The Silent Sister (2 page)

Walking into the dining room, I was struck by how neat and orderly it appeared to be compared to the rest of the house. My father had no need for that room and I was sure he rarely set foot in it. The dining room had been my mother's territory. The wide curio cabinet was full of china and vases and cut-glass bowls that had been handed down through her family for generations. Things she'd treasured that I was going to have to figure out how to get rid of. I ran my fingers over the dusty sideboard. Everywhere I turned in the house, I'd be confronted by memories I would need to dismantle.

I carried my duffel bag upstairs, where a wide hallway opened to four rooms. The first was my father's bedroom with its quilt-covered queen-sized bed. The second room had been Danny's, and although he hadn't slept in our house since leaving at eighteen—
escaping,
he would call it—it would always be “Danny's room” to me. The third room was mine, though in the years since I'd lived in the house, the room had developed an austere air about it. I'd cleaned out my personal possessions bit by bit after college. The memorabilia from my high school and college years—pictures of old boyfriends, yearbooks, CDs, that sort of thing—were in a box in the storage unit of my Durham apartment waiting for the day I got around to sorting through them.

I dropped my duffel bag on my bed, then walked into the fourth room—my father's office. Daddy's bulky old computer monitor rested on a small desk by the window, and glass-fronted curio cabinets filled with Zippo lighters and antique compasses lined two of the walls. My grandfather had been a collector, too, so Daddy'd inherited many of the items, then added to them by searching through Craigslist and eBay and flea markets. The collections had been his obsession. I knew the sliding glass doors to the cabinets were locked and hoped I'd be able to find where my father had squirreled away the keys.

Propped against the fourth wall of the room were five violin cases. Daddy hadn't played, but he'd collected stringed instruments for as long as I could remember. One of the cases had an ID tag hanging from the handle, and I knelt next to it, lifting the tag in my hand. It had been a long time since I'd looked at that tag, but I knew what was on it: a drawing of a violet on one side and on the other side, my sister's name—
Lisa MacPherson
—and our old Alexandria, Virginia, address. Lisa had never lived in this house.

*   *   *

My mother died shortly after I graduated from high school, so although I would never stop missing her, I was used to her being gone. It was strange to be in the house without Daddy, though. As I put my clothes in my dresser, I kept expecting him to walk into the room and I had trouble accepting the fact that it was impossible. I missed our weekly phone calls and knowing he was only a few hours away. He'd been so easy to talk to and I'd always felt his unconditional love. It was a terrible feeling to know that there wasn't a soul in the world now who loved me that deeply.

He'd been a quiet man. Maybe one of the quietest people to ever walk the earth. He questioned rather than told. He'd ask me all about my own life, but rarely shared anything about his own. As a middle school counselor, I was the one always asking the questions and I'd enjoyed being asked for a change, knowing that the man doing the asking cared deeply about my answers. He was a loner, though. He'd died on the floor of the Food Lion after a massive heart attack. He'd been alone and that bothered me more than anything.

Bryan had suggested I have a memorial service for him, but I wouldn't have known who to invite. If he had any friends, I didn't know about them. Unlike most people in New Bern, my father hadn't belonged to a church or any community organization, and I was certain my brother wouldn't show up at a service for him. His relationship with our father had been very different from mine. I hadn't even been able to
find
Danny when I got to New Bern after Daddy's death. His cop friend Harry Washington told me he'd gone to Danny's trailer to give him the news, and I guess Danny just took off. He'd left his car parked next to the trailer, and Bryan and I hiked through the forest looking for him, but Danny knew those woods better than anyone. He had his hiding places. Now, though, he had no idea I was in town, so this time I'd surprise him. I'd plead with him to help me with the house. I knew better than to hope he'd say yes.

 

2.

