The Silent Sister (30 page)

 

38.

Riley

As soon as I'd signed the gift deed in Suzanne's office late Friday afternoon, I headed for the RV park. Tom and Verniece had already signed the simple form—I'd intentionally waited until they'd left Suzanne's office before going in, not wanting to see them any more than was absolutely necessary. I asked Suzanne for a copy of the form bearing both our signatures so I could show it to Tom and Verniece in case they doubted my word.

They were waiting for me inside the trailer. We sat down at the built-in table, the two of them on one side, me on the other. “Here's a copy of the signed form.” I placed it between us on the table. “Everything's set and Suzanne will record the deed on Monday. Now you tell me where my sister is,” I said to Tom, acting as if I were the one with the power in this small, hot space when I knew that was not the case. My body seemed to know it as well, because I heard the tremor in my voice.

Tom and Verniece looked greedily at the form, but Verniece suddenly shook her head. “We should wait till the deed's recorded,” she said, her voice sharp. It was the same voice I'd overheard the day I'd left the phone in their RV. She seemed to catch herself, as if remembering she was supposed to have a sweet and loving persona with me. “I mean,” she said, “wouldn't that make the most sense?”

“She's right,” Tom said to me. “That's how we do it. After that lawyer lets us know it's been recorded, you come back here and I'll tell you everything.”

“No.” I folded my hands on the table. “You tell me
now.
I'm not waiting all weekend to find out what you know. I'm giving you a huge chunk of my net worth.” The words slipped out of my mouth. I wasn't even sure what
net worth
meant, but I hoped I sounded like I'd thought everything over very carefully and knew what I was doing.

“You don't understand what
I'll
be giving up,” Tom said. “I'm putting myself at risk by telling you anything. And one thing you better know is that I'll deny it all if you so much as whisper a lick of it to anyone in authority. Or to your brother.”

“Hush now, Tom.” Verniece put her hand on his arm. “Let's keep this civil. I think you should go ahead and tell her what she needs to know. She's trustworthy.” She reached across the table to squeeze my hands where they were folded together. “Aren't you, love?”

I didn't answer. I let my eyes burn into Tom's, and I could see the moment he decided to back down.

He got to his feet. Walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. “I owed your father,” he said, popping the top on the beer with a church key. He turned to face us, leaning back against the counter as he raised the bottle to his lips. “Verniece knows all this, so don't worry about that,” he said. “I got involved with a female prisoner I was transporting when I was with the Marshals Service. Stupid move. Frank was my boss and he found out. He should have canned me, but instead he covered for me. Gave me a second chance.” He looked down at his beer. “But,” he said, “I ended up paying for that second chance about ten times over.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Your sister didn't kill herself, but she wasn't the mastermind behind the scheme.”

I felt a chill in spite of the heat in the RV. “Do you mean … you?”

“No, honey,” Verniece said. “Your daddy.”

I suddenly felt nauseated and sat back from the table, dropping my hands into my lap. What the hell kind of game were they playing with me? Were they going to feed me lies in exchange for the park? “I don't believe you,” I said.

“Look,” Tom said. “I promised to tell you what I know. I didn't promise to pretty it up for you.”

I tried not to let the shock show on my face. Daddy? It was impossible. He was the most honest person I knew, and he'd grieved for Lisa. My whole life, I'd felt his grief.

But I thought of those two sets of footprints in the snow where Lisa had left her car. “What are you saying?” I asked. “That my father helped her … do what? Make it look like she killed herself?”

“Exactly,” Tom said. “They put the kayak in the water and she got in his car and then he drove her halfway to Philadelphia. That's where I came in.” He set the bottle down on the counter. Folded his arms across his chest. “I picked her up in a rest area and took her the rest of the way to Philly.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. I couldn't breathe. There seemed to be no air at all in the trailer and Tom and Verniece grew wavy in my vision. Beneath the table, I pressed my hands together hard.

“Are you all right, Riley?” Verniece asked, and I ignored her, my eyes on Tom.

“Did my mother know anything about this?” My throat was so tight that the words barely made a sound. “Did she know Lisa didn't kill herself?”

Tom shook his head. “Nobody knew,” he said.

“How do I know you're telling the truth?” I asked. “My father would never—”

“Your father would never what?” He laughed, but the sound was mocking. “Save his firstborn from a lifetime in prison? I personally don't think she was worth saving, but apparently, he did.”

I felt tears fill my eyes. I didn't want to cry in front of them. I had to be strong in here, but the thought of Daddy doing all he could—breaking the
law
—to save my sister, tore me up inside.

“I didn't want any part of it.” Tom lifted the bottle to his lips. “Your sister had to be a sociopath, with all that crap she handed the police about it being an accident and everything. I didn't care a bit about her. I did it because I owed your father and needed to keep on his good side.”

I wiped a tear from my cheek. “Why Philadelphia?” I asked. “Why did you take her there?”

“He took her to the train station,” Verniece said.

“To go where?”

“How would I know that?” he said. “I didn't want to know.”

“Do you mean you don't know where she is?” I asked, my voice rising.

“Tell her about the new name,” Verniece said quickly. I knew she wanted to keep me calm, but if he didn't actually know where I could find her, I was going to lose it completely. That had been the deal: he'd tell me where she was in exchange for the park.

“I made her a set of documents,” Tom said, “same as I'd do for someone in the Witness Protection Program.”

“So he gave her a new name and everything,” Verniece said.

“What name did you give her?” I asked.

“Ann Johnson. Usually we tried to give someone in witness protection a name with the same initials. Easier that way. But your father wanted something completely forgettable, so that's what I gave her.”

My sister has a name.
Words I could say out loud. Words I could Google. But Ann Johnson? “There have to be thousands of Ann Johnsons,” I said.

