The Silent Sister (20 page)

Grady's felt like home to her for another reason that had nothing to do with music. The first time she walked into the shop, her eyes had been drawn to a poster on the wall. Grady had tons of posters, all of rock groups except for this one. It was a photograph of a model, Nastassja Kinski, lying naked on the floor with a python wrapped around her body. It was not the first time Jade had seen that picture. If the police went through her room at home after her “death,” they would find the same photograph tucked deep in her T-shirt drawer. She'd first seen it when she was eleven years old, lying on her stomach on the living room floor, looking through a magazine with Matty. He'd turned the page and there was Nastassja and the snake. “Gross!” Matty had said, contorting his face into the expression of disgust that always made her laugh.

“Gross,” she'd agreed, but later, when she was alone, she cut out the picture and stared at it for hours before slipping it into her drawer, fascinated by the way the snake coiled around the woman's body, hiding and exposing, hiding and exposing.

To see the same poster on Grady's wall when it had nothing whatsoever to do with music felt like a sign to her. This was where she wanted to work.

Surrounding herself with music in the record store wasn't enough to kill her homesickness, though. Her longing for home, for her family, for Matty, for Violet, seemed to grow bigger and more heartbreaking with each passing day. Back when she thought she'd end up in prison, she'd asked Matty to watch over Riley and Danny for her, and she comforted herself with the thought that he was staying in close touch with them even though he now thought she was dead. She pictured him coming over to the house, acting like a big brother to Riley and Danny. Reading to them. Maybe taking them to the zoo or a movie. If only she could be with them.

One day, when she couldn't shake the sense of having lost everything, she went to the bank and changed a twenty-dollar bill for quarters, telling herself she needed the change for the Laundromat, even though she knew that twenty dollars' worth of quarters was overkill. Then, while her clothes were swooshing around in the washing machine, she walked to the nearby pay phone. She left the door open a crack to cut the urine-and-alcohol scent of the booth, then piled her change on the small metal shelf beneath the phone.

She stared at the dial. It was five o'clock on the East Coast. Her mother was likely at home, making dinner. Jade only wanted to hear her voice. That was all. Maybe she'd be able to hear Riley chattering in the background. She wouldn't speak, though. Wouldn't dare to. But she needed that connection to her family. She needed it desperately.

She dialed her old home number, adding quarters as the mechanical voice commanded. Holding her breath, she waited through three odd, tinny-sounding rings before someone answered.

“The number you have reached has been disconnected.” The voice was mechanical and disinterested, and Jade stared wide-eyed at the dial.

Oh, no. They'd had to change their number twice after her arrest, so she supposed her suicide had caused a new rash of unwanted calls, but her heart sped up at having no way to reach her family. Their new number would be unlisted, for sure. Nevertheless, she had to try. She called information and asked for a Frank MacPherson in Alexandria.

“There is no number for a Frank MacPherson in Alexandria,” the operator said.

“You mean, you can't give it out, right? It's unlisted?”

“No, there is no number. There's a Peter and a J.T.”

Had they moved? That seemed unthinkable. “What about … Arlington?” she asked. “Anywhere around Washington?”

The operator had a Fiona, but no Frank, listed or unlisted, and Jade finally hung up in defeat. Where were they? Where was her family? Were they running away from the reporters? Or were they running away from
her
?

Did Matty know where they were? Her comforting image of him remaining a part of her family's life disintegrated. If they'd moved away, how could he stay involved?

Then, although she hadn't intended to, she dialed Matty's number. He had his own phone number, separate from his family's, and it only rang in his bedroom. She would settle for his answering machine. Anything! She just needed to hear the voice of someone from her old life. Someone she knew cared about her.

He picked up. “Hello?” he said.

Oh, my God.
She touched the phone as if she was touching him. He sounded so familiar, so close by, and it was all she could do to stop herself from speaking.

“Hello?” he asked again. “Who's this?”

Might he guess? There was no one in the world she was closer to than Matty. Didn't he know she would never kill herself? She waited, wanting him to say, “Is this Lisa?” Instead, though, he hung up.

Walking back to the Laundromat, she was in a fog. She tried to picture her house in Alexandria with new people living in it, hurt that her family had moved on without her. Even though she knew it could never happen, she'd fantasized about finding some way to go home. Now “home” didn't exist anymore. She felt dizzy thinking about it, like she was floating out in space forever.

In the Laundromat, she opened the washing machine, reaching in for her wet, twisted clothes.

What had she expected? She had to stop thinking about herself and start thinking about what was best for Riley and Danny and her parents. She'd turned their lives inside out. A move would definitely be the right thing for Danny. He could start fresh at a new school where no one knew about her. And Riley, barely two years old now, would never have to know about her murderous, suicidal sister at all.

She blotted her eyes with the damp towel in her hands.

She knew that would be for the best.

 

22.

Riley

I couldn't find my brother. When I drove into his clearing after seeing the Kyles, his car was parked next to his trailer but there was no answer when I knocked on the door. He wasn't suicidal, he'd said, but I couldn't stop myself from dragging a concrete block over to the trailer so I could stand on it to peer into a window. There was no sign of him inside. Of course, there was no sign of his shotgun, either, which did nothing to ease my mind. He was probably in his favorite place in the woods, but I would never be able to find that oval of grass on my own. I sat on the Airstream's step, pulled my phone from my pocket, and tried calling him, unsurprised when he didn't pick up.

I found a scrap of paper in my car and tucked a note between his door and the jamb.
I need to talk to you. Please call. Please let me know you're okay.
I drove away without much hope of getting a response.

*   *   *

That night, I tossed and turned until two
A.M.
, more awake than I'd been when I went to bed. I finally decided to get up and tackle my father's computer. I had to see what needed saving from the hard drive before I turned it over to Christine. Maybe concentrating on that task would clear Tom and Verniece—and my worry about my brother—from my mind.

