The Silent Sister(22)

I nodded, suddenly choked up. I missed my mother.

“After I’d told her everything, she asked me if we’d consider adoption and I said we were too old, but she shook her head. And that’s when she told me.”

“Told you what?”

“That she and your father had wanted more children because there was such a gap between your older brother and sister. They wanted Danny to have a sibling. But they weren’t getting pregnant. Then they looked into private adoption and found a baby girl being put up for adoption here in North Carolina and they were able to get her. Get you.”

Was she crazy? Or could she possibly be right? “This doesn’t make any sense.” I tried to keep my voice calm, but I felt it rising.

“She gave me hope. She said they planned to tell you when you were old enough to understand, but it sounds like they never got around to it. It never occurred to me that you still didn’t know.”

“This is insane,” I said, but I was more aware than ever before of my dark hair and dark eyes.

“I’m so sorry if I’ve upset you, Riley. The last thing I’d want to do is turn your world upside down. But like I said, it doesn’t really matter if—”

“Are you absolutely sure it wasn’t someone else you talked to that day? That it was my mother?”

“Honey, I’ll never forget your mother. Not even a year after that day, she lost your sister and they moved down here. They were running away, coming down here, but you can’t run away from some things.” She shook her head. “You don’t forget a woman who went through something like that.”

“I’m still having trouble believing this,” I said. I didn’t believe it. My parents had not been the most open people in the world, but I couldn’t imagine them keeping this from me.

“Do you wish I hadn’t told you?” Verniece looked worried. “Tom said I should butt out.”

“No, I’m glad you told me. I just…” I gave my head a shake, trying to clear away the crazy doubts that were filling it. “I’m still not sure it was my mother you were talking to.”

She smiled. “I understand,” she said. “I’m sure I’d feel the same way if I were you. But it was, Riley. I can promise you that.”

* * *

I felt nauseous as I walked back to my car. The scent of bacon still clung to that one spot along the gravel lane and this time I rushed to get past it. I was nearly to my father’s trailer when I spotted Tom walking toward me, carrying his fishing rod and basket.

“Hi, Mr. Kyle,” I said when he was close enough to hear. “I have a question for you.”

“What’s that?” he asked. He had a stubble of gray beard I hadn’t noticed the other day and he looked no happier to see me now than he had then.

“My father was paying you five hundred dollars a month,” I said. “What was that for?”

“Doesn’t matter now,” he said. He started to walk past me and I could smell beer on him, as I had the other day. I wondered how much of a problem he had with alcohol.

“Tom?” I said, and he turned around, looking at me without a word.

“Do you think I was adopted?”

He scowled. “You need to stay away from here,” he said. “Stay away from Verniece. She’s not in her right mind and it upsets her, seeing you.”

“What are you talking about?” I almost shouted. “If anyone should be upset, it should be me.”

“Just stay away, all right? For your own good.”

I opened my mouth to speak again, but he’d already turned away, leaving me with many more questions than answers.





10.



As I got back into my car next to Daddy’s RV, I wished I could talk to my brother again. He’d been four when I was born. If I’d been adopted, was there a chance he would know? But I’d just promised him I’d stick to the present and put the past behind us—or at least, behind him—so I forced myself to turn left out of the park, away from Danny and his trailer.

My whole body felt different all of a sudden, as though my genes were reorganizing themselves inside me as I drove back to the house. Verniece Kyle seemed so sure of what she’d told me! Not the least bit crazy. She struck me as a woman who saw kindness in honesty. As a counselor, I agreed with her: truth was always better than a lie. As Riley MacPherson, whose grasp on sanity wasn’t all that strong these days, I wasn’t so sure.

When I reached the house, I struggled to figure out how to set up the dusty old VHS player so it would work with Daddy’s relatively new flat-screen TV in the living room. I had to go online to figure it out, setting my laptop on the rolltop desk, and while I was on the Internet, almost without thinking, I Googled “how to learn if you’re adopted.” Talk to older relatives, one site suggested. Well, I would if I had any. Danny was my only hope there. Search birth records. Not as easy as it sounded, I quickly discovered. Birth records were not simply sitting on the Internet waiting to be found. Check your birth certificate for place of birth. My birth certificate was somewhere in my Durham apartment. I had no idea where. I’d probably been a teenager the last time I looked at that thing. I couldn’t remember anything unusual about it.

When I finished searching the Internet, I sat in front of my laptop, my hands folded in my lap. I was nervous about watching the tapes. I had no memory of my sister from when she was alive. In all my memories of her, she was frozen in time in a photograph. I didn’t know how I’d feel, seeing her in action. I was afraid of the grief. The loss. Danny complained about having to listen to her play far too often. I would have traded a year of my life to hear her just once.