43.
I was able to get a standby flight out of San Diego the following morning. I’d considered flying to Portland, but what would I do once I got there? Portland was a big city and I had so little to go on. I stayed up half the night searching the Internet for a Jade Johnson, thinking that would be much easier than finding Ann, but I was wrong. There were over eighty Jade Johnsons on Facebook alone. I studied their pages until my eyes ached and I finally fell asleep with my computer wide open.
* * *
I had to change planes in Charlotte, and as I waited for the puddle jumper to New Bern, I checked my phone for messages. Only one, and it was from Jeannie. “I’m concerned about you,” she said. “I’m stopping over tonight to check on you. Don’t worry. I won’t be staying and I won’t be doing any work there, but I don’t feel good about the way we left it the other day—a lot of hard feelings on both sides, I think—and I just need to make sure you’re okay.”
I groaned. I should call her. Tell her I was fine and not to come over. We could talk next week. But I didn’t even feel like speaking to her answering machine, much less to her. I’d deal with her later.
My flight was late and I tried to doze sitting up in the chair, but all I could think about was my conversation with Grady.
She was an awesome girl.
Every time I remembered him saying that about Lisa, I smiled. Suddenly, I felt as though I knew her. Hearing about her from my parents, or more recently from Jeannie and Caterina, had never had that impact on me. But now I knew she was awesome. Grady hadn’t based that assessment on her musical ability. He hadn’t even known about that. He’d based it on the person she was, separate from her violin. That was the person I wanted desperately to find.
44.
Jeannie didn’t even knock before walking in the front door early that evening. After my blowup the other day, I would have thought she’d have the sense to at least knock before barging in, but no. I was sitting barefoot on the living room floor surrounded by piles of paid bills and statements and tax documents pulled from the cabinets. I’d already filled two big black trash bags with paper I’d have to shred later, but I didn’t want to take the time to do it now. If there was something—anything—related to Lisa in those cabinets, I wanted to find it. So far, I wasn’t having much luck. Most of the documents were ancient utility bills and medical records I saw no point in keeping.
“Well!” Jeannie stood in the middle of the room, smiling. “I see you’re finally making some real progress.”
I glanced up at her, but said nothing. She was dressed in white slacks and a navy blue blazer with a gold TOP REALTOR pin on the lapel.
“Maybe you just needed a little space from Christine and me,” she added.
“You’re right.” I shoved another fistful of paper into one of the trash bags. “I needed some time on my own, that’s all.”
“I understand. Oh! Look at this!” She’d spotted the photographs I’d taken with me to San Diego where they now lay on the coffee table. She picked up the picture of Lisa standing back-to-back with Matty, locks of their hair tangled together. “Is this the most darling photo or what?” she asked.
“It really is.” I had to agree.
“I haven’t seen this picture in a long time,” she said. “They look like Siamese twins here, don’t they? That’s what they were like. You hardly ever saw one without the other.” The pink of the setting sun poured through the window and across Jeannie’s smile. “She’s wearing the necklace I gave her,” she said.
I’d been about to toss another stack of papers into the trash bag, but lowered my hand to the floor.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“This necklace.” Jeannie tapped the picture with her fingertip. “I gave it to her. It’s jade. Lisa always wore it, and that touched me so much. It had Chinese symbols carved on the front and back. They meant ‘long life’ and ‘joy,’ or something like that.”
I set down the stack of papers and leaned back on my hands. “I was told that one of her violin teachers gave her that pendant,” I said.
“Told by whom?” Jeannie frowned.
“I don’t remember,” I said. I was certain that’s what Caterina had said—that the teacher who had “ruined” Lisa’s playing had given the pendant to her. Of course, maybe Lisa had lied to Caterina. I knew for a fact that my sister was not the most honest person.
“What teacher?” Jeannie asked. “Steven Davis? Caterina Thoreau?”
“The one in between them,” I said. “I heard—or maybe I read somewhere—that Lisa went away to study with another teacher and that’s the one who gave her the necklace.”
Jeannie stared at me and I couldn’t read her expression. “Well.” She looked flustered. “Maybe I have it mixed up with another necklace.” She quickly set the photograph back on the coffee table.
