49.
At seven o’clock that evening, I drove through the dusky forest to Danny’s clearing, determined to reveal nothing of what I’d learned. I wouldn’t let him trip me up. I was only worried about what this thing was he wanted to show me … and I figured that out the moment he opened his trailer door to let me in.
The music on his laptop wasn’t loud, but it was very familiar to me after listening to it nonstop for most of the day. Danny’s computer was on the counter, and the Web site photograph of Jasha Trace was on the screen. The picture of Lisa and the group stared me in the face as I walked inside.
“Okay.” I surrendered, standing with my back against the door. “What’s going on?”
He sat down at the kitchen table. “Good ol’ Verniece,” he said. “She really wants the RV park.”
I swallowed. Damn it. “What are you talking about?” I asked, lowering myself to the bench across the table from him.
“You can lose the innocent act,” he said. “They couldn’t talk you into turning over the park to them, so she tried to get it through me.” He ran his hand over his short blond beard. “I didn’t tell her that (a) I don’t care about the park and (b) I don’t have the legal authority to give it to her without your involvement … although I have to say I was surprised to learn that you had had no problem keeping me out of your dealings with her and Tom.”
“Oh, Danny, I’m sorry.” I felt my whole body sag in defeat. “I was desperate to find out what they knew.”
“And what you didn’t want me to know, right?”
“Do you blame me?” I asked. “You and I have different ideas of what should happen to Lisa. And how did you figure out about—” I pointed to the laptop, where Lisa was in the middle of a fiddle solo. “Jasha Trace? How could you…?”
“I took a look inside our father’s RV,” he said. “Do you believe our old man?” He laughed, but there was nothing funny in the sound. “I always knew he worshiped her, but I’d really underestimated just how much. Anyway, I had to break the lock to get into the trailer. And I think you beat me to it, right?” He waited for me to answer, but I kept my expression stony and blank. “I found a newspaper ad on his table about the concert coming up,” he said. “I saw there was a violinist in the group and she had on a necklace like the one Lisa used to wear. Daddy had all this bluegrass music there, but none of that band, which made me wonder…” He tilted his head, eyes on mine. “Did he have some of their CDs and you took them?”
I hesitated a moment, then nodded.
“I had to pay iTunes eight bucks for this CD.”
“Danny…”
“Once I had her name, it was easy to find out everything else.” He shook his head, and I recognized the hurt look on his face. It was the same expression I saw that morning in the mirror. “She’s made one hell of a life for herself, hasn’t she.”
“Danny.” I folded my hands on the table and leaned toward him. “I’m pleading with you. Please leave her alone.”
“I wasn’t sure how much you’d been able to find out on your own, but the way you’ve been avoiding me the last few days made me think you knew plenty,” he said. “And when I opened the door a few minutes ago and you heard the music … Your face gave you away.”
“Have you talked to Harry about it?” I’d lowered my hands to my lap and was anxiously rubbing them together.
“Not yet.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
He didn’t hesitate. “I’m going to tell Harry he can solve a cold case the night of that concert. He can be a hero, and Lisa will finally get what she has coming to her.”
“Danny”—I was very close to crying—“she’s not hurting anyone.”
I might as well have been speaking Greek. “You don’t seem to get it, Riley,” he said. “Leaving aside all the crap she put our family through, she killed a man. If it was an accident—which I think is bullshit—she’ll finally get to have her day in court. It’ll be complicated by the fact that she ran off, of course, but still. And if you sincerely want to help her, you might line up a good criminal lawyer for her in Virginia.”
“Damn it!” I pounded my fist on the table. “Can you leave it alone? Please! It’s not only Lisa’s life you’re tampering with,” I said. “It’s her children’s. It’s her family’s.”
“Most criminals have families,” he said. “That doesn’t give them a ‘get out of jail free’ card.” He reached out to touch my fist, gently unfolding my curled fingers until they lay flat on the table. The gesture felt tender and it gave me hope. “What is it you want from her, Riles?” he asked quietly.
“I want to meet her,” I said. “That’s all I want. Just to meet her. What I don’t want is to hurt her.”
He withdrew his hand from mine with a sigh. “She killed someone,” he said again, sounding tired. “That’s the bottom line. She killed someone and she has to pay.”
I stood up and walked to the door. “Will you promise me something?” I asked. “Just one thing?”
“What’s that?”
“Think about this awhile longer before you talk to Harry.”
“The concert’s only a couple of days away,” he reminded me.
“I know. But you can wait, can’t you? What difference will it make if you tell him tonight or the day of the concert?” I opened the door. It was dark outside now, and when I turned to look at him, the trailer light illuminated the sharp angles of his face and the translucent blue of his eyes. “It’s important that you think it through before you act,” I said.
“I don’t need to,” he said. “I’ve done enough thinking.”
I looked at his computer where it rested on the counter, the image of Jasha Trace a bright light in the dim trailer. Lisa stared at me from the life I was no part of.
I turned back to my brother. “There’s something you don’t know,” I said quietly, using the only card I had left to play. “Something you couldn’t have figured out, no matter how skillful you are at searching the Internet.”
“What’s that?” he asked
I swallowed hard. “Lisa’s my mother,” I said.
Two sharp lines creased the space between his eyebrows. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“It’s the truth,” I said. “Jeannie told me. Lisa’s my mother. She had me when she was fifteen. Mom and Daddy adopted me.”
“Shit,” he said, and his face softened, but only by a small degree.
I knew that wasn’t going to be enough.
50.
