The Silent Sister(88)
“Her pendant.” Jeannie pointed to the photograph. “I gave it to her right after you were born,” she said. “I lied when I told you what the Chinese symbols meant. The symbol on the front actually meant ‘mother’ and the one on the back meant ‘daughter.’ She said she’d never take it off.”
* * *
When Jeannie left, I sat on the couch in the dark living room, staring into space. I was more numb than anything else. I had a living, breathing mother somewhere. Now I wanted to find her more than ever, but she didn’t want to be found.
Then, as I sat there in the dark, I began to think about the living, breathing man who was, in all likelihood, my father.
46.
I found him.
Despite his relatively common name, Matthew Harrison was easy to track down. Still sitting on the couch at one in the morning, computer on my lap, I discovered his professional Web site and dozens of photographs of him. He wore his hair almost exactly as he had as a teenager—in a thick mop of dark curls—and he was a good-looking man with a killer smile. He was forty, the same age Lisa would be now.
He lived in Baltimore and taught at the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University. l stared at his pictures for over an hour, searching for—and easily finding—myself in his features. He was married with twin daughters, his biography said. Were they my half sisters? Did I have family living in Baltimore? I searched for pictures of those twin daughters every way I could think of without success.
All that nearly sleepless night, I kept getting out of bed, turning on my computer, and staring at the man I thought was my father. I began to think of what I’d say to him when I spoke to him, because I planned to call him first thing in the morning. I absolutely had to. He’d been so close to Lisa. Did he know she was still alive? Could he know where she was?
* * *
At seven-thirty, I made coffee, my nerves jangling as I watched it brew. I carried a cup of it into the living room, sat down on the couch, and anxiously waited until nine before calling the conservatory.
“Oh, Mr. Harrison just left for Japan with a youth group,” the woman who answered the phone told me. My heart plummeted, and I felt momentarily confused, still picturing him as the kid in the photograph—a teenager traveling with a youth group—when he was more likely their teacher. “You can leave a message on his voice mail, though I don’t believe he’ll be checking it until he gets back in two weeks,” the woman said. “Would you like me to transfer you?”
“It’s urgent,” I said. After a night of planning this call, I didn’t see how I could put it off another minute, much less two weeks. “Is there a way to reach him now?”
“I’m afraid not,” she said. “I can give you his work e-mail address if you like.”
“All right,” I said. I jotted down the address she gave me, knowing I wouldn’t use it. This was not a conversation for e-mail. I was afraid of hitting send and never hearing back. I’d have to wait for his return.
* * *
That night, I lay in bed, my eyes squeezed shut, thinking of how my world had changed in the last couple of days. I wanted my old life back, the one where I knew exactly who I was, but that life was gone.
I gave up on sleep and turned on my night table lamp. Next to the lamp was the novel I’d barely touched since leaving Durham and, next to that, a day-old copy of the New Bern newspaper, the Sun Journal. Craving distraction, I picked up the paper and began leafing through it. At the bottom of one of the pages, I spotted an ad for an upcoming concert in Union Point Park—the same ad I’d found taped to the wall of my father’s RV, with the same photograph from that postcard addressed to Fred Marcus. Jasha Trace. Two men and two women stood on a narrow path that stretched forever through a field. Each carried an instrument: a banjo, a guitar, a mandolin, a violin. And the violinist wore an oval-shaped white pendant.
I sat up quickly, sucking in my breath. Leaning my elbow on the night table, I held the grainy photo under the light. I should never have thrown that postcard away. What had been handwritten on it? Suddenly I remembered what Tom had said about the aliases used in the Witness Protection Program. We try to give them a name with the same initials, he’d said. Frank MacPherson. Fred Marcus. Owner of the PO box. Both of them, my father. Oh, my God. Daddy’d been in touch with Lisa! He knew this was her band.
I jumped out of bed and pulled on my shorts and T-shirt, cursing myself for giving the Kyles the key to my father’s RV. I remembered the bag of keys Christine had left for me in my father’s office. Racing into that room, I switched on the light and moved things around on the shelf until I found the small plastic bag. I shoved it in my pocket as I headed downstairs. In the kitchen pantry, I looked for the flashlights Daddy usually kept there. Christine must have moved them, no doubt sticking a price tag on them in the process. I would have to do without.
Outside, the air was still. Even the crickets and frogs were asleep. I got into my car and drove through the darkness to the RV park, pulling as quietly as I could onto the gravel lane, turning out my lights as I drove onto the cement pad next to my father’s RV. The park was quiet and dark, the trees blocking the moonlight. Turning on the overhead light in my car, I searched through the keys, trying to remember what the key for the RV had looked like. I found a couple of possible candidates and clutched them in my hand as I got out of the car.