The Silent Sister (3 page)

“Okay.” The smoke was really getting to me, but I planned to tough it out. “I have to clean out the house to be able to put it on the market. Can you help me with that? Not the physical-labor part, but we need to go through everything and—”

“Why don't you just hire someone to cart everything away?” He tapped the cigarette on the edge of the lid.

“Because … that's not the way it's done.” I fanned away the smoke and leaned toward him. “Look, Danny, I need your help. Do it for me, okay? It wouldn't be for Daddy. It's for
me.
It'll be a massive job for me to handle on my own.”

He stood up and squashed out the cigarette in the sink, running the water for a moment. I knew I'd gotten inside him by making the request more about me than about our father.

“This is so messed up,” he said.

“What is?”

“Everything.”

I tried to imagine what it was like inside my brother's head. In one of his more vulnerable moments, he'd told me that he always felt afraid. He reacted to every loud sound as though he was under attack. Nightmares put him back in Iraq, where he'd done things he refused to tell me about.
You'd never look at me the same way if I told you.
Daddy had tried to be there for him, but there was an animosity Danny felt toward my father that I'd never understood. Daddy finally gave up on him and I couldn't really blame him. But
I
wouldn't give up. It was that vulnerable Danny I tried to remember when he was being belligerent.

“Do you love me?” I asked now.

He raised his head sharply. “Of course,” he said, and his shoulders suddenly slumped as though that admission had defeated him. He sighed as he turned to face me. “What would I need to do?” He suddenly sounded like a little boy, wanting to please me, yet afraid of my answer.

“Let me talk to the lawyer tomorrow and then figure out exactly what we need to do.”
We.
I'd make this about both of us. “How about I get you a prepaid phone so we can communicate while I'm here?”

He shook his head. “Don't,” he said, and I wasn't sure if he meant “don't get me a phone” or “don't make one more suggestion or I'll lose it.” Either way, I thought we'd both had enough of a visit for one day and I stood up.

“You look good, Danny,” I said, getting to my feet. “I love you so much.” I did. He was all the family I had left.

*   *   *

I made up the double bed in my old bedroom that night. I could have slept in my parents' much larger room with its queen-sized bed, but I couldn't bring myself to do that. It still felt like their private space to me. I wasn't ready to invade it.

In the two weeks since I'd split from Bryan, bedtime had become the hardest part of the day for me. That was when we used to talk on the phone to say “good night” and “I love you.” I missed those calls so much. For the first week after the split, I talked to Sherise every night instead of Bryan, and how she'd tolerated my whining and moaning, I didn't know. Now she was unreachable in Haiti, and I was an orphan.

I was still awake at midnight, staring at the ceiling. I would never sleep. I got up, walked downstairs, and made myself a cup of Sleepytime tea in the microwave. I was carrying it back to the stairs when I spotted my purse on my father's desk and remembered the purple envelope from the post office box. I took the envelope upstairs with me and climbed back into bed, sipping my tea as I examined the looping handwriting on the purple paper.
Fred Marcus.
No return address. I hesitated a moment before slitting the envelope open with my finger. The only thing inside was a postcard. On the front was a color photograph of a band. Bluegrass or country, maybe. Two women and two men, all of them carrying stringed instruments. At the bottom of the picture were the words
Jasha Trace.
The band's name, I supposed. On the back of the card was a tour schedule, and written where the recipient's address should go, in that same looping handwriting,
Can't wait to see you! Where should we meet up? xoxo

Damn. Now I felt really terrible. Whoever Fred Marcus was, he wouldn't get this card because I'd taken it from his post office box. I should have left it there. Maybe even paid to keep his box open for a while.

With a sigh, I leaned over to toss the card and envelope into the trash can next to my night table. I had enough to deal with without taking on the problems of a stranger. Fred Marcus would have to figure this out on his own.

 

3.

