Secret of Lies

by Barbara Forte Abate

  He stopped without warning, pausing to stare out at the silvery white caps visible on the cresting waves slamming hard against the sand. It was difficult to gather the components of his face in the darkness, only the sharp set of his jaw and the straight line of his nose somewhat discernible. I reached out, my hand briefly touching his arm with my fingertips, and he pulled me to him, folding me against his chest.

  I clung to him, absorbing the warmth of his body, inhaling the familiar scent of his skin, feeling his lips on my hair as he kissed the top of my head. He took a step back, releasing me, a sweet smile touching his mouth as he moved his fingers, “Next summer isn’t so far away.”

  “Yes, it is. What if I can’t come back?”

  I’d told him nothing of the situation raging in my aunt and uncle’s house, preferring to keep my family’s ugly dysfunctions locked behind our own closed doors. And whether or not I’d made a mistake in keeping it to myself, I nevertheless knew that now wasn’t the time for such disclosures. This night belonged solely to us. To Jake and me.

  “You’ll be back. You have to come back.”

  I wondered if he truly felt the confidence reflected there in his eyes or if he’d only conjured it up right then to persuade me. Whatever his purpose, his decisive assurance acted as a soothing tonic to my wavering spirits. I had plenty of time to spill sorrow all over myself later on the trip back home to Callicoon, and then all winter long if I so desired. And besides, Jake was right. Surely Aunt Smyrna would at least let me come back. After all, I’d done nothing wrong. Eleanor could very well repent on her own for her foolish part in receiving our uncle’s drunken kisses. Let her milk the cow and scrape chicken-shit out of the hen house all next summer on the farm. As long as I was here–right here, reunited with Jake–the extent of my sister’s penance was of little consequence to me.

  Feeling newly hopeful, I dashed across the sand; the wind whipping my hair back from my face, the surf pounding in my ears. Jake managed to catch me but I twisted away and sprinted further up the beach, laughing joyfully with the release of my weighty burden.

  We’d run quite far, slowing only once we’d reached the point where nature’s hand had sculpted the sand into a colony of dunes. We’d come to this place often over the past few weeks, spending long cloistered afternoons together. I darted toward the smooth slopes, confident Jake would read my intentions and follow. He grabbed my ankle as I struggled to pull myself up the sandy incline, but I playfully managed to shake him off–giggling, joggling my foot like a dance in midair.

  And then all at once–I froze–the world gone perfectly still.

  He released me, immediately deciphering something urgent in the bewildered expression I turned toward him.

  “I hear someone up there,” I signed rapidly.

  Jake nodded.

  While any other time I would’ve scuttled away unseen and unheard–hesitant to intrude on someone else’s private doings–on this night some unexplained instinct propelled me forward.

  Creeping low to the ground I eased closer, certain I’d recognized something familiar in the voice I’d heard; inwardly fuming over the thought of anyone else’s presence here where only ours belonged–no matter how irrational a notion it might’ve been.

  We held back for a long moment, waiting, impossibly still despite the wind lashing against us with the bitter current waving up from the sea. The voices were gone now, carried away to be lost in the dunes.

  “Let’s go,” Jake motioned.

  I shook my head. I’d heard it again. Someone was definitely there.

  “You are so beautiful ... so perfect ...”

  The shifting wind now carried the words toward me clearly and my insides staggered with a sickening lurch, certain the voice I heard belonged to Uncle Cal, just as I was sure that it wasn’t Aunt Smyrna to whom he spoke.

  “I’m sorry, but I just don’t think I can do this anymore, Cal. I keep thinking about everything you said, but somehow–I don’t know–it doesn’t seem right.”

  My heart hammered like a knocking fist, my brain frantically added two and two and coming up with ten thousand.

  “It was over with her ten years ago. I told you I loved you and I meant it. I’ll take care of you–there’s nothing more important to me. She only said that nonsense about other women to hurt you. It’s just you, Ellie, nobody else. Just you.”

  I could feel the lies in his voice. Taste the deceit rolling from his tongue. There’d been no time to think beyond an immediate reaction. And had I only hesitated a moment longer, taken a breath, counted to ten, rocked my head to loosen the tightening snarl of disbelief and confusion. But my body sprung forward like a flag unfurled, fueled by a lethal tonic of stunned disbelief and anger.

  Even in the pitch darkness there was little difficulty in deciphering the shape of the two entangled bodies pressed together against the light colored sand. And if not before, then certainly now, all ability to logically function fled in the damning instant it took for my eyes to convey to my brain all that they saw–the long expanse of Eleanor’s bare leg curved against our uncle’s back and the stark hideous ugliness of what it meant.

  The next moments whirled out in a rapidly spinning reel of violent emotion. Jake arrived at my elbow, both of us stunned and staring for what could’ve been no more than the breath of an instant when Eleanor turned her head and saw us.