“Do you know who it was?” I asked. “The teacher Lisa went away to study with?”
“I really don’t recall very much about those days,” she said. “It was so long ago. Christine had taken off with a bunch of her friends to live overseas, and I was beside myself worrying about her.” She looked pointedly at her watch. “And now I’ve got to run. I just wanted to stop in to be sure you’re doing okay. I’m thrilled to see you’re making progress and I know Christine will be happy to hear it.”
She left without saying good-bye. If it had been anyone else, I would have thought her behavior in the last few minutes was very strange, but given that it was Jeannie, it seemed in keeping with her character.
With a shrug, I went back to pulling paperwork from the cabinets, setting aside anything that looked important from the last three years, and tossing the rest. But as I worked, I wondered which story about the pendant was the truth. Did it really matter, though? I couldn’t imagine why.
* * *
I’d nearly reached the last cabinet, the one closest to the wall of vinyl records, by eight o’clock. I had five garbage bags full to overflowing in the middle of the living room. I’d found absolutely nothing to give me a clue to my sister’s whereabouts, but I had a sense of accomplishment at finally getting this task off my list of things to do.
I had to move the big upholstered armchair aside to get into that last cabinet, and as soon as I opened the door, I knew this one was different. There were actual file storage boxes inside, three of them, not a loose paper to be seen, and I was instantly filled with sadness. These must have been my mother’s files. On the front of the first one, she’d written the word Appliances in her distinctive handwriting. On the second box, Kids. On the third, Marriage License, Insurance, Misc.
I pulled out the Kids box and set it on the floor. I felt the tiniest flash of fear at the possibility of finding adoption papers inside, but I no longer believed a word out of Verniece’s mouth. I didn’t know what her motivation had been to feed me tales. Maybe it had been part of her and Tom’s diabolical plan to wear me down.
I lifted the lid and saw that the box was crammed full of file folders. Again, seeing my mother’s neat writing on the tabs of each folder made my heart contract. I tugged out the file containing our old report cards. Danny’s and mine were the usual computerized cards, but my sister’s were handwritten forms that must have been used in homeschooling. I’d been a model student, according to my elementary school teachers’ comments. Danny, not so much, and I felt terrible reading about his difficult childhood, especially from my perspective now as a school counselor and knowing how he’d been lied to—manipulated, really—by our parents. There are all sorts of abuse, he’d told me.
I read the comments from his teachers. “Danny wants to be good, but he lacks self-control, leading to fights with other students and misbehavior in class.” I read only two years of his report cards before shoving them back into the box. It was too painful to think of how he must have felt, knowing deep in his heart that his sister had killed someone but being told he was “misremembering.”
In the box was a thick white folder devoted to Lisa. Awards she’d won. Certificates of Achievement. I was reading through that file when I noticed the heading at the top of the next folder: Birth Certificates. I remembered reading that Internet article that suggested looking at your birth certificate to figure out if you were adopted. That felt like months ago now rather than a couple of weeks. Check your place of birth, the article had suggested. I reached into the folder and pulled out our three certificates. Lisa and Danny both had been born in Mount Vernon Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia, but my birth certificate told a different story. “Place of Birth: Mission Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina.” I stared at it in confusion for a moment before remembering the first time I’d seen the certificate. I must have been about ten years old and I remembered asking my mother why I’d been born in Asheville. Daddy and I were visiting Mrs. Lyons in Asheville when you were born, she’d told me. That had made perfectly good sense to me at the time, but suddenly I thought it strange. I was eight and a half pounds when I was born. I couldn’t have been very early. My parents had lived in northern Virginia then. Would they have traveled six or seven hours from home so close to my mother’s due date?
They found a baby girl being put up for adoption here in North Carolina, Verniece had said.
A feeling of horror began to wash over me. I remembered meeting Christine for the first time. The way she’d gripped my hands. The way she’d proclaimed, You’re so pretty, isn’t she, Mom?
“Please, no,” I said out loud. I thought of Christine’s wavy dark hair, so much like my own.
I stared at my birth certificate awhile longer, looking at my parents’ names. I desperately wanted them to be my biological parents! I had to know. I had to. I reached for my phone.