“So your father drew up this will three years ago.” Suzanne Compton, my father's attorney, leaned across her desk to hand me a copy of the will. I paged through it on the edge of her desk. While I'd still been in Durham, Suzanne had helped me file information with the court and get into my father's bank accounts, but I'd put off dealing with his will until now when I could talk to her face-to-face.

“As I mentioned on the phone,” Suzanne continued, “he split everything fifty-fifty between you and your brother's trust. The house. The RV park. His bank accounts. The only exception is that five-acre parcel that goes to Daniel alone. You'll take over as the trustee of his trust now, so we'll have to talk about your responsibilities in that regard.”

I nodded. I knew about the trust, of course, but I hadn't realized I would now be in charge of Danny's money. He could only spend it on certain things to avoid losing his disability checks. I was relieved that my father had left the land to him.

“Your father had a small life insurance policy he apparently bought when he worked for the government,” Suzanne said, “and it appears he kept up the premiums, so that's fifty thousand that also goes to the two of you.”

“He never worked for the government,” I said, wondering if she had her cases mixed up. “He's always just run Mac's RV Park.”

“Well, it's an old policy.” Suzanne rubbed the back of her neck beneath her blond chin-length hair. She looked a little sleepy as she flipped through some notes in what I assumed was my father's file. She couldn't be half as tired as I was after my mostly sleepless night. “He bought the policy in 1980 when he was with the U.S. Marshals Service,” she said.

“U.S. Marshals Service? My father? I don't think…” My voice trailed off as a vague childhood memory came to me. Danny and I were working on a sand castle at the beach, watching a police officer arrest a couple of noisy drunks.
Daddy used to arrest people, too,
Danny had said.
He was a marshal
. I remembered the pride in his voice, but I couldn't have been more than five and had no idea what he was talking about.

Now I smiled. “When I was little, Danny told me our father used to be a marshal. That must be what he meant. In 1980—when you said he bought that policy—my family lived in northern Virginia outside Washington, D.C., so I guess it makes sense. But I had no idea he ever had a government job. He never talked about it.”

“Well, it was a long time ago.” Suzanne looked down at the will, clearly wanting to get on with business. “Now, your father was quite the collector, wasn't he? He told me the violins were the most valuable, but second to that was his pipe collection, and he wants that to go to Thomas Kyle.”

“Seriously?” I sat back, surprised. Tom Kyle? He and his wife, Verniece, were longtime residents at my father's RV park, but I barely knew them. Tom always struck me as a grouchy old man, though Verniece was sweet. When Daddy died, I'd asked Suzanne to work out an arrangement so that Tom could temporarily handle the reservations and payments for the park. As far as I knew, that had gone well.

“Is that something you want to contest?” Suzanne asked.

I shook my head slowly. “No,” I said. “I'm just surprised. I guess Tom Kyle and my father were closer than I thought. It's nice my father left him something.” I was glad to know Daddy'd had a friend he cared about that much. The pipes were probably worth a few thousand dollars. “Does Mr. Kyle know?” I asked.

“No. As executrix, you should notify him. You can have him call me with any questions and I'll draw up a document you and he will need to sign.” She glanced down at the will again. “The only other thing he's spelled out here is that he's leaving his piano and ten thousand dollars to Jeannie Lyons.”

The name didn't register right away. I hadn't heard it in years. “Really?” I asked.

“Do you know Jeannie? She's a real estate agent?”

“She was an old friend of my mother's from back when they were kids, but Mom passed away seven years ago.” I remembered that Jeannie and my mother went away together every couple of years when I was growing up. A girls' getaway, my mother called it. They'd go to the beach or to Asheville, which was where Jeannie lived then, if I had my facts straight. “I didn't know my father stayed in touch with her.”

“It's always possible your mother asked him to leave something to Jeannie,” Suzanne said. “Do you—or your brother—have any problem with her getting the piano or the money?”

I shook my head. “Not if that's what my father wanted,” I said. “Besides, Danny lives in a trailer and I have a tiny apartment.” Then I added with a smile, “Plus, neither of us can play.”

