The Silent Sister(49)
To see the same poster on Grady’s wall when it had nothing whatsoever to do with music felt like a sign to her. This was where she wanted to work.
Surrounding herself with music in the record store wasn’t enough to kill her homesickness, though. Her longing for home, for her family, for Matty, for Violet, seemed to grow bigger and more heartbreaking with each passing day. Back when she thought she’d end up in prison, she’d asked Matty to watch over Riley and Danny for her, and she comforted herself with the thought that he was staying in close touch with them even though he now thought she was dead. She pictured him coming over to the house, acting like a big brother to Riley and Danny. Reading to them. Maybe taking them to the zoo or a movie. If only she could be with them.
One day, when she couldn’t shake the sense of having lost everything, she went to the bank and changed a twenty-dollar bill for quarters, telling herself she needed the change for the Laundromat, even though she knew that twenty dollars’ worth of quarters was overkill. Then, while her clothes were swooshing around in the washing machine, she walked to the nearby pay phone. She left the door open a crack to cut the urine-and-alcohol scent of the booth, then piled her change on the small metal shelf beneath the phone.
She stared at the dial. It was five o’clock on the East Coast. Her mother was likely at home, making dinner. Jade only wanted to hear her voice. That was all. Maybe she’d be able to hear Riley chattering in the background. She wouldn’t speak, though. Wouldn’t dare to. But she needed that connection to her family. She needed it desperately.
She dialed her old home number, adding quarters as the mechanical voice commanded. Holding her breath, she waited through three odd, tinny-sounding rings before someone answered.
“The number you have reached has been disconnected.” The voice was mechanical and disinterested, and Jade stared wide-eyed at the dial.
Oh, no. They’d had to change their number twice after her arrest, so she supposed her suicide had caused a new rash of unwanted calls, but her heart sped up at having no way to reach her family. Their new number would be unlisted, for sure. Nevertheless, she had to try. She called information and asked for a Frank MacPherson in Alexandria.
“There is no number for a Frank MacPherson in Alexandria,” the operator said.
“You mean, you can’t give it out, right? It’s unlisted?”
“No, there is no number. There’s a Peter and a J.T.”
Had they moved? That seemed unthinkable. “What about … Arlington?” she asked. “Anywhere around Washington?”
The operator had a Fiona, but no Frank, listed or unlisted, and Jade finally hung up in defeat. Where were they? Where was her family? Were they running away from the reporters? Or were they running away from her?
Did Matty know where they were? Her comforting image of him remaining a part of her family’s life disintegrated. If they’d moved away, how could he stay involved?
Then, although she hadn’t intended to, she dialed Matty’s number. He had his own phone number, separate from his family’s, and it only rang in his bedroom. She would settle for his answering machine. Anything! She just needed to hear the voice of someone from her old life. Someone she knew cared about her.
He picked up. “Hello?” he said.
Oh, my God. She touched the phone as if she was touching him. He sounded so familiar, so close by, and it was all she could do to stop herself from speaking.
“Hello?” he asked again. “Who’s this?”
Might he guess? There was no one in the world she was closer to than Matty. Didn’t he know she would never kill herself? She waited, wanting him to say, “Is this Lisa?” Instead, though, he hung up.
Walking back to the Laundromat, she was in a fog. She tried to picture her house in Alexandria with new people living in it, hurt that her family had moved on without her. Even though she knew it could never happen, she’d fantasized about finding some way to go home. Now “home” didn’t exist anymore. She felt dizzy thinking about it, like she was floating out in space forever.
In the Laundromat, she opened the washing machine, reaching in for her wet, twisted clothes.
What had she expected? She had to stop thinking about herself and start thinking about what was best for Riley and Danny and her parents. She’d turned their lives inside out. A move would definitely be the right thing for Danny. He could start fresh at a new school where no one knew about her. And Riley, barely two years old now, would never have to know about her murderous, suicidal sister at all.
She blotted her eyes with the damp towel in her hands.
She knew that would be for the best.
22.
Riley
I couldn’t find my brother. When I drove into his clearing after seeing the Kyles, his car was parked next to his trailer but there was no answer when I knocked on the door. He wasn’t suicidal, he’d said, but I couldn’t stop myself from dragging a concrete block over to the trailer so I could stand on it to peer into a window. There was no sign of him inside. Of course, there was no sign of his shotgun, either, which did nothing to ease my mind. He was probably in his favorite place in the woods, but I would never be able to find that oval of grass on my own. I sat on the Airstream’s step, pulled my phone from my pocket, and tried calling him, unsurprised when he didn’t pick up.
I found a scrap of paper in my car and tucked a note between his door and the jamb. I need to talk to you. Please call. Please let me know you’re okay. I drove away without much hope of getting a response.