The Silent Sister(106)

I tried calling Danny, unsurprised when he didn’t answer. I grabbed my duffel bag and locked my apartment door before heading down to the deserted garage. My phone rang as I got in my car. Jeannie again. I would call her from the road. Right now, I was anxious to get back to New Bern. I’d drive straight to Danny’s trailer and wake him up. I had to tell him what I’d learned. I’d beg him not to talk to Harry … if he hadn’t already.

The night was pitch-black and I had the road nearly to myself. I started to call Jeannie twice, but each time tears filled my eyes and I knew my voice would shut down on me, and I stopped the call before it could go through. I was nearly to Goldsboro by the time I thought I could talk without crying.

She sounded frantic when she answered the phone. “Are you all right?” Her voice surrounded me in the car. “I’ve been so worried. I had no idea what—”

“I’m alive,” I said. “That’s about the best I can tell you.”

“What happened?” she asked.

My tears started again and I couldn’t speak.

“Oh, honey,” she said. “Tell me. Talk to me.”

“Steven Davis was my father,” I said.

She was silent and the dark air of my car filled with my sobs. I could hardly see the road in front of me.

“No,” Jeannie said finally. “I don’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it!”

I told her everything Celia had said, my words nearly unintelligible. Jeannie had to ask me half a dozen times to repeat myself. By the time I’d choked out the story, her voice was thick as well.

“If only Lisa had told your parents what was going on!” she said. “They could have done something to help her.”

“I know.”

“She was such a gentle girl,” Jeannie added. “I could never even picture her holding a gun, much less shooting one. Now it all makes sense. She would have done anything to protect you.”

“And I was horrible to her, Jeannie!” I said. “I got so upset when I was talking to her.”

“Did you tell her to stay away from New Bern?” Jeannie asked.

“She’s coming anyway,” I said. “I have to talk to Danny. I have to try to—”

A deer suddenly darted into the road in front of me, nothing more than a flash of tawny fur in my headlights. Reflexively, I yanked the wheel to the right as I let out a scream. My car went airborne, the steering wheel useless, the tires off the road, and I catapulted like a rocket, upside down, into the black night.





57.

Jade

Jade and Celia were quiet in the sterile breakfast room of the hotel in the morning. Across the table from them, Shane and Travis talked about the set list for that night’s concert as they wolfed down their eggs and bacon, seemingly oblivious to the strain between the two women. Jade knew that Celia was upset with her, and who wouldn’t be? She was upset with herself, but for different reasons. She wanted to see Riley again. She wanted to take a cab over to her apartment right that second, but fear held her back. The way Riley had left her the night before had been so decisive, as though she was washing her hands of Jade forever. If only she could have more time with her. She wanted to build the connection with Riley they’d never been able to have. The yearning was so all-consuming that it nearly overshadowed her fears about tonight’s concert in New Bern. Had Danny already told his cop friend? Would she be led away in handcuffs once again? Her heart sped up at the thought of her hands bound together as they’d been so long ago. She didn’t think she could take it. Twenty-three years ago, she’d been facing years in prison. That would seem like a walk in the park in comparison to what she’d be facing now. Not only had she killed someone, but she’d jumped bail and assumed a false identity and … oh, who knew what all the charges would be? At least Daddy wasn’t alive to be charged as well. That would only have doubled her distress.

All she knew was that she would confess to everything. Every charge against her—she’d accept it without argument. There would be no trial. She was never going to let Riley learn that she’d had an abusive son of a bitch for a father.

She stared down at her plate with its untouched scrambled eggs and slice of bacon, and a small pathetic sound—a whimper—escaped from her throat.

“What’s the matter?” Travis looked across the table at her, his fork in his hand. Travis was sweet. The caretaker of the rest of them, and the peacemaker, always. He hated any sort of conflict. But she couldn’t say anything to put him at ease this morning. She could only stare at her plate.

Celia put her arm around Jade’s shoulders. “It’s all right,” she said softly in her ear. “We’ll work this out somehow.”

“What are you talking about?” Shane asked. “What’s going on? What do you need to work out?”

“No big deal,” Celia said. “She’ll be okay.”

She wanted to tell the guys right now, over breakfast. They’d be caught completely off guard tonight and that seemed unfair, but Celia said they needed to “just sit with it” for a while. Jade didn’t know what that meant, but she also didn’t have the strength to argue with her about it. Celia had been gone a long time the night before and she was quiet when she returned, not wanting to talk. Jade hated the uneasiness between them. This could very well be their last few hours of freedom together, and they were destined to have a sour, miserable day leading up to … what? Would the police come for her before the concert or after? Would Riley be there or would she stay home, not wanting to watch the disaster she and Danny had set in motion?