The Silent Sister(81)

* * *

I didn’t wake up until nine the next morning, and I lay in bed, stretching for a while, glad to have the house to myself. It was so quiet with nobody rummaging through the rooms. I planned to go through more of my father’s papers that morning, searching for something—anything—that might lead me to Lisa. But I suddenly had a different idea.

I got up and carried my laptop back to the bed with me. Surfing to one of the travel sites, I plugged in “New Bern to San Diego,” and a few minutes and seven hundred dollars later, I was booked on a flight for that evening.





42.



It was tourist season and all the hotels near the San Diego beaches were packed. So, after I arrived, I picked up my rental car and drove east through the darkness to reach a hotel in Mission Valley, where I’d been able to make a reservation. It was ten at night by the time I got there—one A.M. New Bern time—but I was wide awake. I sat in my room, staring at my phone, realizing I had no one to text that I had arrived safely. I’d left a phone message for Danny, telling him I was going out of town for a few days to see a friend, and now I felt sad and lonely. I missed Bryan. I missed Sherise. No one knew where I was and the one person I’d told I was going away, I’d lied to.

As usual, I couldn’t sleep. Why should a change of coasts make any difference in my insomnia? I was anxious to do what I’d come here to do. I surfed the Internet on my laptop in bed, trying to make myself tired. At two in the morning California time, I gave in, took a Benadryl, and finally drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Most of the shops in Ocean Beach seemed to be on the main road, Newport Avenue, and I managed to find a parking place a couple of blocks from the beach. I had a few pictures of Lisa with me in my tote bag and my plan was to go from shop to shop asking anyone over the age of thirty if my sister looked familiar to them. A long shot, but it seemed like the only shot I had.

I’d never been to California before and it felt like another world. The sun was unnaturally bright as I walked along the sidewalk, and the palm trees that lined the avenue looked like tall skinny pompoms. The sidewalk was packed with people of all ages. A lot of students, I thought. Young mothers with kids in tow. Aging hippies. There were all sorts of shops. Antiques. Surf shops. Jewelry. A Pilates studio. Had Lisa walked on this same street? I wanted that to be true. I knew decades had passed—and maybe Sondra was wrong and she’d never been in Ocean Beach at all—but I felt oddly close to her here.

After talking to people in fifteen stores, I took a break in a coffee shop, feeling discouraged. I’d quickly discovered this was a young town, full of people who were barely walking when Lisa would have lived there. In each store, I’d shown the framed picture of Lisa, Danny, and myself, telling whoever I spoke with that the girl in the photo was my sister who had run away when I was two. I’d selected that picture because she was close to the age she would have been when she’d worked in Ocean Beach … if she’d worked in Ocean Beach … and she wasn’t holding a violin. I’d worried that the violin might give her away as the famous prodigy she’d been, but I quickly realized that was a pointless concern. Twenty years was a very long time. None of the shopkeepers recognized my sister, and I began to wonder if I should be speaking to the straggly old hippies instead.

After my break, I resumed my hunt. I was about to skip the Pilates studio—had anyone even heard of Pilates twenty years ago?—but at that point I thought I had little to lose.

The ponytailed blond woman behind the counter in the dimly lit studio was no more than twenty-two, and she shook her head when I showed her the photograph. But an older woman, her gray hair in braids, stood next to me at the counter and she touched the edge of the carved frame with her fingertip.

“Oh, I remember her,” she said. “Only her hair was darker.”

I felt my heartbeat kick up, but I was afraid to get too excited. “That would fit,” I said. “I’m sure she dyed it. Where do you remember seeing her?”

The woman leaned her elbows on the counter to study the photograph. “She worked at this music store that used to be across the street.” She pointed through the window. “Grady’s. I went in there a lot. I wish it was still there. I’d rather support an indie shop than buy all my music online, you know? She had a funny name, I can’t remember what it was.” She looked at the receptionist. “What was it?” she asked, as though the young woman could possibly know.

“Got me.” The receptionist laughed.

My brain had perked up as soon as she said music store. That fit. It fit perfectly. The funny name did not.

“Her name was Ann Johnson,” I said.

“Really?” The woman looked at the picture again. “Maybe I’m wrong, then. I don’t remember her name, but I know it wasn’t Ann.”

“Well,” I asked, my hope fading a bit, “do you have any idea where she is now?”

“Oh, God, no. I haven’t seen that girl in”—she looked toward the ceiling, thinking—“I don’t know how long. You should try to find Grady,” she said. “The owner of the store.”

“Do you know where I can find him?” I asked.

“There’s a jewelry store a block up.” She pointed east. “On this side of the street. The jeweler Sal was good friends with him.”