“First, I have to get your promise that you won’t tell your brother what I’m going to tell you,” she said.
“I can’t promise that,” I said.
“Please, Riley. There’s information you should know, but if you tell Danny and he tells … anyone, well, frankly, it will ruin my life. Mine and Tom’s. And I didn’t tell you this before, but I’m very ill.” She looked at me. “Heart disease.” She laid her palm flat against her chest. “I’m looking at open heart surgery soon, and all this is taking a toll on my health.” When I didn’t respond, she continued. “You probably wonder why I stay with a difficult old coot like Tom,” she said. “I’m sure it’s hard for someone like you to understand. You’re young and healthy with marketable skills, but I have none of those qualities. So I put up with what I have to to survive.”
I nodded in spite of my desire to remain cool and detached from her this morning. I understood what she was saying. Probably a lot of women her age were in the same boat.
“All right,” I said. “Just tell me what you want.”
“Okay.” She took in a deep wheezy breath and I thought she might be telling me the truth about her heart. “I know this will sound terrible … it is terrible,” she began, “but Tom is desperate. Well, we both are, I guess.” She laughed nervously. “The thing is, Tom knows more about your sister’s … disappearance than he was letting on yesterday. I don’t know all what he knows,” she added quickly, “just that he wasn’t telling you and your brother the truth.”
“Her disappearance?” I said. “You mean, he knows for certain she didn’t kill herself?”
Verniece nodded, and my own heart skipped a beat. “That’s what he says,” she said. “And he told me to let you know”—the corner of her mouth twitched—“that he’ll tell you where she is in exchange for the deed to the RV park.” She looked toward the river instead of at me so she didn’t see the shock in my face.
“I can’t possibly do that!” I said. “You’re talking about extortion!”
“Oh, no, it’s nothing like that!” she said. “And I do know it’s a terrible thing to ask and I’m so embarrassed, but remember, it is what your father wanted, and…” Her voice faded away. She wrung her hands in her lap. “It’s all Tom’s idea,” she said. “This is a part of him I never knew existed.” She grabbed my hand. “Please don’t say anything to Danny!” she pleaded. “Tom wants you alone to have the information. You deserve to know what happened to your sister, but surely you don’t want the police involved, and your brother … we just don’t know what he’d do if he—”
“Is she still alive?” I drew my hand away from hers.
“She was alive the last time he saw her.”
“Saw her?” I pressed my hand to my own chest and felt my heart thudding beneath my palm. “He actually saw her?”
“He says he was involved, but I don’t know how exactly. It sounds crazy to me. But he knows a lot, Riley. He has a good idea where she is.”
I did the math in my head. Twenty acres at ten thousand dollars an acre. Was finding my sister worth two hundred thousand dollars? Danny couldn’t care less about his half and we already had my father’s money plus whatever we got for the house. I knew Verniece was playing good cop/bad cop with me, pretending she was an innocent victim of her husband in this scheme. I knew that in my head, but my heart didn’t give a damn.
“I’ll do it,” I said.
“Oh, my good Lord!” Verniece slapped her hands on her thighs. “You will? Oh, thank you, thank you, Riley! You’ve just given me a future!”
“I’ll come over this afternoon and Tom can tell me how to find her and then I’ll have my father’s lawyer draw up whatever papers we need to turn the park over to you.”
She lost her smile. “Tom said we need you to do that first. Get the documents taken care of first.”
Whatever, I thought. “All right.”
“And you won’t tell Danny any of this?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. At least I wouldn’t tell him right away, although I hoped I could someday. “I don’t know how quickly Suzanne—my father’s lawyer—can get this done, though.”
“Well, Tom said it has to be soon. Before he loses his nerve.”
What absolute gall, I thought. I pulled my phone from my pocket, and she panicked.
“What are you doing? You didn’t record this, did you?”
“Relax,” I said. I wished I had thought to record her. “I just want to put your number in my phone. I’ll call you when I have the papers drawn up.”
“Oh.” She gave me her number and I added it to my contacts.
“You won’t regret this, Riley,” she said. “I think Tom knows a lot and can really help you.” She stood up. “Come on and I’ll drive you home.”
I shook my head, not budging from the bench. “I’ll run,” I said.
She looked worried as she reached down to touch my shoulder, tentatively, like she wasn’t sure her touch would now be welcome. She drew her hand away quickly, and I thought she must have felt the cold stone my shoulder had become. “We’ll wait to hear from you,” she said.
I watched her walk away, then stood up and started running toward the waterfront. Was I really going to go through with this? It was insane. And risky. I’d have to track Lisa down with care, keeping Danny out of it. Keeping the authorities out of it. I needed to protect her. If I hurt her by finding her, I’d never forgive myself. And if she’d ever cared about me, if she’d ever loved her little sister, that love would vanish like vapor. I would ruin her life. I’d ruin her.
Two weeks ago, I was the proud owner of six thousand dollars. If it took every new cent I was due from my father’s estate, I would spend it to find Lisa. I was certain Daddy would have wanted that. My eyes filled with tears as I ran, and I brushed them away with the back of my hand, but they were instantly replaced by more. How my parents must have tortured themselves over Lisa’s suicide! I was sure Daddy would have given up everything he owned to learn the truth. I’d do this for him as much as for myself.
