The Silent Sister (12 page)

“Well, he was technically too young to retire, but it's why he left, yes. He and your mother wanted to move someplace where they could start over completely fresh for you and Danny.”

“But Danny would have been six years old when Lisa died. He would have had some idea of what was going on, wouldn't he? He would have known why she really killed herself.”

Jeannie looked old all of a sudden, her blue eyes tired. “You're right,” she said slowly, “and I think they did your brother a huge disservice.” She rubbed her temples. “I hate to criticize them, because I know they were surviving the best they could and they probably weren't thinking straight at the time. But they made up their minds that you and Danny should grow up not knowing about the murder, and so if Danny asked questions about things he'd heard, or things other kids said, your mother and father would tell him those kids didn't know what they were talking about. And like I said, they moved down here right away and did a pretty good job of starting fresh. The shooting and Lisa's suicide were national news, but somehow the kids down here didn't get the message, and to the best of my knowledge they left Danny alone about it. So he ultimately bought into the whole ‘she killed herself because she was depressed' idea, same as you.” She pressed her palms together in her lap. “And if he remembered things other children said, your parents would say he must be misremembering. I think that was a little cruel to him. It must have made him feel crazy sometimes. I think that's what led to him being so … disturbed. He had a lot of problems when they moved here.”

“He was always getting into trouble at school,” I said, remembering what my brother was like by the time he reached his teens. “He'd get into fights and wouldn't do his homework. And he argued with Mom and Daddy nearly every night.” I remembered the fights. I'd cower in my room while my parents and Danny went at it, shouting and arguing about his grades and his foul language and the kids he hung out with. I'd been eleven years old, and I'd missed the big brother who'd doted on me and had always seemed like my protector. I'd put the pillow over my head to block out the noise.

“His school recommended that he see a counselor,” Jeannie said, “but your parents wouldn't hear of it. They were afraid he'd say something about … the shooting and that Lisa killed herself, and then it would get out in New Bern and defeat the purpose of moving.”

That really got to me. “How terrible for him,” I said. “He needed help and they kept it from him.” The thought of my brother's confusion tore me up. No wonder his feelings toward our parents were so bitter. I couldn't blame him. As far as I knew, they never did get him help. How could they trust him to hold tight to the family lies?

I wasn't sure who in my family I hurt worse for. The brother I'd adored, being told one thing while knowing another. My father, whose guilt over the gun must have haunted him his entire life. Or my mother, who lost her oldest child. And then there was my sister, the ethereal creature I'd seen on the tapes, struggling to live with the guilt of having taken a life. I dropped my head against the back of the chair and shut my eyes. “I wish I didn't know any of this,” I said.

But now that I did know it, I had to know it all.

*   *   *

I sent Jeannie home, then sat up in bed reading every word of every article, including one that described the scene at our house when the police arrived: “Mr. Davis was found on the blood-soaked living room floor, MacPherson kneeling over him, a .357 Magnum in her hand. Davis had been shot in the temple and the eye and was pronounced dead at the scene.”

That horrific description was going to give me nightmares.

Most of the other articles were repetitive, but I still read them all. It was nearly midnight when I reached the most personal, most painful-to-read item in the box. It was a handwritten note on a sheet of lined white paper, clearly a Xeroxed copy.

Dear Mom and Dad,

I'm so sorry for what I've put you through. I know what I'm about to do will make it even harder on you, at least for a while, but I'm sure a jury won't believe me about it being an accident and I can't go to prison. It terrifies me. I just can't do it. This is better for everyone in the long run. I love you and Riley and Danny so much and I'm sorry for any shame I've brought on our family.

Love, Lisa

 

13.

The forest was absolutely silent, the only sound the
hush-hush
of our footsteps as Danny and I walked over a carpet of long brown pine needles and tufts of neon-green weeds. I was in my brother's world, though not at his invitation. I'd shown up with the box of articles that morning, feeling anxious, wondering how much he remembered of the shooting and Lisa's suicide. How much he knew. But he didn't speak. He sat at the table in his trailer, his face growing nearly as red as his T-shirt as he scanned two of the articles, then shoved the box aside. Grabbing his shotgun, he pushed out of the trailer and into the woods. I quickly followed, terrified that I may have made the worst mistake of my life by bringing the box to him.

