The Silent Sister (14 page)

Around eleven, Suzanne e-mailed to tell me that Tom Kyle and I needed to sign a document, transferring the pipe collection to him. She'd reached him by phone, she said, and he was coming in the next morning. Could I come at the same time?

I had no desire to see Tom Kyle, although I wouldn't have minded talking to Verniece again. But I e-mailed Suzanne that I'd be there.

The appraisers, both men, arrived together as I was getting back to the shredder. Jeannie greeted them, introduced me, and then sent one of them upstairs to work with the lighters and compasses. The other man, a Santa Claus look-alike right down to the snowy white beard and round belly, pulled a chair in front of the pipe collection. “Nice stuff,” he said to me as I refocused on the paperwork, but other than that he was a man of few words. I was glad he said nothing about the missing glass doors.

I was making egg salad in the kitchen a while later when Jeannie walked into the room.

She leaned against the counter. “Maybe you shouldn't sell Lisa's violin,” she said.

I spooned mayonnaise into the bowl. “What would I do with it?”

“You never know.” She shrugged. “You might have a talented child one day who wants to play the violin. Who knows? Maybe even Danny will have children one day. Even if the two of you aren't musical, you've got MacPherson blood in you. Maybe you'll pass that talent on to the next generation and it would be lovely for your son or daughter to have a MacPherson violin.”

I thought she was trying to reassure me that I wasn't adopted and I appreciated the effort. “I guess I don't need to make a decision about the violin right now,” I said.

“The appraiser upstairs says he's not an expert in stringed instruments, but he took a look at it and thinks it's quite valuable, so you might want to store it someplace safer than the house.”

I nodded, stirring the egg salad in the bowl. One more thing to look into.

I felt her gaze on me. “Are you okay?” she asked.

I dropped my hands to my sides. “No, to be honest. How could I be okay?” I spoke quietly, aware of the appraiser in the living room. “My awesomely talented sister's a murderer. My family may not be my family. My brother's not doing great. And I miss my father.” My voice broke, and Jeannie stepped next to me, her arm around my shoulders.

“I wish you'd never found that box of articles,” she said. “It's my fault. I—”

“It's not your fault, Jeannie.” I hunched my shoulders involuntarily, getting rid of her arm. “I had the right to know the truth and I'm glad I know it. It explains a lot.”

“Your family was …
is
your family. Your blood family. That adoption nonsense is just that: nonsense. I am absolutely certain of that. I don't know who Verniece Kyle thinks she is, planting seeds of doubt in your mind. Can you put that worry to rest? Please.”

The doorbell rang before I could respond. “Someone's here!” the pipe appraiser called from the living room.

“Oh! The piano movers!” Jeannie said.

“Today?” I didn't even know she'd contacted the movers, and I suddenly felt like running into the living room to block their path. I couldn't face more people in the house.

“Don't worry,” she said, heading for the living room. “I'll take care of it. You don't have to do a thing!”

*   *   *

I stayed in the kitchen eating my egg salad sandwich while the movers hammered and grunted and yelled at one another in the living room. I didn't even peek into the room to see how they would take apart the baby grand. Instead, I sat at the small kitchen table, checking my friends' comments on Facebook. Bryan and I had unfriended each other, but I still went to his page to look at his profile picture every few days, staring at his smile and wondering if I'd made a mistake. He hadn't changed his picture in the two years that I'd known him. He stood against a pink sunset with his son and daughter, who had been three and four at the time the photograph had been taken and who were climbing up his body like little monkeys. The picture still made me laugh. I missed those kids almost as much as I missed him. Looking at the picture, though, I felt glad of my decision. That was where he belonged. With his kids, and whether he knew it or not, with his wife.