FEBRUARY 1996
35.
San Diego
Jade
Dear Fred,
My life is good and full and I’m loved and productive, but there is a gaping hole in my heart that I can’t heal without your help. I need to know DETAILS about everyone. It keeps me awake at night, wondering and worrying how you all are. Please. If you still love me at all, please do this for me.
Love, Ann
MARCH 1996
Dear Ann,
I’m happy to hear you’re doing well. You haven’t been forgotten, nor will you ever be. I hope you know that.
You ask for details, so I will do my best, but only this once and you must destroy this letter the second after you read it. Knowing you, you’d want me to be honest about the state of affairs here at home, so that is what I’ll be. I’m sorry if this worries you.
We are a family falling apart at the seams.
Your mother has never recovered from losing you. She’s very withdrawn and is on antidepressants. They help somewhat, but I miss the joyful woman she used to be. We are living in a nice part of North Carolina and she found a church she likes, but she’s made few connections. I believe she’s afraid to leave D and R unsupervised for a minute. She carries some blame for everything that happened and nothing I say can change that.
D has grown quite challenging to manage. He’ll be thirteen in September and, to be honest, we dread his teen years. He’s always angry, at what I don’t know. He’s a troubled boy who gets in fights at school and is sullen and hard to communicate with. I suppose this is simply a matter of the hormones getting a head start. We’re considering homeschooling him again, or rather your mother considers it, but I don’t think she has the energy to homeschool anymore. I don’t know if that’s the answer, anyway. He looks more like you every day.
R is growing into a beautiful girl. She is sweet, polite, and does well in school but she can be clingy with y
our mother and is overly sensitive, in my opinion, and I’ve tried to toughen her up with little success. She cries at the drop of a hat and is the type of child who finds stray puppies and kittens wherever she goes. D adores her and he’s a different boy around her. They are very close and you’d be pleased. She is not musically talented AT ALL. We have not pushed either her or D. They both hated piano lessons, and there is no point.
If the weather is good on R’s birthday, I plan to take her and D to the beach for the day to fly our homemade kites. (Do you remember the kite you and I made?) I don’t know if I’ll be able to persuade your mother to join us. Either way, we’ll have dinner at a restaurant on the way home. Yes, I still try to hold on to some of our traditions. R loves this place called the Sanitary Fish Market (what a name for a restaurant!) because all the diners eat together at long tables and she thinks that’s bliss. I expect one of these times she’ll break out singing “Kumbaya.” It’s a blessing that R doesn’t remember our family as it used to be. This is the norm for her—a perpetually sad mother, a preoccupied and worried father, and a confused and angry brother.
As for me, I’m sure you’ve gathered I’m no longer in my old line of work. I’m focusing on my collections now and have a small side business where I can work outdoors.
So there you have it, Ann, the wrap-up of the M family’s lives. Trust me when I say I want to know all about yours, but I’ll have to do without. We can’t continue this back-and-forth. There are people who remain suspicious.
Again, destroy this letter. I cannot say that forcefully enough.
With love,
Fred
36.
Riley
“So, what’s up, Riley?” Suzanne asked from her side of the desk. “You sounded upset on the phone.”
I was relieved that Suzanne had a cancellation for that afternoon and was able to see me. I told myself it was a sign that I was doing the right thing, and I needed to do it before I lost my nerve.
“I did?” I asked innocently. “I’d just gotten back from a run so I was probably out of breath. Everything’s fine, but I do need your help.” I folded my hands tightly in my lap. “I discovered that my father had wanted to update his will to have the RV park go to the Kyles, so I wanted to talk to you about how to make that happen.”
She tilted her head as though she might have misunderstood me. “Well,” she said slowly, “there’s no way to change the will now.”
“Oh, I know that,” I said. “But I … Danny and I … want to carry out our father’s wishes and somehow transfer the park to them. I just need you to tell me how to do that.”
She frowned as I spoke. She must have thought I was the most generous person in the world. “Well,” she said, “the first thing I’d advise is that you give this a whole lot of thought, Riley. You’re talking about valuable property. Jeannie can give you an idea of its worth, and—”
“She already has. She thinks we could get about two hundred thousand for it. But we can’t take it, knowing Daddy wanted someone else to have it.”
She leaned back in her chair, slipping on her reading glasses although there was no paperwork that I could see in front of her. “How did you find this out?” she asked.
I was glad she couldn’t see my hands from where she sat, since I was now wringing them in my lap. “Jeannie mentioned something about it,” I lied. “So did Verniece Kyle. And then as I was cleaning out my father’s desk, I found a ‘to do’ list where he said he needed to talk to you about rewriting his will, and in parentheses it said ‘Park to the Kyles,’ so I knew then that it was true. What Jeannie and Verniece said.”
I was a terrible liar. I always had been. Suzanne shifted in her seat, squinting at me. “Are you making this decision under duress?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I said. “It’s our decision. We just wouldn’t feel good about keeping it.”
“It’s very generous of you and your brother, Riley, but I wish you’d talk to a financial advisor before you make a huge decision like this. Are you aware of the tax implications?”
