The Silent Sister(17)

And what did the photograph say about Lisa? She was only months from her death, and I swore I could see the pain in her face. She smiled for the camera, of course, like a dutiful daughter, but when people say “her smile didn’t reach her eyes” … well, looking at this picture, I understood that phrase. Had she been thinking about her application to Juilliard when this picture was taken? Had the fact that she was talented enough to apply not been enough to validate her? What pressure she must have been under during her whole young life. Child prodigy. It couldn’t have been easy for her.

I must have stared at the picture for half an hour, wishing I could change things for her, the sister I never got to know. “I’m changing things for other kids,” I whispered out loud to the room. I hoped that, somehow, she could hear me.

I suddenly remembered the first time I’d seen this photograph. I’d found it tucked away, facedown, in the dresser drawer where my mother kept her scarves. I was seven. I’d recognized Danny and myself, of course, but I didn’t know who the older girl was, though she was a little bit familiar. I carried the photograph into the living room, where my father was playing the piano and my mother sat on the couch, helping Danny with his homework.

“Who’s this girl?” I asked, holding up the picture in its carved wooden frame.

All three of them looked at me, and then my parents looked at each other.

“It’s Lisa,” Danny said. “Don’t you remember her?” I’d heard her name before, scattered here and there in conversations that went over my head.

“Come here, Riley,” my mother said, patting the couch next to her. My father turned on the piano bench to face us as I took a seat next to my mother. I held the framed photograph on my lap.

“Lisa was your sister,” my mother said. “She passed away when she was seventeen. You were not quite two.”

I looked at the picture again. The girl suddenly seemed more familiar to me, yet I couldn’t remember her. Not really. I couldn’t remember ever talking to her or touching her. I didn’t know much about death at that age. All four of my grandparents were dead, and the only one I’d ever gotten to know had died of a heart attack the year before.

I looked up at my mother. “Was it a heart attack?” I asked.

“No,” Danny said. “She did it to herself.”

“Danny!” my father snapped at him, and my mother gave him a little smack on his knee, but that cat was out of the bag.

I looked across my mother’s lap at my brother. “What’s that mean?” I asked.

“She drowned,” my father said. “That’s all you need to know.”

“Why did Danny say she did it to herself?”

“She drowned on purpose,” Danny said.

How could you drown on purpose? I could hold my breath for forty seconds and after that I needed air. I couldn’t imagine how someone could drown herself.

“Why did she do it?” I asked.

My mother glanced at the picture in my lap, but only for a second. “Sometimes when a person is very, very unhappy,” she said, “they forget that they’ll someday feel better and they just want to end the unhappiness. That’s what happened to Lisa. She felt so unhappy that she thought she’d never be happy again, and she ended her life. It was a terrible and very wrong thing to do. Don’t ever think about doing anything like that, Riley,” she added.

“If you ever feel that sad, you come tell us,” my father said.

“I could never be that sad,” I said, looking at the girl in the picture, still trying to wrap my head around the fact that she’d ever existed at all.

I never forgot my mother’s words about Lisa feeling unhappy and thinking she’d never feel happy again. I thought about that every time I counseled a depressed kid. I thought about it every time I felt unhappy, reminding myself I would one day be happy again. I could use that reminder right now.

I carried the photograph into my bedroom and set it on the nightstand. I’d sort through all those other pictures soon and decide which ones to keep and which to toss. But this one picture, I would keep always. I smiled at it where it rested upright on the nightstand. The three of us, together. My family.





8.



It was searingly hot the next morning as I drove down the rutted road toward Danny’s clearing, and even with my air conditioner blasting cool air in my face, I was perspiring. On the seat next to me was a key ring I’d discovered in my father’s desk drawer. Most of the keys belonged to the various curio cabinets, but there was one that appeared to fit nothing in the house and I hoped it would get me into Daddy’s RV. I’d also brought a few of the old photographs with me, hoping Danny might like to see them. Doubtful, but worth a shot. I actually wanted an excuse to check on him. I hadn’t spoken to him since dropping him off at his trailer the other night and I knew he hadn’t been in the best shape. He wasn’t answering the phone I’d given him, either. I had a feeling he hadn’t bothered to turn it on.

I turned onto the trail through the woods and nearly drove head-on into a police car coming from the direction of the clearing. Oh, God. Why was a cop coming from Danny’s place? I was in a panic as I got out of my car, but then I got a look at the officer in the cruiser. Dark skin. Hair beginning to gray at the temples. Harry?