The silence from the living room was sudden, and I could hear voices out on the front porch. I waited until they'd subsided, then walked into the living room, past the Santa Claus look-alike who was still working with the pipes. From the middle of the room, I stared at the enormous empty place where the piano had stood for as long as I could remember, and the breath went out of my body. I pressed my hand to my chest. I was only twenty-five, but I thought this month might kill me. If I was having this much trouble saying good-bye to a piano I couldn't even play, how would I ever say good-bye to the house I loved?

I dropped onto the couch as Christine trotted down the stairs carrying her iPad. “Whoa, look at that!” she said. “No piano! Mom went with the movers, I guess?”

I nodded. “I think so.”

“The appraiser guy is almost done up there,” she said. “He's loving those compasses!” She turned to the man at the pipes. “How's it going?”

He shut his computer. “Just about done,” he said, running his hand over his beard. “I have a few things I need to check at the office, but ballpark figure is seventeen thousand.”

“Wow!” I said, sitting up straighter on the couch. I'd had no idea the pipes were that valuable. Maybe that would take some of the grouch out of Tom Kyle.

The appraiser slipped his computer into a briefcase and headed for the door. “I'll get back to you with the exact figures and a certificate in a few days.” He spoke to Christine rather than me and I didn't bother getting up as she ushered him out of the house. Once back in the living room, she sat down at my father's rolltop desk, sideways on the chair so she was facing me, her iPad resting on her thighs. “How's the shredding going?” she asked.

“Slowly,” I said. “I'm afraid of tossing something that turns out to be important.”

“Oh, you don't have to be supercareful,” she said. “I'm sure most of it is tossable.” She smoothed her bangs across her temple and I saw the damp skin of her forehead. The attic had to be unbearably hot to work in and I suddenly felt sympathy toward her.

“Must be challenging, going through someone else's stuff,” I said. “I feel like I've left you a mess, but Jeannie said not to throw anything away except the old paperwork.”

“She was absolutely right,” Christine said, “and I love going through someone else's stuff, so don't worry about the mess.” She touched the screen of the iPad. “Mom and I will be in again tomorrow, if that's okay with you. I know you want to get this thing rolling.”

“The sooner the better,” I said.

“A few items I need to go over with you.” She tapped the screen again. “The computer on the desk in the office upstairs. Does that go?”

I nodded. “It was my father's. I guess I should clean the hard drive first.”

“Exactly. We can do that for you, but you might want to be sure there's nothing you need on there before you let us have it.”

“All right.”

“I found keys lying here and there around the house and I put them in a plastic bag and left them on the shelf in that office,” she said. “You should go through them to see if you need to keep any of them. And you should be putting things you want to hold on to in that office, too. Mom knows that room is off-limits, except for the lighters and compasses and instruments, of course.”

“And my bedroom,” I said. “Make that off-limits, too.”

“Of course,” she said. “What about your brother's old room? There's nothing in there, really, but would he want to—”

“He won't care,” I said.

“If we find anything that looks like a personal item or a family heirloom, we'll put it in the office, too,” Christine said. “How's that?”

“All right,” I agreed. “I want to keep that one violin, at least for the moment.”

“Lisa's,” she said. “The one with the violet on the tag?”

“Yes.” I looked up at her. Tipped my head. “Did you know about … what she did?” I asked.

For the first time, I saw a shadow pass over her features. “I was living abroad when it happened and not in much contact with Mom at the time, so I only heard about it later when I got home,” she said. “That was after your family moved down here. I was shocked. I knew Mom felt terrible. She really liked Lisa and wished she could have talked to her. Helped her somehow.”

“It sounds like Lisa was beyond help,” I said.

“Yeah. That happens.” Her bangs had flopped over her forehead again, and she looked at me from beneath them. “Mom told me you didn't know and you found some articles about it. That must have been a shock.”

“It was,” I said. “It still is.”

“Well,” she said, getting to her feet again. “Hopefully that'll be the last shock you have as we clean out the house.”

 

16.