Tax implications? That gave me pause, but I didn’t want to sound like I hadn’t thought this through.
“Yes.” I nodded.
“That you’ll have to file a gift tax form with the IRS?” she asked, as if she didn’t believe me. “You don’t have to actually pay taxes on the gift until you reach the lifetime limit, but you’re only twenty-five and you never know how much—”
“I’ve thought about it a lot, Suzanne,” I interrupted. “We want to do it, and the sooner the better. I really want to get the estate taken care of so I can go back to Durham and my life.”
“Well, that’s what worries me,” she said. “That in your rush to get back to your life, you’re not making the wisest decisions.”
I leaned forward. I needed to get this over with. “How do we do it?” I asked. “Do you need to draw up a contract or what?”
She sensed my impatience and gave in to me with a small nod of her head. “It’s called a gift deed,” she said. “It’s really quite simple. As grantor, you sign the deed over to the Kyles. As grantee, they sign it as well, accepting it without special warranty. They can have a title search performed, which I’d recommend, but they can waive that if they so choose. Then I, or rather my secretary, will deliver the deed to the courthouse to be recorded and we’re done. It’s that simple.”
“Perfect,” I said. “When can we do this?”
“I can draw up the form this afternoon and you can all come in tomorrow afternoon to sign it.”
You all. “Does Danny need to come, too?” I asked. I was his trustee. I was counting on him not needing to sign.
“No,” she said. “The only problem with us doing it tomorrow is that I won’t be able to get the deed to the courthouse until Monday, so it won’t be recorded until then.”
“That’s fine.”
“Usually”—she peered at me above her reading glasses—“the language in a gift deed states that the transfer is being made in consideration of love and affection between the grantor and grantee.”
My stomach knotted at the words. “Just leave that out,” I said.
She gave me a worried smile. “Will do,” she said, and I had the feeling she didn’t believe for a moment that I wasn’t making this decision under duress.
MARCH 1996
37.
Morehead City, North Carolina
Jade
Sitting in a rental car in front of the Sanitary Fish Market Restaurant, she took off the giant sunglasses she’d bought for this trip. She was afraid she was on a very big, very expensive, wild-goose chase. She’d sat there for nearly three hours and now daylight was fading and it would be even harder to see people going into the building.
Putting the car in drive, she moved it a bit closer to the entrance so she could see more clearly in the dimming light. It had been a beautiful day, and with so many families on spring break, the restaurant appeared to be filling up. She’d counted on that. She’d counted on being able to blend into the crowd, but it was beginning to seem as though it didn’t matter.
Grady had wanted her to work this week, but she told him she was going up to Portland to see Celia. The truth was, Celia’s break fell at a different time from hers. Even Celia didn’t know where she was right now. No one did, and that thought put a lump in her throat. No matter how many people care about you, she thought, if you can’t be open with them about who you truly are, you are still alone.
She’d tried to sleep in the car the night before after flying into Raleigh, but it had been too cold and she couldn’t quiet her brain. She kept thinking about the drive here to Morehead City, the small North Carolina town that was home to the Sanitary Fish Market her father had made the mistake of mentioning in his letter. She’d worried about getting lost and all the other things that could go wrong. Riley could wake up with the sniffles. The weather could keep them home. By the time morning came and she actually started the drive, she was wiped ou
t.
She’d waited until she was nearly to Morehead City before putting on the oversized sunglasses and Halloweenish black wig she’d bought, worried that her dyed hair wouldn’t be nearly enough of a disguise. Then she found the restaurant, parked the car, and waited. Now it seemed the whole trip had been for nothing.
Then, in the spotlights from the restaurant, she saw a man and woman and fair-haired boy walking up the sidewalk toward the entrance. A girl ran ahead of them and Jade leaned forward, holding her breath. Despite knowing full well that Riley was now eight, she’d been looking for a small child.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. Her breath left a smudge of fog against the car window, and she quickly erased it with her fingers so nothing was in the way of her view.
Her mother’s dark hair was short now, tucked behind her ears. She walked next to Jade’s father, but they weren’t holding hands as they used to and there was a good six inches of air between them. My fault, Jade thought. Her father hadn’t said as much in his letter, but between every line about her family falling apart, she’d felt the blame.
In the light from the restaurant, her father looked completely gray. That was a shock. But he smiled as he called out something that made Riley turn around and wave to him.
Danny and Riley … she wouldn’t have recognized them. Danny was tall and gangly, his hair absolutely white, the same color hers would be if she didn’t dye it. He walked a little hunched over, like he’d grown tall too quickly and was uncomfortable with his height.
Then there was Riley. Oh, my God, Riley! Jade wished for more daylight so she could see her clearly, but she could tell that the little two-year-old was gone and in her place was a slender, pretty child with dark wavy hair. Riley ran back to her parents and took her father’s hand, swinging it, giving a playful hop every few steps. Jade swallowed hard. She’d done the right thing, all those years ago. The right thing.
She waited for them to walk into the restaurant and then gave them a few extra minutes to be seated. Putting on her dark glasses and adjusting her wig, she took a deep breath and got out of the car.