The Silent Sister(92)

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but I was afraid. I didn’t know who to trust.”

Jeannie sank onto my couch as though her legs had turned to liquid. “I just can’t believe it,” she said. “Your poor parents! Your poor father! All these years, he grieved and—”

“He knew,” I said. “He helped her.”

She stared at me and I saw the hurt work its way into her face. I knew how she felt. We’d both been duped. “How do you know?” she asked finally. “How was he involved?”

I started at the beginning, holding nothing back as I told her how my father and Tom Kyle had helped Lisa escape. How she’d changed her name to Jade and lived in San Diego and met Celia. I told her what I’d learned about her current life from Celia’s e-mails and about their two children.

“This is…” She kept shaking her head. “It’s just so crazy.”

I sat next to her with my laptop and pulled up the Jasha Trace Web site. When the photograph of the band appeared on the screen, Jeannie gently touched the pendant at Lisa’s throat.

“Unbelievable.” She shook her head. “Just … extraordinary.”

“Check this out, Jeannie,” I said, clicking on the link to their tour schedule. I handed the computer to her, resting it on her lap. “They’re coming to New Bern Saturday night.”

Her eyes were huge blue marbles in the light from the computer screen. She looked at the schedule, then at me. “Why would they do that?” she asked. “Isn’t it risky?”

“I’m sure they planned it so they could see Daddy,” I said. “Lisa may not know he’s dead.” I went to the Google Web site, holding my laptop so she could see all the links that popped up for Jasha Trace. “I guess they’re well-known in bluegrass circles.”

“Wow.” Jeannie looked at the list of links. She pointed to one of them.

“What’s this page?” she asked.

“That’s a site where you can share photographs, I think,” I said, clicking on the link.

A page of tiny images popped up, and when I clicked on the first photo, I knew right away where the pictures had been taken: Lisa and Celia’s December wedding.

“Oh, my,” Jeannie said as we scrolled through the pictures. “I can’t get over the fact that she’s gay. I guess Matty was just an aberration. She looks so happy, doesn’t she?”

She did. I wanted to be glad for Lisa as I scrolled through the pictures of her dancing with Celia, laughing with friends, hugging her son and daughter, but with every new photograph, I fought the gut-roiling sense of being forgotten.

“Oh, my God!” Jeannie said suddenly as a new image appeared on the screen. “Look!”

I saw what she was referring to even before she pointed to the top right-hand corner of the photograph: my father, sitting at a table, chatting with an elderly woman.

“He was there?” I sounded as though I was asking a question, although there was no doubt about it. Daddy had been at the wedding.

Jeannie scrolled through more images, leaning hungrily over my computer. My father was in a few of the photographs, usually off to the side talking with someone. In one picture, though, he laughed with Lisa. In another, he danced with a woman I was sure was Celia’s mother, and in yet another, he was on the keyboard with the band, a wide grin on his face. I shook my head in hurt wonder over my father’s secret life.

“When did you say they got married?” Jeannie asked.

“December twenty-ninth.” I’d spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s with Bryan at his parents’ house in New Jersey, worrying the whole time that I’d deserted Danny and my father over the holidays. I usually divided my time in New Bern between the two of them, but I knew Danny didn’t really care about Christmas and Daddy had encouraged me to go with Bryan. I’d still felt guilty and called every day. Sometimes my father didn’t answer his phone and I pictured him napping to ward off depression over being alone for the holidays. Instead, he’d been in Seattle, dancing, chatting, and jamming with the band at his daughter’s wedding.

“I suggested to him that we get away that week.” Jeannie sounded equally stunned. “But he said he had a funeral to go to in Seattle. One of his close collector friends.”

“He lied to you,” I said. “There was no funeral.” I was surprised by the anger I felt. It was one thing to protect Lisa by keeping me in the dark about what had actually happened to her. It was another thing entirely to be an active part of her family while leaving me behind.

Jeannie suddenly stood up, raising her arms in the air in a gesture of frustration.

“Why didn’t he ever tell me, for heaven’s sake?” she asked. “He knew he could trust me!”

I understood her pain completely. “I feel like”—I hunted for the words—“like Lisa and Daddy did everything they could to keep her existence—and their relationship—a secret from me.” My voice locked up, and Jeannie looked down at me.

“I can’t imagine what this is like for you,” she said. “I feel so … betrayed myself. It’s got to be a thousand times worse for you.”

It was a million times worse, and I felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin. I set the laptop on the coffee table and stood up, needing to move. Needing to do something to erase the image of Daddy and Lisa laughing together, three thousand miles away from me. “I know this is irrational,” I said, “but I feel almost as though they were laughing at me in those pictures.”