When I found him, though, he was walking slowly, as though he hoped I'd catch up to him. He didn't look at me, but kept his eyes forward, his gun propped against his shoulder, and I fell into step next to him. We walked that way in complete silence for ten minutes or more, and although I'd been nervous at first, I began to relax. There was something about the quiet out here. About the thick carpet of needles beneath our feet. All around us, for as far as I could see, the arrow-straight trunks of the pines shot into the sky, where they exploded into puff balls of long green needles. I glanced over my shoulders to see the same view in every direction. We were not on a trail, and I knew that without Danny at my side, I would be lost.

“How do you know where we are?” I whispered. It seemed wrong to break the spell of the woods with my voice.

“I just do.” He pointed ahead of us. “That's where I like to go.”

I looked ahead of us, but the landscape of tree trunks looked no different in that direction than in any other. Yet within a few steps, I understood. An oval of grass opened up in front of us, circled by pines so tall, they created a cathedral-like space below them. “Oh,” I said. “I see why. It's beautiful.”

He walked over to one of the trees and sat down on the cushion of pine needles near its base, resting the shotgun on the ground at his side. I sat next to him, and when I looked at him, he was slowly shaking his head, his eyes closed. I waited, and two or three minutes passed before he finally opened his eyes.

“You know how you think you remember things, but you're not sure if maybe you dreamt them?” he asked, looking out into the trees. “Or maybe even … made them up?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Mom used to say I had a good imagination. I should be a writer, she said, because I made up such amazing stories.” He sounded bitter. “She'd laugh them off, my stories. When I'd ask her if she remembered the day she and I came home from the grocery store and we heard two gunshots as we got out of the car, she'd say, ‘Oh, what a creative mind you have!' Or when I said something about remembering blood on the living room carpet, she'd say, ‘If you have to make up stories, can't you make up nicer ones?'”

“Oh, Danny.” I touched his arm, relieved when he didn't try to brush my hand away.

“I remember sirens,” he said. “I thought they were coming for you.”

“For me?”

He nodded. “You were bleeding. You had a cut on your head.”

“I have a scar on my forehead,” I said, lifting my bangs to show him the small dent above my left eyebrow, but he didn't turn to look at me. He seemed lost in his memory.

“You were screaming,” he said.

I let my bangs fall over my forehead again. “Mom always told me I hit my head on a coffee table when I was little, but I don't remember it.”

“I thought that was why the ambulance was coming, but that wasn't it, was it?” He shook his head as though talking to himself. “It was for her teacher. That guy she killed.”

“Accidentally,” I added. “You read the part about it being an accident, right?”

“‘Shot through the eye,'” he said. “I
knew
that. I knew…” He ran his fingers through his hair. “How did I know that? Did I see it? Hear it?” He rubbed his temples hard in frustration, then looked at me. “I
knew
about all this, Riles,” he said. “I knew it, but I'd forgotten it.”

“I think,” I said carefully, not wanting him to go off on his tirade about our parents again … and yet, maybe they deserved it? “I think Mom and Daddy did their best to make you forget it.”

“I didn't have to go to school then,” he said. “Mom homeschooled me for a while like she did with Lisa, though Lisa was gone.” He frowned as if trying to remember. “She was always going away on trips and things, but … I guess she was in jail then? She must have been. I didn't connect the homeschooling with the sirens or anything. I thought I was being punished for something. They wouldn't let me go out and play.” He was rambling, piecing things together in his mind. “I hardly knew her,” he said. “Lisa. Eleven years older and always gone. Her schedule ruled our lives. The whole world revolved around her.” He wrapped his hand around a fistful of pine needles. His face was still expressionless, but his voice was taut. Suddenly it softened. “I always liked you, though,” he added, glancing at me. “You were a cool little kid.”

I couldn't believe he was talking this way. Saying so much.

“You were my best friend,” I said.

