The Silent Sister (24 page)

*   *   *

She'd gotten in the habit of using Ingrid's phone on those rare occasions she needed to make a call. It was cheaper, easier, and less disgusting than using a pay phone, but it came with the possibility of Ingrid overhearing the conversation. She could usually wait until Ingrid was working in the garden or taking cookies to the homeless on the beach. This afternoon, though, she was too impatient. She needed to call about that Jay Haide violin before it was snapped up by someone else, and it didn't matter if Ingrid was in the kitchen or not.

So Ingrid chopped vegetables to toss in a stockpot while Jade placed the call. The girl—her name was Cara—was a senior, and she told Jade that she was moving up to a nineteenth-century Amati. They made plans to meet in one of the practice rooms at San Diego State the following day. Jade had hoped Cara could meet that evening. She would have turned around and driven all the way back to school if Cara had been free, but she said she had classes and then a date with her boyfriend.

When Jade hung up the phone, Ingrid handed her a chunk of the celery she was chopping.

“A violin?” She looked amused, as though she thought Jade had lost her mind.

“I used to play when I was a kid,” Jade said, “and I kind of miss it.”

“Cool.” Ingrid scooped the celery pieces into the pot on the stove. “I can't wait to hear you play.”

Jade shrugged, as though buying the violin was no big deal. “Oh, well, it's been years,” she said.
Two years, nine months, and about fourteen days, to be exact.

“Well, good for you for pursuing a passion,” Ingrid said. “Stay for dinner? Turkey soup.”

Jade shook her head. “Thanks, no. I have homework.” Ingrid was really nice but Jade tried not to spend too much time with her. She no longer worried about being recognized, but she did worry about the police showing up at Ingrid's door one day, asking questions about her strange tenant.

She barely slept that night, she was so excited about the violin. The excitement, though, was tempered by thoughts of her father.
Never pick up a violin again, Lisa,
he'd warned her. He'd be furious if he knew, but she would be very careful. She'd play only in her cottage. She had no reason at all to play anywhere else.

*   *   *

Cara was twenty-one and extraordinarily beautiful. Total California girl, Jade thought. The kind she could picture surfing rather than cooped up in the music building at San Diego State. But Cara was a good violinist, and Jade sat mesmerized as she played the opening section of “Czardas” by Monti. She watched Cara's tanned and toned bare arms work the bow and her long fingers sail over the strings, and she was unsure whether she was more taken with the violin or the violinist.

Cara finished playing, then handed the instrument to Jade. Holding a violin beneath her chin for the first time in so long felt like holding a friend she'd thought she'd lost forever. She played some scales and arpeggios to hear the sound and warm up her tense, tight fingers. Then she played a bit of Vivaldi's Concerto in A Minor, and she didn't have to work hard at sounding like a novice. It had been so terribly, painfully long.

She gave Cara five one-hundred-dollar bills, then carried the violin across campus to her car, hugging the case tightly in her arms as if it were a baby.

*   *   *

San Diego was in the midst of the hot, dry Santa Ana winds of autumn, and even though her cottage felt like a sauna, Jade closed all the windows, stood in her living room, and played. Although her left hand and bow hand worked seamlessly together, her fingers felt weak from too much time away, and they moved sluggishly at first. Her control of the bow was imprecise, but none of that mattered. She cried with happiness and sorrow as she played. She'd lost so much. Her home. Her family. Her future. But in her hands she held the one thing with the power to bring her joy, and she played her new best friend until the early hours of the morning.

 

28.

Riley

I pulled into the circular drive of the oceanfront house in Myrtle Beach and sat there a moment, thinking through what I planned to say to Caterina Thoreau. Caterina—not Steven Davis—had been Lisa's violin teacher at the time she supposedly killed herself. I'd found her name in several of the newspaper articles my father had saved. She was the only person still alive who'd truly known my sister around the time of her death—if indeed she was dead. I felt a desperate need to talk to someone who had known her well and, I hoped, cared about her.

