where he hid it, and I’ve been so worried that you’d…” She shook her head. “Just close it up and throw it away, Riley. That’s what he would have wanted.”

  She was talking quickly, trying to get my mind off what I’d seen. I reached into the box and pulled out the article that called my sister a murderer.

  “I don’t understand.” I read the headline again. “I don’t understand at all.”

  “I know,” she said. “I know what you were told. That she killed herself because she was depressed and overworked. Your parents never wanted you to know the truth.”

  “What truth?” I lifted the box again, carried it to the open rolltop desk, and sat down. I picked up article after article and that word kept jumping out at me from the headlines: Murder, Murder, Murder.

  “That’s why they moved here after Lisa’s death.” Jeannie walked to the piano bench and sat down heavily. “They wanted to get you and Danny away from all the accusations and everything. They wanted to get you away from a place where you’d always be known as a murderer’s sister.”

  I looked over at her. “She did it? She actually killed someone? Who? Why?”

  “It was an accident.” Jeannie pressed her hand to the top of her head in aggravation. “Oh, your father would be so upset with me.”

  “Tell me!” I said.

  “She was about to go on trial,” Jeannie said, “and she believed she’d end up in prison for the rest of her life. The prosecution was going for first degree murder—‘planned and premeditated’—and that would have meant life in prison if they could prove it. But I think the real reason she killed herself was that she couldn’t live with what she’d done. Accident or not, she’d killed someone. Lisa was only seventeen—a child!—and she couldn’t get past the guilt.”