He dropped the needles. Rubbed his hands over his denim-covered knees. “I have this nightmare that comes and goes,” he said. “It sucks. It's the worst one.”

“Do you want to tell—”

“I thought it was about Iraq.” He interrupted me, lost in his own thoughts. “But now I don't know, because Mom is in it. She's always in it. Always screaming.”

I watched the muscles around his jaw tighten and release as I waited for him to say more, but he was done talking about his dream.

“Suicide is the coward's way out.” He picked up a twig, playing with it between his fingers. “I mean, I feel for the vets who do it, and I get it. It becomes too much for them to carry around. Maybe they don't have a place like this to escape to.”

I wasn't sure what he meant by “a place like this.” Then I realized he was talking about this small patch of pine forest. His haven. I was touched that he'd allowed me to be there with him.

“So you don't have to worry about me and suicide, all right?” He glanced at me. “I know you do.”

I was afraid of breaking the spell of warmth that had fallen over us, yet maybe I could take advantage of his mood to delve deeper.

“I
do
worry,” I admitted. “I know you're depressed. If you'd stay on your medications, I think you'd be—”

“I'm not depressed.”

Like hell,
I thought. “How would you define your feelings, then? What do you—”

“I'm pissed off, is what I am!” He broke the twig in two between his fingers. The sound it made was barely audible, yet it made me jump.

“Who are you pissed off at?” I asked.

“Who am I
not
pissed off at would be a shorter answer,” he said. “Our fucking government, for one. The shitty things they made me do over there. Made me…” He gave an angry shake of his head. “You don't even see people as human beings after a while when you're there, you know?” he said. “And I'm pissed at our parents. Our lying prick of a father and our ice queen of a mother. And our selfish bitch of a sister!” His face was red and damp with sweat, his breathing loud. “She took up all the air in our family. There was nothing left for anyone else.”

“But,” I said carefully, “did you ever stop to think of what it was like for her, growing up?” I asked. “The pressure on her?”

“Hell, no!” His anger shattered the sacred feel of the woods. “Nobody ever forced her to play the violin. Nobody told her to kill her fucking teacher. Everything was handed to her on a silver platter and she took it all for herself!”

I ran my fingers through the pine needles. I could hear his hard, fast breathing and I made my voice as calm as I could to counter his rage. “I try to understand why people do what they—”

“Shut up with the counselor voice, okay?” he said. “I hate when you do that!”

I was stunned. “I'm only trying to—”

“You turn into some automaton, like you're programmed to say all this fake, warm, fuzzy shit that has nothing to do with reality.” He looked at me, his face flushed. “You went to school for what? Five years? Six years? And then you think you're equipped to pick at people's heads when you haven't even lived in the real world yet? Maybe you can manage a thirteen-year-old. Fourteen-year-old. But you are
way
the hell out of your league when it comes to me, little sister.”

I felt as though he'd picked up his shotgun and smashed the stock of it into my stomach.
“Danny.”
I wasn't sure what else to say, the hurt I felt was so intense.

“You don't get me at all, okay?” He grabbed the shotgun as he jumped to his feet, sending my heartbeat into the stratosphere. He looked down at me, the pale blue of his eyes ice-cold. He leaned over so those angry eyes were no more than two feet away from me. “It's not my
mind
that's sick, Riley,” he said. “It's my
soul.
And there aren't any drugs that are going to fix that.”

He turned and walked back into the woods, his stride long and quick despite the limp, and I let out my breath in relief. I waited a moment, trembling, then got to my feet and followed him at a distance, my legs rubbery. I didn't want to catch up to him—I couldn't possibly talk with him right now after that outburst—but I needed to keep him in my line of sight. I would never be able to find my way out of the woods alone. Thank God for his red T-shirt! My eyes burned as I followed it from a distance, and I was crying before I realized it. I ached from the sting of his cutting words. Had he thought that little of me all along? Like I was nothing more than an undereducated charlatan with a “fake counselor voice”? Not only did I feel as though I'd just lost my brother, it seemed I'd never had him to begin with.