The Silent Sister (5 page)

I parked behind the Ford and spotted Tom on the other side of the RV at a fish-cleaning table. He wore an undershirt and camouflage pants and appeared to be working on that morning's catch. He was a bigger man than I remembered. Tall and broad shouldered, he'd probably been muscular in his youth, but the years had taken a toll. He looked up when I closed my car door, squinting from behind silver-framed glasses as I walked toward him. I could tell he didn't recognize me.

“It's Riley MacPherson, Mr. Kyle,” I said. “Frank MacPherson's daughter?”

He set down his knife and his expression changed. It was more of a frown than a smile. “Riley,” he said. “Haven't seen you in a long time. How're you making out?”

“I'm all right,” I said. “I'm down here to get the house and everything squared away. Thanks for taking care of things here at the park this past month.”

He shook his head. “That was too bad about your father.” He looked down at his hands, his fingers glittery with fish scales. “Things won't be the same without Frank around here.”

“He left one of his collections to you, Mr. Kyle,” I said. “His pipes.”

“Verniece and me've been keeping up with the reservations and all,” he said, as if I hadn't spoken. “Do you want to check over the books? Will you be handling that from here on?”

I could tell he didn't understand what I'd said. Whether it was his hearing or his cognitive skills, I didn't know.

I shook my head. “I came here to tell you that my father wanted you to have his collection of pipes,” I said, raising my voice a bit. “I'm not sure exactly what they're worth, but he wanted you to have them. His lawyer will work out the details.”

My words finally sank in. He nodded slowly, his eyes on the table and its three fish rather than on me. I couldn't read his face. “Well,” he said after a moment, “that was nice of him.” He looked out at the creek. “Anything else in his will we should know about?” he asked, surprising me. Had he expected more?

“No,” I said. “The pipe collection is the only mention of you.” All morning, I'd been picking up broken glass from around the pipes. I didn't think any of them had been damaged in Danny's sudden burst of anger.

I heard the creak of the door on the other side of the RV. “Who's here?” Verniece Kyle walked around the corner of the motor home.

“Verniece,” Tom said, “do you remember Frank's girl? The little one?” he added quickly, as though he didn't want her to conjure up any thought of my sister. Had they ever known Lisa? I didn't see how they could have.

“I surely do!” She smiled warmly at me and reached out to take my hand in both of hers. Her skin felt loose and satiny smooth. Her gray hair was neatly combed but it looked like she probably cut it herself, and she was overweight. Not obese, but her short-sleeved knit top stretched across her breasts and her stomach. “I'm so sorry about your daddy, Riley, dear,” she said. “He was the salt of the earth now, wasn't he?”

I nodded. “Thank you.” I was surprised she remembered my name. Maybe my father had talked about me to them.

“We never see your brother, do we, Tom?” she asked. “Even though he's no more than a mile down the lane.” She let go of my hand. “I took some muffins over to him after we found out about your father, but he wasn't there, and I was afraid to leave them in case the squirrels or—”

“She has a little bit of news for us, Verniece,” Tom interrupted. “You take her in the house and I'll clean up and come in and we can all talk about it.”

“Come in, love.” Verniece tugged gently on my forearm, and I followed her around the corner of the RV and up the steps into the dim interior of the trailer, where the air was only a few degrees cooler than outside. The window shades were lowered against the sunlight and it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. How did they tolerate this, living like moles in a hot airless tunnel?

“Some nice sweet tea?” Verniece asked as I sat down at the built-in table, larger than the one in Danny's tiny trailer. This RV was at least three times the length of his.

“Nothing, thank you,” I said. “I'm fine.”

She removed a photograph from the door of the narrow refrigerator and put it in front of me on the table, turning on the overhead light. “Do you remember our son, Luke?” she asked.

“I do,” I said politely. I hadn't known Luke well. Living out here in the RV park, he'd gone to different schools from me. He'd been an outgoing, whip-smart kid, from the little I remembered. “Where is he now?” I asked.

