53.
Riley
“You’re so beautiful,” Lisa said.
Seeing her in front of me, seeing her humanness and feeling the love in her touch, made me feel incredibly guilty. “I’m afraid I’m ruining everything for you,” I said.
“Let’s not talk about that right now,” she said firmly. “Right now, right this minute, I’m not in prison. I’m here with you, and I want to know everything there is to know about you.” She sat forward in the chair. “I search for you on the Internet constantly, but it’s like you don’t exist,” she said. “I check Facebook at least once a month. There are a bunch of Riley MacPhersons, but I can tell none of them are you. One of them has a nature picture as her profile instead of a picture of herself, though, and I always wonder, ‘Is that her?’”
For the first time all day, I smiled. I felt a thrill, knowing that she’d searched for me. She’d guessed right: I was the Riley MacPherson with the photograph of a field of poppies as my cover picture and a spectacular rainbow as my profile shot. “That’s me,” I said. “I have to keep a low profile on social media. I’m a school counselor and the less the students I work with know about my personal life, the better.”
“A counselor!” she said. “Oh, Riley, that’s wonderful.”
I thought of telling her that she became the inspiration for my career choice the day she took her own life, but I didn’t want to talk about her deceit. I didn’t want to talk about the choice she made to leave me.
“I love it,” I said instead.
“That tells me so much about you,” she said. “It tells me who you are, deep down inside. Daddy told me a little about Danny and how rough it’s been for him, but he wouldn’t ever tell me anything about you. I do know where you live, though,” she said. “I found your address about a year ago. You’re in Durham, right?” She rattled off my street address with startling ease.
I nodded. Some students had found my address, too. It wasn’t hard to do. But I doubted that my students had it memorized and I felt both touched and unnerved that she did.
“I thought of writing to you a million times,” she said. “I wanted to see you so badly, but there was no way to do that without risking everything. I would have sent myself—and Daddy—to prison.” She swallowed hard, and I saw the effort it took for her to hold herself together at the thought of prison. “Now I guess it’s going to happen anyway.” She suddenly wore a faraway look. “At least they can’t get to Daddy,” she added. “Thank God for that.”
“I’m so sorry I’ve stirred the pot,” I said.
She shook her head as if clearing prison out of her mind. “Are you married?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I know you are, though. Jeannie and I saw the photographs from your wedding. We saw Daddy there.” I felt foolish saying the word Daddy in front of her when she knew better than anyone he was not my daddy at all.
“How could you possibly have seen the pictures?” Her eyes, the same clear blue as Danny’s, were wide.
“They came up when I searched for Jasha Trace.”
“Wow.” She leaned back in her chair. “I never thought they’d be public like that. We weren’t careful enough.” She gave me a weak smile. “Having Daddy at the wedding was the most wonderful gift I could imagine, though, Riley,” she said. “I hadn’t seen him in so many years, and I could hardly believe he was there. We told everyone he was my uncle and he played along with it perfectly. He met our kids and they loved him.” She looked at me quizzically. “Do you know I have children?”
I nodded, ignoring how much the question hurt.
“Alex and Zoe,” she said. “I wish you could meet them. Daddy was so good with them at the wedding. I think he had a great time. He even jammed with the band. I hadn’t seen that lighthearted side to him since I was a kid.”
“I never got to see it.” My voice trembled. My father’s heart was already heavy by the time I was old enough to truly know him. Danny was right: Lisa and her fake suicide had destroyed our family.
Lisa bit her lip. “Oh,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, Riley.”
I drew in a breath, knowing I was about to make myself totally vulnerable. “When I saw those wedding pictures,” I said, “I felt so left out.”
She looked stunned. “Oh, baby.” Her chair was close enough that she could lean over and touch my hand. “Of course you did!” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t want to cry. My mind scrambled to find a safer subject, but there were precious few. I thought of Matty. “After Jeannie told me you were my mother,” I said, “I tried to call Matthew Harrison, but he’s in Japan with a group of kids. Are you in touch with him at all?”
She looked puzzled. “Why would you call Matty?”