  She screamed–a startled high-pitched wail of fear.

  “Who is it?” my uncle demanded in what was surely intended to be an authoritative voice, instead, his words quavering like falling leaves as he frantically snatched up his clothing and pressed the fabric against his nakedness. “Who’s there?”

  The full comprehension of everything–not only this, but all those telltale hints and suggestions over the previous months–came whirring back sharp and concise like a boomerang I’d consistently attempted to toss away, but which stubbornly managed to return, obediently landing at my feet. Because hadn’t I known about them before? Didn’t this night merely confirm the recurrent suspicions I’d willfully pushed back down each time they’d succeeded in forcing their way to the surface of my conscious thoughts?

  I stood–a pillar of salt–offering nothing, waiting for some excuse or explanation, an answer for what could never be explained or rationalized.

  ...I could only stare, unable to move out from under the weight of crippling disbelief, holding them within the inescapable cell of my eyes like condemned prisoners; staring even when I was no longer actually seeing them–all at once overwhelmed by the curious sensation that I had nothing inside at all–that I wasn’t really there.

  But just as quickly as it settled, the paralyzing shroud lifted, something inside my head shifting–snapping open to unleash a landslide of venom; vile accusations spilling from my lips like poison, the sound of the words harsh and satisfying in my ears. The fervor of my disgust leaving me wholly unsympathetic to the genuine terror etched like a veneer over my sister’s face–her expression a stark contrast to my uncle’s, his customarily cool and polished exterior peeled away to leave the frail skeletal bones of a timid and pathetic coward.

  And then all at once I was tearing away, running to escape the sickening reality of everything I’d never wanted to see–never wanted to know. Falling in the softly sifting sand, I tumbled easily down the dune’s steep slope. And when Jake attempted to help me to my feet I pushed him away. The conviction already having arrived that our witness to their revolting crime had left us equally tarnished and soiled.

  Morning … I lay in bed, reluctantly awake, squeezing my eyes tight against the instantly returned angst of the previous night, striving to center my attentions on the sharp cadence of rain pinging against the glass like stones … wishing it away … wishing it wasn’t true … wishing I didn’t know.

  In the hallway outside my room the sound of voices rose sharply then fell away. I blinked my eyes against the dismal shadings of early light; staring out past the rain spattered glass –sky, air
, and water barely visible, everything muddied together in an ugly shade of grey.

  Was Eleanor back?

  I listened, waited, but now there was only silence, the drops rapping the pane the only intrusion into the quiet.

  Eventually I would have to go downstairs and face them. Impossible. How would I look at either of them ever again and not see the hideous scenes I’d attempted to scour from my head even before they’d settled?

  They would’ve been pacing for hours, my sister and uncle–though maybe sitting now, tightly coiled, waiting, insides sickly knotted with the certain dread that I would appear to betray them, neither seeing the truth of how they’d already succeeded in deceiving themselves. Because surely the magnitude of their sins would have worked to change their outward appearance–appalling in such a way everyone would know just from looking at them. I needn’t say a word, they’d done it all themselves.

  “Stevie? Are you awake?” Aunt Smyrna had come in soundlessly to stand beside my bed.

  “Um hum,” I rolled over onto my back, startled, then immediately alarmed by the intensity of her stare–eyes piercing like a blade though butter.

  “What happened to Eleanor last night? Where did she go?”

  “Huh?” I mumbled, uncertain as to the depth of her question. Did she really expect or even want details? “Shouldn’t you ask her?”

  “She’s not here.”

  After deserting Jake on the beach, I’d sped back to the house and flown in a direct route to the sanctuary of my bedroom. With my insides continuing to heave like buckling asphalt, I’d laid awake for hours, long enough not to know when I’d finally fallen into a place resembling of sleep.

  “You mean she didn’t come home?”

  “Stephanie, you have to be honest with me. Did you see her with anyone?”

  “Well, she ... she wasn’t really with anybody. We were all together–just a bunch of us standing around the fire.”

  “If she didn’t come up to the house with you she must’ve been with someone.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, unsure what inherent sense of intuition inspired me to hold back right then. This was Eleanor’s mess. Let her and Uncle Cal fix it. “I was tired and we were running out of wood so I just came back by myself.”

  “What am I supposed to tell my sister,” she breathed heavily, crossing her arms to clasp opposite shoulders, fingers gripping the fleshy slopes tight enough to make her knuckles show white. “Why must he do this to me?” She paced the floorboards from bed to window and back. “Once, twice–am I supposed to try and compete with them? Is that what he expects–a competition?”

  I watched her, uncertain, afraid to guess or otherwise understand the precise meaning behind her ravings–unwilling to recognize whatever it was that had unraveled to deposit her on the threshold of coming unhinged.

