The Silent Sister(60)

Caterina Thoreau had the front door open by the time I got out of my car. She was dressed in white capris and a frothy blue tunic that matched both the sky and the ocean I could see through the glass wall behind her. She reached her hand toward me with a smile.

“Lisa’s sister!” she said, physically drawing me into her house with her hand in mine. “I’m so happy to meet you!”

“You, too,” I said.

She led me into a high-ceilinged living room and settled me on one of two white sofas while she poured us each a mimosa. Through the glass wall, the ocean seemed close enough to touch.

“What an awesome view,” I said.

She nodded, handing me my glass. “I’m very fortunate.” She sat down on the other couch, curling her bare feet beneath her. She was a beautiful woman. Her hair was as white as the sofa, and her blue eyes sparkled in a face that time had treated kindly.

She took a sip of her mimosa. “I’ve been thinking so much about Lisa and your family ever since your call.” She shook her head sadly. “What a terrible time that was,” she said. “I remember your parents so well. They tried to do everything right with your sister and look what happened. It was all very sad. How old were you when she passed?”

“Not quite two, so I don’t remember her at all, really,” I said. “I guess I’m talking to people who knew her to try to understand her better.” What I was really doing, I thought, was trying to find out if Lisa was dead or alive.

“Oh, we all wanted to understand her better,” she said. “To this day, when I think about her, I shake my head. It’s hard to believe what she did and … how it all turned out.” She smiled sadly at me, holding her glass on her thigh. “How can I help?” she asked. “What would you like to know?”

“Just anything you can tell me,” I said, hoping she was one of those people who liked to talk. “You probably know my family moved from northern Virginia right after Lisa took her life,” I said, and she nodded.

“They disappeared,” Caterina said. “No one seemed to know where they went.”

“They moved to North Carolina,” I said, “and they hid the fact that she’d killed her teacher—Mr. Davis—from my brother and me. We only found out recently when I came across some old newspaper articles.”

Caterina’s mimosa froze in the air halfway to her lips. “Oh, my,” she said after a moment. “No wonder you’re curious. You need to fill in a lifetime of blanks, don’t you?”

I nodded. “Exactly.”

“Well.” She leaned forward to set her drink on her glass-topped coffee table. “I only started working with Lisa when she returned from studying with that ‘mystery teacher,’ and—”

“Mystery teacher?”

She hesitated. “You wouldn’t know, I guess. Were you even born then? That’s what started everything spinning in the wrong direction, in my opinion.” She put her feet flat on the floor so that she could lean toward me. “First of all,” she said, “I want you to understand that I adored your parents. You had lovely parents. Your mother in particular was a very sweet woman, and I don’t blame either of them for anything that happened. But Lisa did very well with Steve. For heaven’s sake, look at the level he took her to!” She raised her hands in the air. “I first heard about her when she was only eight years old. ‘You must hear this girl!’ people would say. The young stars in the violin world were Asian at that time, so Lisa stood out, especially with that white hair of hers.” She reached for her glass and took a sip of the mimosa. “Steve was extremely proud of her, as well he should have been.” She sat up straight and looked out toward the sea, then gave a little shake of her head as if clearing away a sad memory. “He did have a possessive streak, I guess you could call it. In Lisa’s case, I didn’t blame him. To put years into a student and then to have that student go to some unknown teacher?” She shook her head with a look of disdain. “We all thought your parents had lost their minds.”

“Why did they switch?” I asked.

“Who knows!” She set down her drink. “Your parents kept it very quiet because they knew they were going to get a lot of criticism. I think they worried Steve would interfere, and he probably would have. I’m sure he did all he could to find out who it was, but I don’t know that he ever did.”

“Wouldn’t he—and you—have known all the violin teachers in the area?”

“Oh, see, that’s the thing.” She’d been about to pick up her glass again, but stopped. “It wasn’t someone in the area,” she said. “She went away to study for the entire school year with this person—or perhaps it was a conservatory—who knows? We never found out. At any rate, whoever it was utterly ruined her.”

My brain felt like a pinball, spinning in one direction then another. I remembered Sondra Davis mentioning some other teachers in her blog. “What do you mean, ‘ruined her’?” I asked.

“Her playing deteriorated terribly that year,” Caterina said. “It was quite tragic, really. That’s when your parents asked if I’d take her on. I was so shocked. I said I’d assumed she’d go back to Steve, and your mother said Lisa felt she’d outgrown him, but I think she was embarrassed to go back to him when she was playing so poorly.” She lifted her glass from the coffee table and took a long swallow. “I knew Steve would be furious with me if I took her on—he could be so petulant!—but I was drawn to the opportunity to work with a talent like your sister. How could I refuse? So I didn’t.” She smiled. “But then she came to my home and I heard her play. I nearly wept. It was hideous! Plus she’d lost her confidence.” Caterina set down her glass again. “I asked her to explain the other teacher’s approach, but she couldn’t. I’m sure that … charlatan … came to your parents and said, ‘Here’s what Steve is doing wrong and here’s how I can help,’ and they thought, ‘Oh, Steven Davis, he teaches five-year-olds! It’s time to move Lisa to someone better.’” She rubbed her arms through the gauzy fabric of her sleeves. “Steve wouldn’t talk to me after I agreed to teach Lisa,” she said. “He never spoke to me again. Neither would Sondra, his wife, and we’d been friends for many years.”