The Silent Sister(15)

“Have you been going through his things?” Her head was lowered toward her bowl, but her eyes were raised, watching me from beneath thickly mascaraed lashes. I wasn’t sure what was behind her question, but it made me feel guilty. Again.

“Not really,” I said. “I haven’t known where to begin.”

“Would you like help?” She looked excited all of a sudden, as though she’d been waiting for the opportunity to ask. “I’d be happy to do that.” She set down her spoon and used her hands to help her talk. “I can track down resources for you,” she said. “Appraisers for the collections. Then perhaps buyers. You really need to hold an estate sale and it so happens that my daughter, Christine, recently started an estate sale business, so she can help you set that up. She’s very good.”

“That would be awesome,” I said sincerely, although I found myself leaning away from the table as though blown back by her sudden burst of energy. “I forgot you had a daughter.” I wasn’t sure I’d ever known.

“She’s considerably older than you, so you never really knew her. She’s forty-two now, a couple of years older than Lisa would have been. They played together sometimes when they were little, before Christine and I moved to Asheville.” She rolled her eyes. “When Lisa wasn’t practicing the violin, that is. Your sister was a driven—and very talented—little girl.”

“I know.”

“Let me come over and go through the house to see what’s there,” Jeannie said. “When would be a good time? How long do you plan to be here?”

“I was hoping to be done in a couple of weeks, but I can see that’s not going to happen. I have the summer off so—”

“Can your brother help?”

I shook my head, and it was clear I didn’t need to explain.

“It’s always a bigger job than you imagine,” she said. “And with that particular house … I can certainly help you get it ready to go on the market, if you like, but I don’t want you to feel pressured to use me just because—”

“Please. I’m sure my father would have wanted you to be the one to sell it, and I don’t know the first thing about how to do it.”

“You can let me take care of everything!” Her cheeks were flushed. “Christine and I will make it easy for you.” She pushed her bowl to the side of the table, clearly more interested in talking now than eating. “Now, because of how your father has everything set up in that house—all the built-in cabinets and the way he transformed the living room into an office and everything—I think we’ll have to do some renovations to make it look like a comfortable family home,” she said. “Nothing huge. No tearing down walls or anything like that, but the cabinets need to go and his furniture is quite old and the kitchen and bathrooms are beyond dated. We should have the estate sale first to get everything we can out of there and then evaluate the need to do the kitchen and baths, because that would be an expense, though perhaps worth it in the long run.” She was off and running and I sank lower in my chair, drowning under the deluge of her ideas. “The house has great bones,” she continued, “but he let the outside get a bit rundown and with old houses like that, they can look haunted, don’t you think?”

“Well, he spent so much time working on the RV park.” I felt defensive, although seriously, the RV park looked like it took care of itself. Trees. Creek. Concrete pads. What was there to do?

“How about I get someone over to the house to do the lawn and trim the shrubbery?” Jeannie asked. “Maybe plant something colorful in the front for a little curb appeal?”

“That would be awesome,” I said again. I didn’t like her—she was pushy and hard to read and I felt resentful of all she knew about me and my family. But I was relieved to have someone to help me.

We settled up with the waitress—Jeannie paid for my barely touched tacos—and we walked out to the sidewalk. Standing in front of the entrance, I turned to face her.

“I’ll call you in a day or two and figure out a time for you to come over,” I said.

“Don’t wait too long,” she warned.

“No, I won’t,” I said.

She lifted my hand and held it tightly as she stared hard into my eyes. I felt gooseflesh rise on the back of my neck.

“I’m so glad to see you again, Riley,” she said, finally freeing my hand.

I gave her a weak smile. “I’ll call you,” I said, and turned to head home, thinking all the way, What the hell is wrong with that woman?





7.



There was a big box of photographs on the top shelf of my father’s bedroom closet. I carried it to his bed, which I’d stripped when I was in town the last time, washing the sheets and pulling the quilt up. I’d noticed then that the quilt had initials in the corner: “JL to FM.” At the time, I hadn’t thought much about it, too caught up in the sorrow over losing my father. Now I realized Jeannie had most likely made the blue and yellow patchwork quilt for him. A personal thing. Something for his bed.

I wasn’t sure why that woman made me so uncomfortable. The fact that she seemed to have been closer to my father than I’d been, I guessed. The suspicion that she’d been happy to get my mother out of the way so she could take her place? That was unfair. My mother’d been her oldest friend—I knew that for a fact—and surely Jeannie was telling the truth when she said that her grief and my father’s grief had drawn them together. It was the way she spoke to me. The way she stared at me, especially there on the street after lunch. I was trained, though, to look beyond behavior to motivation. Maybe she was simply uncomfortable with me. She didn’t know how to behave with the daughter of her lover.