Danny had no phone, so there was no way to reach him other than to drive out to his trailer. He lived deep in the woods on the outskirts of my father's RV park about ten miles from New Bern. As I turned onto the long narrow driveway leading into Mac's RV Park, the woods hugged my car so tightly I wondered how motor homes ever made it down the road. I reached the lane that ran parallel to the creek. The park was down the gravel lane to the right, but I turned left onto a rutted dirt road that would take me to Danny's trailer. I slowed way down, my teeth clacking against each other as my car bounced over the choppy peaks and valleys of the packed earth.

I came to the turnoff that led into the woods and made another left. The road here was barely more than a hiking trail. Someone would have to be looking for it to see it, and that was the way Danny liked it. Branches slapped against my windshield as I drove over rocks and tree roots. The few hundred feet to get to Danny's trailer always felt like an eternity on this road.

I finally spotted a glint of metal through the trees and I steeled myself for what lay ahead. Which Danny would I meet today? The affectionate big brother whose smile masked his sadness, or the angry, bitter man who could scare me with his fury? Either way, I hated that I was a counselor but I couldn't seem to help my own brother.

Driving forward again, I turned into the clearing. The trees formed an emerald-green cavern around the pine-needle-covered earth, and between Danny's small, ancient Airstream, his old Subaru, and the hammock strung beneath two of the towering longleaf pines, there was barely enough room for me to park. I'd brought him a couple of bags of groceries and I looped them over my wrist as I got out of the car and walked toward the trailer.

Danny opened the door as I got closer.

“Hey, Danny.” I smiled brightly.

“Hey,” he said. “I wondered when you'd show up.” His expression was flat and hard to read, but there was a spark in his eyes that comforted me. He'd always been a good-looking guy and he still was, his messy collar-length hair a darker blond than it had been when we were kids and his pale blue eyes vivid against his tanned skin. He was too thin, his face all sharp angles and flat planes. I was glad, though, to see that his short beard was neatly trimmed. During the worst times, he let it grow long and scraggly. I'd come to see his beard as an indicator of how he was doing.

“I stopped by right after Daddy died,” I said, “but I couldn't find you.”

“And that surprised you?”

Okay,
I thought.
The angry Danny today.

I held up the bags. “I brought you some food and cigarettes.” I'd bought some fruit for him—peaches and a melon and a pint of strawberries—but one whole bag was filled with the boxed macaroni and cheese he loved along with the Marlboros. I long ago gave up trying to make my brother into a healthy eater. Making him happy was more important to me. I'd stopped short at buying him booze. I was sure he had plenty of that already.

I reached up to hand him the bags and he took them from me, stepping back to let me in. As always, I yearned to reach out and hug him as I climbed into the trailer, but sometime over the years, our hugging had stopped. He was four years older than me, and until I was ten or eleven, I would have called him my best friend. That's when adolescence seemed to take hold of him and refused to let go.

“We need to talk,” I said.

“Do we have to?” he asked in a way that told me he knew perfectly well we had plenty to talk about.

“Yes, we have to.” It had been months since I'd been in his trailer and I'd forgotten how it listed to one side, giving me vertigo as I walked into the tiny space. His narrow bed was at one end, the built-in table and benches at the other, and they were no more than five steps apart. I knew he liked the confined space. He once told me he felt safe, contained that way. He was not a complete hermit, though. More than once, I'd come to the trailer to find signs that a woman had been there—lipstick on a coffee cup or a romance novel on the counter. You couldn't look like my brother without turning heads. My girlfriends used to drool over him when we were teenagers. I liked knowing he occasionally had company out here.

The window air conditioner cranked out a weak flow of cool air as I began putting away the groceries. I'd never really understood how he had power out here at all, but he'd somehow managed to rig up a generator that kept him cool enough in the summer and warm enough in the winter. The generator also kept his computer running. The laptop on the table was the one truly out-of-place item in the old trailer, which otherwise looked like it came straight out of the fifties. Danny had always been a technology geek. He was glued to that laptop by the fingertips, and I was glad, actually. He kept in touch with some of the guys he'd served with through e-mail, and I thought he needed that camaraderie. I only wished he'd keep in touch with
me
as well as he did with them. Sometimes I felt as though my e-mails to him went into a vacuum.

