The Silent Sister(61)

“Wow,” I said. “He really was … petulant.” I repeated her word. It seemed to fit.

“Indeed,” she said. “Sondra was not a very happy woman, even before Steve’s death. They struggled to have children. Very frustrating for her, I know. I don’t think she’s ever moved on. It’s sad, after so many years, to still be living in the past that way.”

“That is sad,” I said.

“Well, anyway, to Lisa’s credit, she knew she had lost ground and she worked hard. We slowly turned around the mess the other teacher had made of her playing, and her joy started coming back.” She lifted her glass and drained it. My own drink was nearly untouched. “By the time she was ready to apply to schools, she had an excellent chance at Juilliard,” Caterina said. “I was certain she’d get in because she’d gotten her confidence back.” She turned away, eyes suddenly glistening. “I’ll never understand it, what happened. Why Steve was so cruel. There’s no other word for it. You know he interfered with her application to Juilliard?”

I nodded.

“He was an idiot. And I made the mistake of telling her, so I’ve always blamed myself.”

So that’s how Lisa found out about the letter Steven sent to Juilliard. “What happened wasn’t your fault,” I said.

“Well, I still wish I could undo it. She was more fragile than I ever guessed, and your father was foolish enough to keep a gun where she could get it.” She teared up again. “Just … terrible.” She stared out the window at the sea, and for a while, neither of us spoke. She suddenly stood up. “When I knew you were coming, I asked my assistant to find a video I have of her practicing for an audition. I had all the old tapes transferred to DVDs. What a task! Would you like to see it?”

“Yes,” I said, although I remembered how hard it had been to watch the tapes I’d found, and that had been in the privacy of my own living room.

Caterina walked over to the television, picked up a remote, and then sat down next to me so we were both facing the TV. She turned it on and my sister appeared on the screen playing a vibrant violin solo that sent her fingers and the bow flying over the strings. This video was crisper than either of the ones I had and Lisa’s face was full of emotion as she played.

“There’s that pendant,” Caterina said.

“Pendant?”

Lisa finished her piece, lowering the violin from beneath her chin, and I saw what Caterina was talking about. Lisa wore a white disc on a chain around her throat. I remembered seeing it in the photograph of her standing back-to-back with Matty. The pendant appeared to have a design engraved on it, but I couldn’t make it out.

“She always wore it,” Caterina said. “She said the teacher she’d stayed with that year had given it to her.” She looked at me. “Now tell me that isn’t strange,” she said. “The teacher who ruined her playing—and Lisa freely admitted that was the case—gave her this pendant and she never took it off, at least not when I saw her.”

On the TV screen, Lisa lifted the violin to her chin again and played something slow and bittersweet this time, and we watched for a while in silence. Except for the opportunity to see my sister play one more time, I felt disappointed in this visit. What had I expected? That Caterina might have secret knowledge about Lisa’s whereabouts? That she might have hidden her in her basement after her faked suicide? But now, I was out of questions and Caterina was out of answers, so we sat and listened to the music of the girl she thought was dead and I wanted to be alive—and I wondered about that mystery teacher who’d given her the pendant she’d cherished. Could he or she have the answers I needed? Or was I looking for answers that didn’t exist?





MARCH 1994

29.

Jade

“Are you Jade?” the woman asked.

Jade sat on a chair in the hallway of the music building, her violin in its case. She’d gotten there early, excited and nervous for the audition that would let her change her major from education to music education. She’d become a realist about how far she could take her playing this last year. She knew she couldn’t be a soloist again, and she had to let go of the Carnegie Hall fantasy she’d had all her life. She wouldn’t even dare to play in a symphony orchestra. But she could teach music. She’d thought about it a lot. She could help kids live the dream she’d lost.

She’d watched the other students waiting for their auditions as they sat in the hallway. Most of them looked like high school seniors and they appeared so nervous she felt sorry for them. She was every bit as jittery, but for a different reason. They worried they wouldn’t be good enough to get in. She worried about finding the balance between being good enough to get in, but not so good that she’d draw attention to herself. And she was good. In the year since she’d bought her violin, she’d played for hours every night. She missed Caterina Thoreau’s guidance more than she could say, but she taught herself—she drove herself—well. She bought reams of sheet music. She played all night long, sometimes, shutting her cottage windows no matter how hot it was outside, or she played in the practice rooms at school, even though she had to be sneaky about it, since she wasn’t yet a student in the school of music. With any luck, soon she would be.

The violin had amazing sound for a relatively inexpensive instrument. It had opened up under Cara’s playing, and it could be bright when the music demanded it as well as warm and mellow when that was what she wanted. It wasn’t Violet—no violin could compare to Violet—but it was by far Jade’s most treasured possession.