I walked barefoot down the hall to Daddy's office and switched on his small desk lamp. The house was deathly quiet as I sat down at the computer. When I pressed the power button, the old machine let out a human-sounding gasp that broke the silence and sent a chill up my spine. The clunky monitor was slow to come to life, and once it did, I groaned. It wanted a password. Great.

In movies, people always managed to come up with the appropriate password to hack into a computer. A child's name. An anniversary date. Something obvious. I tried every possible combination of letters and numbers I could think of without luck before heading back to bed. Maybe Jeannie would have some idea of a password he'd use, I thought as I lay awake staring at the dark ceiling. She seemed to know everything else about him. If she didn't know what it was, I'd have to ask Danny for help. He knew everything there was to know about computers, and if anyone knew a way to get into my father's files without a password, it would be him. How I'd get him to come back to the house, though, was another question entirely.

And of course, I'd have to find him first.

*   *   *

I was just waking up the following morning when Jeannie and Christine arrived. I heard their car doors slam outside, their muted voices on the front porch as they let themselves in with Jeannie's key. In a moment, one of them would knock on my bedroom door, badgering me about my father's cabinets or the computer or whatever. My house was not my own.

I got out of bed, brushed my teeth, then threw on my running clothes. I managed to escape down the stairs and out the front door without them seeing me, and I headed for the river at an easy jog, still yawning from my mostly sleepless night. When I reached the path along the river, I spotted five kayakers paddling south. I slowed down, then stopped altogether, standing at the railing near the river's edge as I watched the kayaks cut through the water in a chevron shape. The lead kayak was yellow, like my sister's had been.
Weird timing,
I thought, as my mind drifted back to the conversation with the Kyles.

Two sets of footprints.

I pulled my phone from my shorts pocket and dialed Danny's number. No answer. Turning around, I started for home, running now. I went in the back door to find Jeannie rooting around in one of the kitchen cabinets. She looked up in surprise and opened her mouth to speak, but I grabbed my keys from the key rack, gave her a quick wave, and left before she could ask me anything.

*   *   *

Danny was still not in his trailer, but this time his car was gone as well and I guessed he was either at the store or in a bar. I sat in the sweltering heat of my car, remembering the e-mail Harry had sent me about Danny hanging out at Slick Alley these days.

I turned the key in the ignition, hoping I'd see his Subaru in the Food Lion parking lot rather than at the pool hall, for both our sakes. I jostled my car back and forth in the tight clearing, then headed back to New Bern. Fifteen minutes later, I spotted Danny's black Subaru in the Slick Alley parking lot. The building itself was a one-story, flat-roofed rectangle of concrete that had once been painted white but now blended into the gray sky behind it.
SLICK ALLEY BILLIARDS
was hand painted in green letters above the door, and on the side of the building, someone had painted a picture of a busty blond woman as she bent over a pool table to take a shot. Lovely.

It was not yet eleven in the morning, but there were already ten cars in the lot. I parked between the Subaru and a green truck and got out of my car before I could change my mind. When I pushed open the front door of the building, a dozen male heads turned in my direction and I wished I was wearing something other than my running shorts and tank top. The place was like every stereotype I'd ever seen of a pool hall—murky light, smoky air, faint background music interrupted by the muffled
thwak
of pool balls hitting one another at the tables. A row of booths lined the left wall of the room, and as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw my brother in the last booth, a book in his hands and his eyes on me. He didn't wave. Didn't rise. I walked toward him, ignoring the looks and comments and lip smacking of the pool players as I passed them.

Danny was alone in the booth, except for a full bottle of beer and one empty, and I slid onto the bench across from him. The fake leather seat felt sticky beneath my bare thighs.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” he asked.

I'd expected to tell him about my conversation with the Kyles, but knew I couldn't do it here. I had no idea how he'd react to anything I said about Lisa. “I need your help getting into Daddy's computer,” I said instead. “It's password protected.”

“You shouldn't be here.”

“Well, I don't know how else to get to talk to you, Danny,” I said. “You won't use the phone I got you.”

“Why do you need to get into his computer? You should just wipe the drive clean and chuck it.”

“I have to see if there's anything important on it before I get rid of it. I need your help. Please.”

He shook his head. “I told you. I'm not going in that house again.”

I sighed. “I'll bring it to you, then,” I said, not looking forward to lugging the computer around with me. “It's a big clunky old PC. You don't need the monitor, right? Just the computer?”

He didn't answer. Instead, he gave me a flat look I couldn't read, his blue eyes catching the faint light from the front windows. I wanted to ask him if this was how he spent his days—sitting alone in this sticky booth in this disgusting building. Did he even know these guys at the pool tables? Was there anyone here he could call a friend? Yet, that's not what came out of my mouth at all.

“The other day, when you said those things to me about not being a good counselor, I was hurt,” I said, the words spilling out in an unexpected rush. “I worked hard for my degree, Danny, and I'm good with the kids I counsel. I know I am. Maybe you're right that I'm out of my league when it comes to someone like … someone who's been through what you have. But you don't have to belittle me or cut me down the way you did.” I leaned forward to make my point. “It really upset me,” I said.

He tightened his hand around his beer and my whole body went stiff, afraid of what he was doing to do, but he only lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long swallow. When he set the bottle on the table again, he looked at me. “I'll come to the house to help with the computer,” he said, sliding out of the booth. “You don't need to bring it over.”

It took a moment for his words to register, and I knew this was his way of apologizing. I felt strangely euphoric as I slid out of the booth, and he waited for me before heading toward the door. He walked next to me, a shield between me and the cretins at the pool tables, and for the first time since we were kids, I felt the protective arm of my brother slip around my shoulders.