“Then you'll want to see Jeannie,” Suzanne said. “She can help you with the house and RV park, too, if you plan to put them both on the market.”

“I do,” I said.

Suzanne turned to her notes. “I have here that your father had about two hundred thousand in savings at the time he drew up the will. So that, plus the insurance, plus the value of his house and the park, which Jeannie can help you determine, will be split between Daniel's trust and yourself.”

The word
wow
crossed my mind, but it felt wrong to say it. I had six thousand dollars in my savings account at that very moment. I made next to nothing as a school counselor and I thought I was doing pretty well to have put away that much.

“A word of advice is not to go crazy spending,” Suzanne said. “Sock it away. Find a good financial advisor. I can refer you to someone here, but you'd probably prefer someone in Durham. Just be careful with the money and let it grow. Maybe buy a house of your own. Get out of the tiny apartment. Hopefully this will help your brother out, too. How is he doing?”

“You know him?” I asked, not really surprised. Nearly everyone in New Bern knew Danny to one extent or another. He elicited a complicated set of emotions in people: gratitude for his military service, compassion for his injuries, and apprehension over his unpredictability.

“I've never met him personally,” she said. “I set up his trust, though. It sounds like he's been through a lot.” She gave me a kind smile as she closed the file on her desk, and I was grateful that she spoke about Danny with sympathy instead of disdain.

“He has,” I said.

“Listen, one other thing,” she said as we both got to our feet. “When someone dies unexpectedly the way your father did, they don't have the chance to clean everything up. You know, erase sites he's Googled or whatever. So don't dig too deeply into his personal things. Don't upset yourself.”

I frowned at her. “Is there something you're not telling me?” I asked.

“No. I barely knew your father.” She walked around the desk, heading with me toward the door. “When my own father passed away, though, I found some … pornography, that sort of thing, on his computer and wished I hadn't looked.” She smiled sheepishly. “Just a little warning.”

“I can't imagine my father being into porn,” I said, my hand on the doorknob.

“You never know,” she said. “Sounds like your father was full of surprises.”

 

4.

I wanted an ordinary brother. One I could talk to reasonably about my appointment with Suzanne. A brother I could grieve with over our father. I was never going to have that brother, and even though I'd managed to guilt him into coming over to the house that evening, his anxiety was like a third person in my car as we drove away from the RV park. He said his Subaru was low on gas and he didn't have the money to fill it, so I'd picked him up, trying to hand him the hundred dollars I'd taken from his trust fund. He turned away from the money with an annoyed expression on his face. I couldn't blame him. It had to do something to his pride to be dependent on his younger sister for funds now.

I stopped at MJ's to pick up a pound of peel-and-eat shrimp and fries, my heart racing as I waited for the order to be filled, afraid I'd return to the car to find Danny gone. But he was still there, filling the air in my car with cigarette smoke. I said nothing. If he needed to smoke to get through this, fine. If he needed to drink, fine. I'd bought a six-pack of beer that afternoon. Whatever it took.

Before starting the car, I reached into my purse and pulled out the phone I'd bought that afternoon. “Here's a prepaid phone for you so we can keep in touch,” I said, holding it out to him.

“I really don't want a phone,” he said.

“Just for while I'm here.” I pressed the phone into his hand. “I put my number in the contacts, and your number is in mine.” After a moment, he closed his fingers around the phone and slid it into his jeans pocket.

Satisfied, I started the car and we drove to the house, the scent of Old Bay Seasoning mixing with the cigarette smoke. I parked in the driveway, and we walked slowly across the lawn and up the steps to the front door. His limp was not as bad as it used to be, I thought, though I had the feeling his slow, stiff gait might be due to pain. Or maybe he simply wanted to put off going into the house as long as he could. It had been years since he'd been inside.

“Daddy has about two hundred thousand in savings,” I said as we walked through the living room toward the kitchen, the sack of shrimp and fries in my arms. Danny turned his head left and right, taking in the room. I doubted anything had changed since the last time he'd been there. “Half of that money will go into your trust.”