The Silent Sister(93)
Jeannie walked over to me and put her arm around my shoulders. “No, honey, now you know that’s not true, don’t you?” she asked.
“I don’t know what’s true anymore,” I said.
“You sit.” She gave me a little shove toward the couch. “I smell coffee. I’m going to get us both a cup. Then we’ll be able to think more clearly, all right?”
I nodded, flopping onto the couch again. I tried to empty my mind while I listened to Jeannie rooting around in the kitchen, but the images of my father at the wedding were burned into my brain and I couldn’t get them out.
I spotted an e-mail notification on my laptop and clicked on it, surprised—and fearful—when I saw it was from Danny. I opened the mail.
Come over tonight. I have something to show you.
I stared at his message. This couldn’t be good. Danny was much more sophisticated than I was when it came to using the Internet. If he believed Lisa was alive, who knew what he’d been able to find?
Jeannie was back in the room and she nearly missed the coaster as she set my mug on the coffee table in front of me. “She was terrified of prison, Riley,” she said, lowering herself to the other end of the couch. “After the … you know, the shooting and everything, Deb would call me up, so worried. She’d say that Lisa couldn’t sleep and she cried all the time. She felt so guilty that she’d taken a life, and she was afraid of being in prison with … you know … hardened criminals. If your father offered her a way out, she must have jumped at the chance. It was foolish of him, but I guess he was desperate to protect her. We have to forgive them both.” She lifted her mug to her lips, but set it back on the table again without taking a sip. “Did Deb know, do you think?”
I held the warm mug between my palms. “I don’t think she knew until just before she died,” I said. “Lisa came here to see her.” I told her about the brief e-mail from Celia telling my father that Lisa had made her plane, and then I began to cry. “I feel so alone, Jeannie,” I said. “Totally alone. Dealing with all of Daddy’s stuff.” I waved my hand through the air of the living room. “And I feel responsible for Danny now. I worry about him all the time and I’m totally alone with that, too. Meanwhile, Lisa’s surrounded by a happy, healthy, smiley family. Children and a partner and all those friends and Celia’s family and I have no one!”
“Oh, sweetheart.” She moved closer to me, taking the mug from my hands and setting it on the table. “I wish you could remember Lisa from when you were little. She doted on you. She adored you.” She patted my hands where they rested limply on my lap. “You have to get in touch with her. You know that, right?”
I nodded. “I just don’t know the best … the safest way to do it. And Danny can’t know. He already thinks something’s up, but if he knows for sure she’s alive, he’ll tell the police and that will be the end of her.”
“He’d do that?”
“He really hates her. He blames her for everything that went wrong in our family.”
“You could e-mail her,” she said. “There’s that contact information on the Web site.”
“Who knows where that goes?” I said. “I have to be really careful. That e-mail probably goes to their band manager or something. I do have Celia’s e-mail address from Daddy’s computer, but I—”
“You need to tell Lisa you know she’s alive,” Jeannie said, “and that Frank passed away and that you’ll find a way to meet up with her when she comes to New Bern.”
I shook my head. “It can’t be done by e-mail,” I said. “If she doesn’t reply, I’d never know if she got my e-mail or if she just wanted nothing to do with me.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” she said quickly. “Somehow, you’ll have to talk to her in person at that concert, then. I want to be there, too,” she added. “I need to see her.”
“Let me do this alone, all right?” I asked. “It’s going to be hard enough with only myself to worry about.”
She sighed, nodding reluctantly. “All right,” she said. “I’ll settle for just being there in the crowd.” She broke into a wide smile. “I still can’t believe this! When you talk to her, please tell her I’m relieved she’s alive and well. That I’m glad she found the happiness she deserves and let her know that I love her.”
I envied Jeannie for being able to see past the deception to feelings of warmth and love. The image of Lisa laughing and dancing, as though she didn’t have a care in the world, would be with me for a long, long time. I didn’t know what I would say when I was finally face-to-face with her. I was so afraid of seeing her. Of scaring her. She might turn away. Turn me away. But I remembered Celia’s e-mail to my father, how she’d written that there would always be a place in Lisa’s heart for me. She’d written those words years ago, but I’d hold on tight to them. I needed them to be the truth.
49.
At seven o’clock that evening, I drove through the dusky forest to Danny’s clearing, determined to reveal nothing of what I’d learned. I wouldn’t let him trip me up. I was only worried about what this thing was he wanted to show me … and I figured that out the moment he opened his trailer door to let me in.