When I left Danny’s trailer, I drove straight to Jeannie’s small, one-story white brick house in the DeGraffenried neighborhood. She was dressed in a blue robe when she opened the door, and it only took a glimpse of my face in the porch light to let her know something was very wrong.
She reached for my hand and drew me inside. “What is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”
“Danny knows everything.”
“You told him?” She looked shocked, and I told her how he’d come to learn the truth about Lisa. I spoke so quickly that my words tumbled over one another.
“Will he go to the police?” she asked.
“He hasn’t yet, but I know he plans to.”
We were still standing by the front door, and now she motioned me into the room. “Come in,” she said. “Let’s calm down so we can think.”
I walked into her softly lit living room and felt a jolt at seeing our old baby grand piano nestled in the bay window. I dropped onto an armless upholstered chair, my head tipped back to look at the ceiling. “I have to warn her,” I said. “He plans to tell Harry Washington … do you know him?”
She nodded. “He’s a good guy. Why Harry?”
“They’re friends. He wants Harry to arrest her … or at least apprehend her at the New Bern concert. I’m not sure what Harry will do exactly, but if Danny tells him, I’m sure he’ll have to do something.”
“You have to e-mail Lisa, then,” Jeanne said. “You really don’t have much of a choice.”
I looked out the window into the darkness. “Unless I could find a phone number for her,” I said, “but she’s probably unlisted. And she’s on the road right now anyhow.” My heartbeat sped up at the thought of calling her. Telling her who I was. I would scare her to death. What if she hung up on me? I was too chicken to risk a hostile response. Lisa had managed to fly under the radar for over twenty years until I started digging into her life.
Suddenly, I seized on an idea. “Her tour schedule!” I said. “It’s on their Web site.”
Jeannie stood up and walked toward the door to get her briefcase. “Let’s look,” she said, pulling her laptop from the case and carrying it to the couch. I moved from my chair to a seat next to her, and we were quiet as I guided her to the Jasha Trace Web site.
“There’s the schedule,” I said, pointing to the link.
She clicked on it and I quickly scanned the dates. Tonight they had off. Tomorrow night they’d be at Dulcimer, a little club I’d been to a couple of times in Chapel Hill, and the night after that was the New Bern concert. “I have to go to the one in Chapel Hill,” I said. Chapel Hill was only a few hours from New Bern and right next to Durham. “I can spend the night in my apartment.”
“What will you do?” Jeannie asked slowly, and I guessed she was trying to imagine the scene, the same as I was. “What will you say to her?”
I sat back on the couch, gnawing my lip as I thought. “I’ll tell her about Danny,” I said. “That he knows. That he won’t leave it alone and that his best friend’s a cop. She’ll have to decide what to do from there.” I pressed my fingers to my temples, rubbing hard. “And I’ll apologize,” I said. “It’s my fault she’s in danger, Jeannie,” I said. “I never should have tried to find her.”
“You didn’t know what you were getting into,” she said. “You’re hardly to blame.”
I stared into space, unconvinced. I doubted Lisa would see it that way.
“Do you want me to come to Chapel Hill with you?” Jeannie asked.
I thought about it. It was strange that Jeannie was the person I felt safest with these days. “I should go alone,” I said finally. I tried to imagine approaching Lisa at Dulcimer. I tried to imagine the look on her face. It wouldn’t be welcoming. “I can’t believe I’m going to do this,” I said, my apprehension mixed with excitement.
“You need to.”
“I’m nervous.” I glanced at her. She was watching me intently. “I’m afraid she’ll act like she doesn’t know me. Turn me away. That would be the worst. Maybe she’ll sic security on me.”
Jeannie leaned forward to rest her laptop on the coffee table. “Come with me,” she said, getting to her feet.
I followed her through the dining room to a small sunroom. A large desk stood at one end of the room, and a love seat and two chairs, upholstered with palm trees and monkeys, sat at the other. Beneath the windows along one wall was a row of white built-in cabinets, similar to those in my father’s living room.
She turned on a floor lamp, then squatted in front of one of the cabinets. She rooted around for a moment, finally pulling out a small album. “Have a seat.” She nodded in the direction of the love seat as she stood up again. I sat down on the love seat and she pulled one of the chairs close to me and opened the album.
“I used to be good about putting pictures in albums, before everything went digital,” she said, holding the album so the floor lamp illuminated the pages. “Now I’ve gotten lazy.” She gave a small laugh. “Anyway, these are mostly from a trip I took to California.” She turned the pages without stopping to look closely at the photographs. “But I remember there are a couple from the year Lisa stayed with me, and there’s one in particular I want you to see.”
She turned a page and I spotted a picture of Lisa, her hair as pale as her skin, decorating a Christmas tree. She wore black leggings and an oversized blue sweater. I pulled the album closer to me. She was clearly pregnant.
“She was about six months there,” Jeannie said.
“Oh,” I whispered. Lisa smiled at the camera. It wasn’t a full-blown smile of joy, but it was an expression that told me she was at ease with the photographer. With Jeannie.
“Unfortunately, that was the only picture I kept of her from when she was pregnant,” Jeannie said. “She was camera shy then, for obvious reasons. But this is the one I wanted you to see.” She turned the page and I saw Lisa in a hospital bed, the requisite blue and white hospital gown slipping off one shoulder, a dark-haired baby in her arms.
“That’s you,” Jeannie said.
Lisa’s eyes were closed, her face at peace, her head turned so that her cheek rested on my temple. The gesture spoke volumes. She’d loved me. She’d treasured me.
Jeannie lifted my chin with her fingertips until I was looking at her through my damp, blurry vision. “She’s not going to turn you away, Riley,” she said gently. “I am completely sure of that.”