Caterina had been remarkably easy to find. Now seventy-six, she'd retired from the National Symphony ten years earlier and moved to South Carolina to be near her daughter. I found her phone number online and told her who I was and that I wanted to talk to her. After expressing her shock at hearing from me, she invited me to her home. I didn't let the fact that her home was nearly four hours from New Bern stop me. I would do whatever I needed to do to get answers about Lisa.

The bonus of driving to Myrtle Beach was getting away from the insanity in my house. When I'd first arrived in New Bern, I'd wanted to get the house cleaned out and on the market as soon as possible. Now I wanted to slow everything down, but with Christine and Jeannie on a rampage as they tore through the rooms, I wasn't sure I could make that happen. I'd told them I was visiting a friend in Virginia and would be home some time this evening. Christine opened her mouth and I was sure she was going to get on my case about my father's paperwork, but I left the house, shutting the door behind me, before she had a chance to say a word.

Caterina Thoreau had the front door open by the time I got out of my car. She was dressed in white capris and a frothy blue tunic that matched both the sky and the ocean I could see through the glass wall behind her. She reached her hand toward me with a smile.

“Lisa's sister!” she said, physically drawing me into her house with her hand in mine. “I'm so happy to meet you!”

“You, too,” I said.

She led me into a high-ceilinged living room and settled me on one of two white sofas while she poured us each a mimosa. Through the glass wall, the ocean seemed close enough to touch.

“What an awesome view,” I said.

She nodded, handing me my glass. “I'm very fortunate.” She sat down on the other couch, curling her bare feet beneath her. She was a beautiful woman. Her hair was as white as the sofa, and her blue eyes sparkled in a face that time had treated kindly.

She took a sip of her mimosa. “I've been thinking so much about Lisa and your family ever since your call.” She shook her head sadly. “What a terrible time that was,” she said. “I remember your parents so well. They tried to do everything right with your sister and look what happened. It was all very sad. How old were you when she passed?”

“Not quite two, so I don't remember her at all, really,” I said. “I guess I'm talking to people who knew her to try to understand her better.” What I was really doing, I thought, was trying to find out if Lisa was dead or alive.

“Oh, we all wanted to understand her better,” she said. “To this day, when I think about her, I shake my head. It's hard to believe what she did and … how it all turned out.” She smiled sadly at me, holding her glass on her thigh. “How can I help?” she asked. “What would you like to know?”

“Just anything you can tell me,” I said, hoping she was one of those people who liked to talk. “You probably know my family moved from northern Virginia right after Lisa took her life,” I said, and she nodded.

“They disappeared,” Caterina said. “No one seemed to know where they went.”

“They moved to North Carolina,” I said, “and they hid the fact that she'd killed her teacher—Mr. Davis—from my brother and me. We only found out recently when I came across some old newspaper articles.”

Caterina's mimosa froze in the air halfway to her lips. “Oh, my,” she said after a moment. “No wonder you're curious. You need to fill in a lifetime of blanks, don't you?”

I nodded. “Exactly.”

“Well.” She leaned forward to set her drink on her glass-topped coffee table. “I only started working with Lisa when she returned from studying with that ‘mystery teacher,' and—”

“Mystery teacher?”

She hesitated. “You wouldn't know, I guess. Were you even born then? That's what started everything spinning in the wrong direction, in my opinion.” She put her feet flat on the floor so that she could lean toward me. “First of all,” she said, “I want you to understand that I adored your parents. You had lovely parents. Your mother in particular was a very sweet woman, and I don't blame either of them for anything that happened. But Lisa did very well with Steve. For heaven's sake, look at the level he took her to!” She raised her hands in the air. “I first heard about her when she was only eight years old. ‘You
must
hear this girl!' people would say. The young stars in the violin world were Asian at that time, so Lisa stood out, especially with that white hair of hers.” She reached for her glass and took a sip of the mimosa. “Steve was extremely proud of her, as well he should have been.” She sat up straight and looked out toward the sea, then gave a little shake of her head as if clearing away a sad memory. “He did have a possessive streak, I guess you could call it. In Lisa's case, I didn't blame him. To put years into a student and then to have that student go to some unknown teacher?” She shook her head with a look of disdain. “We all thought your parents had lost their minds.”