“Colorado. He's studying to get his Ph.D. in something to do with computers.”

“Did you have other children?” I asked, to make conversation. “I can't remember.”

“No, he's our only one, and the reason I brought out his picture”—she gestured toward the photograph—“is because seeing you reminds me of him.”

I tried to think of some connection between Luke and myself and finally gave up. “Why do I remind you of him?” I asked.

She sat down on the other side of the table, smiling at me with dazzling warmth. “We could have no children of our own,” she said, “and one day, I confided in your mother about it and she told me about adopting you and put the idea in my head, and I said to Tom, why don't we adopt a baby, too? So that's how we ended up with Luke.” She seemed so delighted by the connection between our families, that I hesitated to set her straight. But I had to.

“I wasn't adopted, Mrs. Kyle,” I said gently. “I think maybe you have my family mixed up with some of your other friends.”

Her eyes flew open and she sat back on the narrow bench. “Oh!” she said, color rushing to her cheeks. “I thought … You're right. I must have you mixed up with someone else.” She suddenly stood up and opened the refrigerator door as if looking for something, but she made no move to reach inside. “Tom says I'm losing my marbles and sometimes I think he's right.” She shut the door, picked up Luke's picture from the table, and put it back on the front of the refrigerator, her fingers trembling. I felt sorry that I'd upset her so much, but then she smiled at me again, collecting herself. “Well, whoever it was, they were about our age when they adopted,” she said. “Fortyish. And we thought, if they can adopt a baby at their age, we can, too, and we got Luke when he was a year old. It was the best thing we ever did.”

I smiled and said, “I'm so glad you got your son. You must be really proud of him.”

“Oh, we are. And we miss him. We haven't seen him since Christmas.”

“She telling you about Lucas?” Tom said as he stepped into the RV.

“Yes,” I said.

“He's a perfect kid.” He moved to the sink to wash his hands. He was too big for the space, and he filled the RV with the odor of fish and sweat … and a trace of alcohol, I thought. “The only imperfect thing about him is him living on the other side of the country. We wish we had an RV we could use to go see him sometime. A mobile home that's actually mobile.” He put his hands on his hips and looked around him at his claustrophobic little home. “This one's been on blocks so long it's forgotten how to get up and go.”

“That would be just wonderful.” His wife sounded wistful.

“You tell her the news?” He nodded at me, and I told Verniece about the pipe collection.

“I'm sure it's worth a few thousand dollars, at least,” I added.

Verniece glanced at her husband with a look I couldn't read, but then I thought I saw a spark of joy in her blue eyes.

“Well, God bless your daddy, that's all I can say,” she said. “Would you feel bad if we sold them? I know how he loved all those things he collected, but we don't have much use for them.”

“Not at all.” I smiled. “The pipes will be yours to do what you want with them.”

We chatted a little while longer and then I walked back to my car. I felt like Santa Claus. Not a bad feeling.

But as I drove away, it wasn't their smiling faces or their grief over my father I carried with me, but the certainty in Verniece Kyle's face when she told me it was my adoption that had inspired their son's.

*   *   *

Late that afternoon when the weather began to cool off, I put on my running shoes and headed downstairs. I'd taken a nap when I got home from the RV park. A sure sign of depression, I thought. But the truth was, Verniece Kyle's chatter about me being adopted had unsettled me in a way I couldn't quite explain. Of course she had no idea what she was talking about, but at a time when I already felt lost and lonely, her suggestion that my one and only beloved and mourned family wasn't my biological family was enough to leave me empty inside.

When I reached the living room, I noticed the mounting stack of bills on the table by the front door. I'd brought all the bills that had been forwarded to me in Durham, but I hadn't even looked at them. And now there was a handful more. I pictured the electricity suddenly being cut off to the house, the lights going out on me any minute.

