I saw his shoulders sag and heard him sigh. He turned back to me.
“Why do you want to find her?”
“I thought she killed herself when she was seventeen,” I said, and his pale eyes widened, “but I recently found out that she faked her suicide. That she’s probably still alive. I never got to know her. Our parents are both dead. She and my brother are my only family.”
He was frowning at me now, gray eyebrows nearly knitted together. “When’s the last time you saw her?” he asked.
“When I wasn’t quite two.”
“Shit.” He ran a hand over the thinning hair at his temples. “Well, it seems to me if she wanted to see you, she would have found you instead of you having to look for her.”
I winced. The same thing Tom Kyle had said to me, almost word for word.
“I think she was afraid of hurting me or our family by being in touch,” I said. Or, more likely, I thought, she was afraid of us hurting her.
“Convince me you’re her sister,” he said. “You don’t look like her.”
I reached into the tote bag hanging over my shoulder and pulled out the framed picture of Lisa, Danny, and me, all of us dressed in white.
He held it on his knee and let out his breath. “Wow,” he said. “This is your brother?”
“Yes. Danny. He doesn’t know I’m here. He … he was in Iraq,” I added. “His life’s kind of a struggle.”
A whole array of emotions passed over Grady’s features, and he looked down at the picture awhile longer in silence.
“Please help me,” I said.
After a moment, he stood up. “Not sure I can.” He handed me the photograph. “But let’s get out of this claustrophobic room and talk.”
He led me out of the room and we walked down the wide corridor and then out into the bowl of the huge stadium itself. The brown plastic seats were completely empty, and we sat down high above a sunlit green field.
“What’s your name again?” he asked.
“Riley,” I said. “You knew her, right?”
“Did she really kill someone?” He looked at me. His green eyes were startling in the sunlight.
“Is that what the PI said?” I asked.
“Yes. Was that bullshit?”
I shook my head. “She shot a man, but it was an accident. I think she got scared then and faked her suicide.” I’d leave my father out of the story. “I didn’t know about the shooting. My whole life, I grew up thinking she’d killed herself because she was depressed.” I told him about finding the box of newspaper articles and my conversation with Sondra Davis. “Which is how I found out that she’d worked in Ocean Beach. And then I met a woman who recognized her and she said she worked for you.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Did she? Work for you?”
He nodded.
“Oh, my God.” A chill ran across my arms. “I can’t believe it. A week ago I thought she was dead. Thank you! Can you tell me about her? What was she like?” My words came out in a rush. “Do you have any idea where she is now?”
“I don’t know where she is,” he said. “I haven’t seen her since she left, which was the same day that PI came into my shop. I knew she was running from something, though, and I have to tell you,” he said, “I don’t think she’ll want to be found.”
I turned my face away from him, afraid I was going to cry again. “I won’t hurt her,” I promised. “That’s the last thing I want to do.”
“She was an awesome girl,” he said, as if trying to console me, and his words did give me some comfort. I needed to hear them. I didn’t know my sister at all.
“Thanks for telling me that,” I said.
“She knew everything there was to know about music, but I didn’t realize till that private investigator showed me her picture that she was a serious violinist.”
“A child prodigy,” I said.
“How have you tried to find her so far?” he asked.
“All I know is that her name was Ann Johnson,” I said, “which is not much to go on.”
“She always went by Jade, though.”
“Jade?”
“It was her nickname.”
“So … maybe I should be searching for Jade Johnson instead of Ann?” I asked.
“I’d definitely try that.” He looked far below us, where two men had appeared on the field, kicking a soccer ball back and forth between them. “Was Ann Johnson her real name?” he asked. “I always wondered.”
I shook my head. “Please don’t ask me to tell you her real name. I just can’t.” I stared down at the men, one of them heading the ball toward an invisible goal. “I’m so scared for her,” I said.
“Why?” he asked. “Is something going on now that’s making you afraid? I mean, I’m assuming if she’s still on the run, she’s been safe for a long time.”
“What’s going on now is that I’m trying to find her,” I said, “and I don’t want to screw up her life in the process.”
“All right,” he said. “I get it.”
“Do you still have records on your employees from back then?” I asked. “Is there a way to get her Social Security number?” A Social Security number would be like gold, but he shook his head.
“Sorry. Those hit the dustbin a long time ago.”
“Do you have any idea where I should look?” I asked, point-blank.
He hesitated, but not for long. “As far as I know, she went to Portland to stay with her girlfriend, Celia,” he said. “Whether that lasted or not, I don’t know.” He looked at me. “You know she was gay, right?”
My look must have told him I’d had no idea. “I’d never heard a word about that,” I said. “But then, there was a lot I never heard about in my family.” It took me a moment to recover from the surprise, only then realizing that he’d given me two new pieces of information: “Portland” and “Celia.”
“Do you know Celia’s last name?”
He shook his head. “I knew her grandfather, Charlie, really well. His last name was Wesley, but he was on her mother’s side.”
“Can I talk to Charlie?”
He shook his head. “He passed away years ago,” he said. “Good man. He left me all his vinyl, but I’d closed the store by then. He never talked about Jade after she left, and I never asked questions. I figured the less I knew, the better.”
“I’m trusting you to keep this quiet.” I pressed my finger to my lips.
“You can trust me,” he said. We looked down at the bright green field for a long moment. “Here’s what I think,” he said finally. “I think if Jade’s made a new life for herself, you should leave her alone.”
My eyes stung. He was probably right, but I couldn’t do that.
“I need my sister,” I said, when I thought I could trust my voice. “I thought she was dead. I just want to…” What did I want? Was I going to hurt her by finding her? I felt my lips tremble. “I need my sister,” I said again.
He rested a big hand on my shoulder then, nodding. “I think you’ll do the right thing,” he said. “And if—when—you find her, tell her Grady says hello.”