“That was the point.”

“You said documents. Plural,” I said. “What else did you give her?”

“She had a driver's license with that name and a Maryland address. She had a Social Security number.”

“Do you know what it is?” I asked.

“Hell, I can hardly remember my own Social Security number,” he said with a bitter laugh. “I have no idea.” He took another swallow of beer. “So,” he said, setting the bottle on the counter again. “I've told you all I know. Now you have a name and you know she got on a train in—”

“You said you could tell me where I could find her!” I felt panicky. That was what Verniece had promised, wasn't it?

“I never said that,” he said.

I looked at Verniece and she recoiled a bit from whatever she saw in my eyes. “I didn't say he knew exactly where she is, Riley,” she said. “But you have a whole lot more information than you had just a few minutes—”

“I can tell you she was alive and healthy twenty-three years ago,” Tom interrupted her, “and I can tell you how she disappeared. That's all I promised. And I paid for it. I failed a lie detector test in '93 because I protected your father and sister when I said I never used my official role for anything outside official business. I should have just let them hang.”

“Oh,” Verniece said, “you would have failed it anyway because you were lying about that tramp you had a—”

“Shut up, woman!” Tom shouted. “You don't know what you're talking about.”

Verniece clamped her mouth shut, though I had the feeling if I hadn't been there, she would have let him have it the way she had when I'd overheard her a few days before. She had to keep up her sweet-and-innocent act for my sake.

“This is why my father's been paying you five hundred dollars a month all these years,” I said. Suddenly the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place.

“A small price to pay to keep his daughter out of prison, don't you think?”

“What I think is that you haven't told me much of anything,” I said bitterly. “So Lisa was alive twenty-three years ago, with a name that's impossible to track down, and she got on a train to who-knows-where.”

“You know what, Riley?” he said. “Did you ever stop to think that if Lisa wanted to see you, she would have found
you
?”

He'd hit a nerve I hadn't even realized was raw and tender, and the pain was too much for me. I stood up, and grabbing the copy of the signed form from the table, I tore it in two.

“That's only a copy!” Verniece said.

“This is what I'm going to do to our deal,” I said, tearing the paper into quarters, then eighths. “I'm calling Suzanne to tell her I've changed my mind and not to record the deed.”

“You can't do that!” Verniece looked up at me, a shocked expression on her face. “We signed the paper! The real form!”

“I can do it and I will,” I said, hoping I was right. “This is over.”

“You little bitch.” Tom growled. He took a step toward me and I tried unsuccessfully not to flinch.

“Riley.” Verniece groaned. “That's not playing fair! He's telling you everything he knows. You don't want him to make things up just to satisfy you, do you?”

“No, but I
do
want him to tell me something that's worth two hundred thousand dollars,” I said. “We're done.”

I pulled the door open, then leaped down the steps. Once I hit the ground, I ran all the way to my car, terrified Tom might come after me with a shotgun. When I got into my car and hit the locks, though, I looked back at the trailer and saw there was no one in sight. My hands shook as I started the car. I turned it around at the end of the lane and headed out of the park, and only when I reached the main road did I pull over to the shoulder and start to cry. What had I expected? That he would know right where I could find her?

Sitting there, I called Suzanne's number and was relieved to get her voice mail. I was too embarrassed to talk to her at that moment. I cleared my throat, hoping she couldn't tell that I'd been crying.

“Suzanne,” I said, “this is Riley MacPherson. I thought about some of the things you said and I've decided not to gift the park to the Kyles after all. I'm sorry for the hassle. Please don't record the deed. Thanks for helping me think it through.”

I hung up the phone and sat there staring blindly at the trees by the side of the road.
Daddy knew.
All these years, he'd known the truth. Could he have told my mother? I didn't think so. Not the way she grieved. You couldn't fake that kind of grief. I thought only my father knew, and I wondered if somewhere, buried deep in the sea of paperwork in those living room cabinets, there might be a clue to Lisa's whereabouts.

And if there was a clue, I was going to find it. I would attack the paperwork with a new vengeance. No more stopping to shred every unwanted sheet of paper. I had no time for that. I would search through it all for something, anything, that would tell me where I could find my sister.

 

APRIL 1996

39.

Jade

“Hi, Charlie,” she said as the old man walked into Grady's carrying an armload of LPs. She gave him a kiss on the cheek and took the records from him. “Ready to turn these in?” Every time he came into the store lately, he brought more records to sell to Grady. He'd reached the age where it was time to pare down, he'd told her, but even though he was turning in ten or twenty a week, he was buying at least five to replace them, so it was going to be slow going.

She set the pile of records on the counter in front of Grady, who would tally them up while Charlie wandered through the aisles, looking for something new.

“I'm going through some boxes in the back,” she said to them. They were the only people in the store, and she usually looked forward to catching up with Charlie, but today she needed to be alone.

“Let me know if you come across anything back there that I can't live without,” Charlie said.

“I will.”

Sitting on a stool in the back room, she pulled old vinyl albums from one of the estate sale boxes. She barely noticed the records, though. She was thinking about what she'd discovered at school that morning: before she started her fifth year at San Diego State, the year in which she'd get her credential that would allow her to teach, she needed to be fingerprinted. It was the law for anyone who taught, anyone who worked with kids. How stupid she'd been not to realize that she'd have to be fingerprinted to work in a school! Blindly sifting through the records in front of her, she realized that the last four years of her life, at least from an educational perspective, had been wasted. She could never teach. Not music. Not anything. And she had no idea now what she was going to do.

It was momentarily quiet in the store. Grady always had music going, but Enya's
Watermark
had just ended and Jade knew he was figuring out what to play next when she heard the jingle of the bell on the front door.