“He’s my father, isn’t he?”
She shook her head slowly. “Oh, no, honey,” she said. “That was a boy I met in Italy. I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even know his name.”
“Oh.” I felt so disappointed. I’d wanted it to be Matthew. Someone I might have been able to meet. To know and to like. I sank lower into the chair, my hands still wrapped around Violet’s case. Lisa didn’t seem to know what to say any more than I did, and the silence filling the room was suffocating.
“Danny…” I said. “I never would have told him anything if I’d known he’d start digging for more information on you. I didn’t realize there was so much to hide, and by the time I did, it was too late. He wants to see you pay. You have no idea how much he … hates you.”
She tightened her lips when I said the word hate. “Please don’t blame yourself,” she said, but the look in her eyes was distant, and I knew she wasn’t thinking about me at that moment. She let out a sigh. “I’ll be back to looking over my shoulder every second, I guess,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had to do that.” She shut her eyes as if collecting her emotions, and when she opened them again, her face was pained. “This is so frustrating, Riley!” she said. “I want time with you and I don’t know how to get it.”
Her words lit a spark of anger in me—anger I hadn’t even known was there.
“You could have had all the time in the world with me if you hadn’t left.” I tried to speak softly to take the sting out of my words, but she still looked hurt.
“I didn’t want to be your mother from behind bars,” she said.
“Maybe you wouldn’t have had to serve that much time if you’d stayed for the trial,” I said. “I know what happened was an accident.”
“Please, Riley.” She slowly shook her head. “Let’s not waste our time together talking about this,” she said. “Let’s not talk about things that can’t be changed.”
“But if you’d had a good attorney, he—or she—could have defended you. They could have made the case it was an accident.” I couldn’t seem to let this go. I was suddenly so frustrated! I set Violet on the floor and stood up, pacing across the room. “Why didn’t you stay?” My voice cracked. “Everything would have been so much better! You might have had to do some time, but I could have visited you. I could have known you. Danny would never have gone off the rails the way he did when he was a teenager. Maybe he never even would have gone to Iraq.”
“Oh, Riley.” She bit her lip again. “Maybe that’s true,” she said, “but I was too scared to take the risk. Daddy saw a way out for me. I trusted him to know what was best. And it ultimately turned out well for me. Until now.”
“You mean until your daughter shows up and ruins everything.” I sounded young and stubborn, like one of the adolescent kids I worked with, but I couldn’t help myself.
“That’s not what I—”
“Do you regret it?” I stood in front of her. “Running away?”
She hesitated long enough to tell me she didn’t. “My life is far better than I deserve,” she said, “but there’s always been a huge hole in it. For you. For my family. I’m not just saying this because you’re here. I thought I was doing the best thing for you. Giving you two loving parents. I didn’t know Mom would die so young. I didn’t know Danny would enlist and get hurt and suffer so much. I thought leaving was the best thing for you. The publicity … all the talk … it was already taking a toll on Danny. I didn’t want it to take a toll on you, too.”
“And you wanted to be free.”
“Of course I wanted to be free!” she said, red splotches high on her cheekbones. “But not of you. Never of you. I love you.”
I shook my head. “You got your freedom, Lisa, but Danny and I got a life sentence, living in a house full of lies.”
She looked alarmed. “Call me Jade, Riley,” she said as though she hadn’t heard a word I’d said other than her name. “Please. You have to call me Jade.”
I felt scolded. She could tell me she loved me all she wanted, but her actions said otherwise. They always had. Suddenly, I knew I had to escape that tight little dressing room. It hurt too much to be there with her.
I pulled the door open and charged out of the room before she could say anything else. I ran across the dark, deserted club floor and pushed through the double doors onto the sidewalk, gulping in the thick summer air. I started running toward my car as if I were afraid she might come after me, my feet pounding the sidewalk.
I was breathless by the time I reached my car, and I leaned against the warm metal door for a moment, my gaze riveted on the dark sidewalk as I watched for her to follow me, but she didn’t.
Only then did I realize how much I wanted her to.