The Silent Sister(56)
Jeannie’s blue eyes were even bigger and rounder than usual. “Oh, my God, Riley,” she said. “They’re trying to pull a fast one on you.”
I remembered Danny saying that Tom Kyle was yanking my chain.
“Well, even Verniece said it, and she’s—”
“She’s a sweet old bat, I know,” Jeannie said. “But she’s the one feeding you the load of crap about you being adopted, too, right? Stay away from them, Riley. They don’t care about you, and you really need people around you who’ll support you, not mess with your head.” She tapped her fingertip on my temple.
“But could Daddy have said it?” I asked. “Promised the park to them?”
“No!” She frowned at me. “He didn’t like the Kyles. I admit I’m lost about the checks he was giving Tom Kyle and why he’d leave him the pipes when he knew I could use a bit of that cash.” She let out an aggravated breath. “Although three years ago, which is when he wrote that will, I was in better shape, so it probably never occurred to him I’d be in need. But the idea of him leaving them a valuable piece of property is preposterous.”
My phone rang before she finished her last sentence and I pulled it from my shorts pocket. The number was unfamiliar and it took me a moment to realize it was Danny’s cell phone. I jumped to my feet, amazed he would call. “I have to take this,” I said to Jeannie as I headed for the front door and privacy. Once on the porch, I lifted the phone to my ear.
“Danny?”
“Come over,” he said. “I have something to tell you.”
JULY 1992
25.
Jade
She needed a car.
After sailing through the GED, she’d been admitted to San Diego State for the fall semester on the strength of new SAT scores—not nearly as good as Lisa MacPherson’s scores had been—and an essay about growing up in Maryland with her fictional family. She planned to study hard and keep her head down, and she guessed that in a few years, she’d be a teacher. Not a career she’d ever imagined for herself, but she had to do something worthwhile with her life, and if she couldn’t play music, working with children was the best thing she could think of.
San Diego State, though, was fifteen miles from Ocean Beach. She planned to continue living at Ingrid’s and working at Grady’s, the two places she felt safe, so a car was an absolute must. And that, she decided, constituted a dire emergency.
She’d been so good about not getting in touch with her family! Yet she longed for them, and sometimes she felt so forgotten. She knew her father had created the ruse to save her from a far worse fate, but did he miss her? Did he even think about her anymore?
She opened her own post office box under her new name, Ann Johnson. Then, sitting at the kitchen table in her little cottage, she wrote a long, heartfelt letter to her father, weeping through every sentence. She couldn’t send it. She didn’t dare. She dried her tears and started over.
Dear Fred,
I plan to attend school, majoring in education. The only problem is transportation. Although I’m working and will continue to do so, I don’t have enough money to buy a used car. I hope you can help.
Sincerely,
Ann
She sat back from the table and read the note aloud, stumbling over the cold sound of the words. The formality, when what she really wanted to write was, I miss you so much! How is everyone? Tell me about Riley. Please tell me she’s still the happy little girl at four that she was at two. Is Danny all right? Has he forgotten that terrible day? Is there any way—ANY WAY—I can see all of you? Please!
She folded the letter in thirds and put it in an envelope. There was a good chance he would be angry, but so was she.
* * *
She began checking her post office box three days after mailing the letter and of course it was empty. Her spirits sank each time she saw the hollow space behind the glass window in the small metal door. But on the nineteenth day, a shadow blocked the glass. She opened the door and pulled out a long fat envelope. There was no return address, but the postmark was from Pollocksville, North Carolina, and she let out a joyous yelp before she caught herself. Her address was written in block print she would never recognize as her father’s, but it could be from no one else. She trembled as she put the envelope in her purse, and she nearly ran all the way home.
Sitting on the big couch in her living room, she carefully slit open the envelope. There were bills inside—twenty one-hundred-dollar bills—and tucked in the middle of the stack, this note: You are loved and missed. She held the note close to her heart. Of the twenty-one items in the envelope, this was the most precious.
* * *
She bought a rickety old white VW bug for four hundred dollars from an aging hippie in Ocean Beach and put the rest of the money in her bank account. She also got a California driver’s license. Even after living in San Diego for a couple of years, she’d felt nervous walking into the DMV, turning in the fake Maryland license, having her new picture taken. The process was easy, though. Facing her fear turned out to be the only hard part.
Late in July, she made her first drive to the university to take a special placement test. The test took two hours to complete and struck her as easy. When she’d finished, she wandered around the campus. She would have denied even to herself that she was looking for the music building, but there it was—standing between the building where the test had been held and the parking lot—and because it was so hot out, she told herself it made sense to cut through the building to cool off.