“Why did they switch?” I asked.

“Who knows!” She set down her drink. “Your parents kept it very quiet because they knew they were going to get a lot of criticism. I think they worried Steve would interfere, and he probably would have. I'm sure he did all he could to find out who it was, but I don't know that he ever did.”

“Wouldn't he—and you—have known all the violin teachers in the area?”

“Oh, see, that's the thing.” She'd been about to pick up her glass again, but stopped. “It wasn't someone in the area,” she said. “She went
away
to study for the entire school year with this person—or perhaps it was a conservatory—who knows? We never found out. At any rate, whoever it was utterly ruined her.”

My brain felt like a pinball, spinning in one direction then another. I remembered Sondra Davis mentioning some other teachers in her blog. “What do you mean, ‘ruined her'?” I asked.

“Her playing deteriorated terribly that year,” Caterina said. “It was quite tragic, really. That's when your parents asked if I'd take her on. I was so shocked. I said I'd assumed she'd go back to Steve, and your mother said Lisa felt she'd outgrown him, but I think she was embarrassed to go back to him when she was playing so poorly.” She lifted her glass from the coffee table and took a long swallow. “I knew Steve would be furious with me if I took her on—he could be so petulant!—but I was drawn to the opportunity to work with a talent like your sister. How could I refuse? So I didn't.” She smiled. “But then she came to my home and I heard her play. I nearly wept. It was hideous! Plus she'd lost her confidence.” Caterina set down her glass again. “I asked her to explain the other teacher's approach, but she couldn't. I'm sure that …
charlatan
 … came to your parents and said, ‘Here's what Steve is doing wrong and here's how I can help,' and they thought, ‘Oh, Steven Davis, he teaches five-year-olds! It's time to move Lisa to someone better.'” She rubbed her arms through the gauzy fabric of her sleeves. “Steve wouldn't talk to me after I agreed to teach Lisa,” she said. “He never spoke to me again. Neither would Sondra, his wife, and we'd been friends for many years.”

“Wow,” I said. “He really was … petulant.” I repeated her word. It seemed to fit.

“Indeed,” she said. “Sondra was not a very happy woman, even before Steve's death. They struggled to have children. Very frustrating for her, I know. I don't think she's ever moved on. It's sad, after so many years, to still be living in the past that way.”

“That
is
sad,” I said.

“Well, anyway, to Lisa's credit, she knew she had lost ground and she worked hard. We slowly turned around the mess the other teacher had made of her playing, and her joy started coming back.” She lifted her glass and drained it. My own drink was nearly untouched. “By the time she was ready to apply to schools, she had an excellent chance at Juilliard,” Caterina said. “I was certain she'd get in because she'd gotten her confidence back.” She turned away, eyes suddenly glistening. “I'll never understand it, what happened. Why Steve was so cruel. There's no other word for it. You know he interfered with her application to Juilliard?”

I nodded.

“He was an idiot. And I made the mistake of telling her, so I've always blamed myself.”

So that's how Lisa found out about the letter Steven sent to Juilliard. “What happened wasn't your fault,” I said.

“Well, I still wish I could undo it. She was more fragile than I ever guessed, and your father was foolish enough to keep a gun where she could get it.” She teared up again. “Just … terrible.” She stared out the window at the sea, and for a while, neither of us spoke. She suddenly stood up. “When I knew you were coming, I asked my assistant to find a video I have of her practicing for an audition. I had all the old tapes transferred to DVDs. What a task! Would you like to see it?”

“Yes,” I said, although I remembered how hard it had been to watch the tapes I'd found, and that had been in the privacy of my own living room.

Caterina walked over to the television, picked up a remote, and then sat down next to me so we were both facing the TV. She turned it on and my sister appeared on the screen playing a vibrant violin solo that sent her fingers and the bow flying over the strings. This video was crisper than either of the ones I had and Lisa's face was full of emotion as she played.