Giving in to the worry, I picked up the envelopes and carried them to my father's desk. The rolltop was up and I could see Daddy's checkbook poking out from one of the many cubbyholes. I opened all the envelopes and laid the bills one on top of the other, then took a look at his check register, hoping he was better than I was at writing everything down so I could see how much money was in the account. The register was up to date as of a week or so before he died. If he had any automatic bill payments not reflected in the checkbook, though, I could be in trouble. I'd go to his bank tomorrow and look at his accounts with someone there before I started writing checks.

I was about to set down the register when I noticed the name Tom Kyle on one of the lines. My father had written him a check for five hundred dollars. What for? I wondered. I glanced through his register. The checks all appeared to have been written to utilities except for a monthly five-hundred-dollar check to Tom. Did my father owe him money? Was he paying him back for … what? I could think of no reason he'd be giving him money. There was only one way to find out, but I didn't see the rush. I'd ask Tom when I went back to the park to check out my father's RV.

I looked at the stack of bills again, this time with a sigh. One task of a thousand. I pulled the rolltop over the desk, covering the bills and the checkbook, making them disappear. They could wait one more day, I thought as I got to my feet. Then I left the house, walked down the porch steps, and started to run.

 

6.

The real estate office where Jeannie Lyons worked was only a few blocks from the house, so I stopped in after my run the following morning. It was a hole-in-the-wall building, with pictures of homes for sale taped to the narrow front windows. Inside, a young woman with stick-straight blond hair sat at one of two desks and she gave me a broad, do-you-want-to-buy-something smile when I walked in.

“Good morning!” She got to her feet, holding her hand out to me.

“Hi,” I said, shaking her hand. “I'm looking for Jeannie Lyons.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

I shook my head. “I just need to talk to her for a minute,” I said, although that was a stupid statement. Telling her my father was leaving her—someone I barely knew and hadn't heard him mention since my mother's death—the piano and ten thousand dollars would probably take more than a minute. “I'm the daughter of an old friend of hers,” I said.

“Hold on a sec,” the woman said, and she disappeared through a door in the rear of the office.

A moment later, Jeannie came through the same door. She was only slightly familiar to me. I'd been eighteen the last time I saw her, which was at my mother's memorial service. That day was such a haze to me that I couldn't really recall who was there. But I remembered Jeannie's eyes. They were enormous and an intense blue beneath deep brown bangs. Her bob was a bit edgy, one side tucked behind her ear, and although I knew she'd been the same age as my mother, she looked younger than my mother ever had. It was hard to believe she was sixty-four. I could tell right away that she knew who I was, but her smile looked uncertain. She held out her hand as she walked toward me. “Riley,” she said.

“Mrs. Lyons.” I nodded and shook her hand.

“Oh, call me Jeannie,” she said, squeezing my hand with a warmth that didn't reach her face. “I'm very sorry about your father.”

“Thank you.” There was a moment of awkward silence and she looked at me expectantly. “I need to talk to you,” I said. “Do you have some time now … or I could come back tomorrow?”

She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was eleven-fifteen. “I have some calls to make right now,” she said. “How about we meet for lunch? I'll make reservations at Morgan's Tavern for noon. Would that work?”

“Yes, perfect.” That would give me a chance to run home and change. “I'll see you then.”

*   *   *

I was first to arrive in the restaurant and I gave the hostess Jeannie's name. She put me in a side room that was otherwise empty, and I couldn't help but wonder if Jeannie had told her we needed privacy.

I was looking over the menu when she arrived. She blew into the room with so much energy the air swirled around our table as she took her seat. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, unwrapping her silverware from the napkin. “A million fires to put out this morning.”

Sitting across the table from her, I could see that she looked closer to her age than I'd originally thought. Her jawline was blurry, her neck a little crepey, but she was still a youthful, vibrant-looking woman.

The waitress was at our table in an instant. “Your regular?” she asked Jeannie.

“Yes, but maybe we need a minute?” Jeannie raised her eyebrows in my direction.

“Fish tacos,” I said to the waitress. “And my water's enough.”