“You look like shit,” Tom Kyle said as he sat down across from me in the waiting room at Suzanne Compton's office the following morning. I'd run to the attorney's office from home and knew my face glistened with perspiration under my visor. It was the first time I'd seen Tom out of his T-shirt and camo pants. He'd shaved, combed his sparse gray hair, put on khakis and a blue short-sleeved dress shirt. But the clothes hadn't seemed to change his ornery disposition, and I wished my father had left him absolutely nothing. I thought of him cheating on Verniece, maybe even putting some high-level government work at risk when he did so. What my father had liked enough about this man to help him cover up his affair was beyond me.

I wanted to say something snotty to him in response to his crack about the way I looked, but I needed more information from him and didn't think that was the way to go about getting it. If he knew why Verniece was stuck on me being adopted, I wanted to know, and if he knew why my father gave him those checks every month—and left him the pipe collection—I wanted to know that, too. I decided to play on his sympathy, hoping that beneath that rough exterior, he actually had some.

“I know,” I said, aiming for a self-deprecating smile. “My life is kind of a mess right now.”

He studied me from beneath his bushy gray eyebrows. “Your father left you a lot to deal with,” he said.

I nodded. “And I just feel really alone.” I rubbed my palms on my damp thighs. “It's overwhelming.”

I thought I saw sympathy in his face, but it was quickly replaced by his usual scowl.

“That brother of yours is more a hindrance than a help, I take it,” he said.

“Well, he has his own problems to deal with.”

Tom glanced at the reception desk. Suzanne's secretary wasn't at her desk, and although we were alone in the waiting room, he still lowered his voice. “You ever think he's a suicide risk, like your sister?” he asked. “We hear gunshots coming from down there sometimes and Verniece gets worried. She wants to go check on him, but I say it's best we leave him alone.”

That sounded like Verniece, worrying about other people. “My sister's situation was totally different,” I said. “Danny won't hurt himself … or anyone else, either, so Verniece doesn't need to be concerned. He's just hunting out there.” I wondered if Tom knew the real reason Lisa had killed herself. Probably. Steven Davis's murder had been such a big deal in the news back then. I thought Danny and I had been the only people kept in the dark about what really happened.

“Well,” Tom said, “let me know if we can do anything else to help with the RV park.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “It's our home, you know,” he said. “We've lived there more than twenty years and I'm not sure where we'll go once you sell it.”

He stared at me so intently that I had to turn away. There was something other than kindness in his offer of help, but I wasn't sure what it was.

“Hello, Riley.” Suzanne walked into the waiting room, hand outstretched toward me. “And you must be Mr. Kyle.”

We both shook her hand, then followed her into her office where we sat nearly side by side across the desk from her.

“Riley,” she said, scrutinizing me from her side of the desk, “are you all right?”

“I'm fine.” I must have looked even worse than I'd imagined. I wanted to get back to the house. Christine and Jeannie were again culling through my family's possessions, and it felt strange to leave them there alone. Christine's rough edges were beginning to chafe me. She was impatient and not exactly a diplomat when assessing my family's old possessions.

“Okay,” Suzanne said, getting down to business. “I've drawn up this document transferring ownership of the pipe collection to you, Mr. Kyle. Have you had it appraised yet, Riley?”

I nodded. “The appraiser thinks it's worth about seventeen thousand.” I watched Tom's face, but it was impossible to read. I'd just told him he was seventeen thousand dollars richer and he seemed unmoved. “How do we do it?” I asked. “I mean, do I deliver the pipes to him, or—”

“I think it's best if Mr. Kyle comes over and packs them up and takes them away. They're his now.”

We talked with Suzanne awhile longer, signed a couple of documents, and then walked quietly out of her office together. Once outside, I saw his old Ford in the driveway.

“Don't take everything so hard, Riley,” he said as he walked away from me toward his car.

I didn't know what to say to that, so I kept my mouth shut and kept walking. He was backing out of the driveway by the time I reached the sidewalk, and he suddenly called to me through his open car window.

“Riley?”

I looked over at him. “Yes?”