I put the milk in his refrigerator while he leaned against the counter, watching me.

“Bryan with you?” he asked.

“We broke up.” I shut the refrigerator door. “It was my doing,” I added.

“I thought you said he was ‘the one.'”

I was surprised he remembered me saying that. “Well, I thought he was,” I said. “But he's been separated from his wife for three years and he still wasn't doing anything about a divorce and I got tired of waiting.” I was certain Bryan loved me, but as a couple, we were going nowhere. He had two great kids and I knew he still cared about his wife. I had the feeling I was in the way. “The writing was on the wall,” I said. “It just took me a long time to see it.”

“Good for you.” Danny sounded sincere.

“I thought you liked him.”

“I didn't like how he was stringing you along.” Folding his arms, he leaned back and took a good look at my face. “And you know what?” he asked. “You look great. Like you got rid of a burden that's been weighing you down.”

“Oh, right.” I laughed. How could I look great when I felt so miserable? I was touched, though. Under his surly and sometimes caustic exterior, my brother was still a sweetheart.

He pulled a box of cigarettes from the carton I'd bought him, opened it, and lit one. He held the box out to offer me one, as though I might have started smoking since I last saw him. I shook my head as I slid onto one of the bench seats at the table.

His shotgun was directly in my line of view, propped against the wall next to the counter. He hunted small game in the woods and, as far as I knew, the shotgun was his only weapon. I hoped that was the case. Harry Washington told me that everyone in the police department saw Danny as a “loose cannon.” Harry had served with Danny in Iraq and I knew he kept a protective eye on him. He'd e-mailed me a few weeks ago to tell me Danny'd been permanently banned from his favorite sports bar for getting in a fight with the bartender. He now hung out at Slick Alley, Harry said, a run-down-looking pool hall that gave me the creeps every time I drove past it.

My gaze lit on that shotgun again. I'd seen my brother's sudden bursts of anger firsthand, but I wasn't nearly as afraid of him using his gun against another person as I was of him using it against himself. Although the shattered leg he'd suffered in Iraq had taken a toll, his psychological injuries were far worse. To be fair, though, he hadn't been in the greatest shape before he went.

“How are you?” I looked up at him.

He took a drag of his cigarette, nodding. “Good,” he said through a stream of smoke. Sitting down across from me at the table, he moved his laptop aside and tapped an ash into a jar lid.

“Are you taking your meds?” I asked.

“Get off my back, little sister,” he said, and I knew he wasn't. He hated the cocktail of medications the VA psychiatrist had put him on.

“Never mind.” I folded my hands on the table as though I were about to start a meeting. “So,” I said, “I'm Daddy's executrix, as you probably know, and I'm in New Bern for a couple of weeks to take care of his … estate.” The word sounded silly attached to my father, and Danny made a derisive sound in the back of his throat. “You can have his car,” I said. “It's only a few years old and—”

“I don't want his fucking car.”

“All right.” I backed off again. I'd deal with that later. “What about the house?” I asked. “I think we should sell it, but maybe you could live there if you—”

“No, thanks.” He took a long slow drag on his cigarette, his eyes narrowed at me as though I'd insulted him by even suggesting he move into our childhood home. “You can decide whatever you want about the house and everything in it,” he said. “All I care about is that this piece of land right here”—he pointed to the floor of the trailer—“right where we're sitting, is mine forever.”

“We have to sell the park,” I said, “but I don't think this area is technically part of it.”

“It's not,” he said. “It's totally separate.”

“Okay. So I'll talk to the lawyer about making sure this land goes to you. Can you come with me to see her tomorrow?” I asked. “The lawyer? I'd like you to know what—”

“No,” he said.

I nodded, unsurprised and knowing it was probably for the best. He would complicate things. Either he'd be so anxious he'd be unable to sit still, or he'd get angry and slam out of the room. Danny was anything but predictable.