The Silent Sister(48)

She wore a sad smile, reaching over to touch my hand. “I’m sure it will,” she said. “And don’t you worry, now. We’ll be fine.”

* * *

I felt far worse as I drove away from the Kyles’ motor home than when I’d driven toward it half an hour earlier. I wanted to believe my sister was alive, and yet I knew there was a good chance Tom was toying with me.

Two sets of footprints, he’d said. Was he making it up? Even if he wasn’t, what did it mean?

All I knew was that I didn’t want to be alone with this possibility another minute. I drove past the exit of the RV park and onto the rutted lane that would take me to my brother’s trailer.





MARCH 1990

21.

San Diego

Jade

She played the violin in bed at night.

She had no instrument, of course. She would honor the bargain she’d made with her father, no matter how difficult. She would never play again. But just like a boy without a guitar could play an air guitar, she played the air violin. She’d lie on her back and hold Violet beneath her chin as she stroked the bow across the strings, playing Bach or Mendelssohn, until the instrument grew too heavy for her arms to hold. And then, every single night, she’d cry until her head was stuffy and she’d struggle to fall asleep.

She missed her violin so much. She’d never been one of those children whose parents had to force them to practice. Instead, they’d had to force her to go outside and play. To Jade—to Lisa—the violin had been a reward. Even when she was eight or nine and the neighborhood kids were out riding their bikes on a Saturday morning, she’d wake up with her fingers twitching, ready to pick up the bow. Her violin had gotten her through some terrible times and now, during the loneliest, scariest time of her life, she didn’t have the one thing that could calm her.

Sometimes she couldn’t believe what had happened to her life, as though it was a nightmare and she would wake up, excitedly working on her applications to Juilliard and the other schools she’d been applying to. Maybe Juilliard wouldn’t take her, thanks to Steven, but some school would want her. “Oh, Lisa has such a bright future!” everyone said. Now, Lisa had no future at all, and Jade’s looked empty as well. She wondered if there was a way out of her dilemma. Maybe her lawyer hadn’t thought of everything. Now, though, even if there were a way out, her father would end up in prison, too. She couldn’t let that happen.

In the mornings, she’d eat a piece of toast she wasn’t hungry for and watch the news. Even though a month and a half had passed since she’d left home, she still worried that her face would pop up on the television, but it never did. Each day without any mention of Lisa MacPherson, she grew a bit braver. She walked a little farther through the neighborhoods with their bungalows and wild gardens. When people smiled at her, she made herself smile back, and she doubted anyone knew that it was only her facial muscles making the expression and not her heart. At the beach, she’d watch the surfers ride the waves in their wet suits. She looked with new sympathy at the homeless people who had let her share their beach for a night without harm. A few times, she accompanied Ingrid as she carried her baked goods out to the hungry in the dark. It seemed the least she could do.

Newport Avenue, the main street in Ocean Beach, ran between Ingrid’s neighborhood and the beach, and both sides of the street were lined with antiques shops and consignment shops and yoga studios and little eateries, but there was one store that drew her in nearly every time she passed it: Grady’s Records. The first time she set foot inside the shop, she spent an hour going through old vinyl and cassettes and new CDs, and for a while, she forgot the ache in her chest. She went through everything—the classical, the rock, the folk, the country, the gospel. Everything. She needed music! How had she survived all these weeks without it? If only she could buy some of the CDs, but she had no way to play them and she was afraid to touch her shrinking bank account. She needed a job, but although she could get onstage in front of thousands of people and perform for hours, the thought of walking into one of the shops along Newport Avenue and asking for work scared her. But Grady, the blond, long-haired owner of the shop, gave her a warm smile every time she came in, and she was slowly working up the courage to ask him if he needed help. If it annoyed him that she spent so much time looking through his albums without making a single purchase, he never said a word.

Grady’s felt like home to her for another reason that had nothing to do with music. The first time she walked into the shop, her eyes had been drawn to a poster on the wall. Grady had tons of posters, all of rock groups except for this one. It was a photograph of a model, Nastassja Kinski, lying naked on the floor with a python wrapped around her body. It was not the first time Jade had seen that picture. If the police went through her room at home after her “death,” they would find the same photograph tucked deep in her T-shirt drawer. She’d first seen it when she was eleven years old, lying on her stomach on the living room floor, looking through a magazine with Matty. He’d turned the page and there was Nastassja and the snake. “Gross!” Matty had said, contorting his face into the expression of disgust that always made her laugh.

“Gross,” she’d agreed, but later, when she was alone, she cut out the picture and stared at it for hours before slipping it into her drawer, fascinated by the way the snake coiled around the woman’s body, hiding and exposing, hiding and exposing.