  “What about Uncle Cal? I saw him talking to her. Maybe he–”

  “He said he brought down a bag of marshmallows and then went for a walk on the beach by himself. He says the fire had burnt-out and everyone was gone by the time he came back.”

  “Oh … maybe she … well, you know how Eleanor is, she’ll show up soon,” I said, hearing the lack of conviction in my voice and wondering if Aunt Smyrna had detected it too.

  “It’s pouring and the storm is practically on top of us,” she said, a rise of undefined emotion threaded tightly through her words. “Hurry and get dressed. We need to go out and find her.”

  Crawling along the deeply rutted roads through the blinding curtain of rain was one of those endeavors that felt altogether useless but which needed to be pursued regardless. It was all but impossible to see the pavement in front of us as the car inched ahead slowly, and on either side of the narrow shoulders hemming the road there was nothing remotely visible beyond the ominously swaying shadows of trees and shrubs torturously bent by the driving wind and battering rain.

  The search was futile. By all appearances the inhabitants of the narrow strip of land had all but vanished, either returned to the city or stubbornly barricaded in their homes to wait out the storm; leaving no one to question, no probable shelters to scour, no visible trail leading to Eleanor.

  We rode back to the house in silence, the car itself the sole entity conscious of taking in regular breaths as it labored slowly through the downpour. Hunched into a corner of the back seat, I stared at the back of my uncle’s head as he drove–the polished cap of hair he’d inconceivably taken the time to comb neatly before leaving the house to search for Eleanor–fervently wishing I had something to pound against it.

  While earlier my thoughts had churned and twisted within the realms of concern, the slow creep of passing hours had steadily worked to push my apprehensions in a diligent climb reaching into something else–somewhere farther beyond those of simple speculation. Somewhere that felt like fear

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon when the hurricane hit, the world outside turned black and threatening, as though every fear I’d ever harbored or believed to exist was lashing out at me–at all of us.

  We’d returned to the house, my heart knocking an urgent prayer that Eleanor had miraculously reappeared in our absence and we’d find her there–blue jean clad legs stretched out along the couch cushions, face thrust between the pages of one of her favorite trashy novels–as if nothing unusual or of particular consequence had ever occurred.

  Instead, the house was as we’d left it–empty and cold.

  “Shouldn’t we call the police?” I said, when neither my aunt or uncle suggested what now seemed most imperative.

  “She hasn’t been gone long enough,” Uncle Cal answered, placing a reassuring hand on Aunt Smyrna’s shoulder. It was the first time I’d seen him touch her since our arrival in June and the gesture sickened me now for its feigned sentiment.

  “Then where is she, Calvin? We should at least call Libby.”

  “Take it easy, Smyrna. Just let me handle everything.” Uncle Cal said, careful to keep his eyes from mine. “She’s all right. She’s a smart girl. There’s no point in calling Libby and getting her needlessly upset. It’s best if we just wait it out. She’ll be home when the storm blows over.”

  “We should call the police,” I said again.

  “No. Not yet. We need to wait. Just give her a little more time to turn up on her own.”

  Within the hour the electric was out and the telephone dead. All distinction between day and night assiduously erased as the storm continued to slam its rage along the shoreline, the tide rising nearly ten feet as wind gusts churned up angry floodwaters. And as the world beyond the windows fought hard against itself, the house became a tomb, offering no means for escaping either the brutal aggression of the weather outside or the numbing cold of fear and dread within.

  When the last of the candle supply inevitably flickered and died, Uncle Cal went to the basement armed with a flashlight, returning shortly with two old and grimy lanterns he’d found squirreled away beneath the stairs.

  With little else to pass the time, I sat within the circle of subdued yellow light cast by the lantern, leafing through a gardening magazine I’d found stuffed between the cushions on the couch. Thumbing the glossy pages, my mind deafly resisted the command to focus, words and pictures of bright showy blooms running together in a distorted riot of gibberish, so that I’d eventually abandoned the ruse, tossing the magazine aside to stare silently into the nothingness.

  The two had been pouring drinks from a delicate cut-glass decanter for hours now, my own presence there all but forgotten. Propped in a chair with her legs curled beneath her, Aunt Smyrna eventually tipped her head sideways as though no longer capable of supporting its weight on her slender neck and closed her eyes, sinking below the surface and into a leaden sleep. She’d been insistent we stay together in one room for the duration of the storm in the event of some unanticipated catastrophe–shattered windows, collapsing walls, a dislodged roof. Only now, sitting here with Uncle C
al as my aunt held to the slumber of the dead presented a situation so distasteful as to be intolerable, and I rose quietly with the intention of slipping away.

  “Stephanie,” he said softly before I could pass. “You won’t say anything, will you?” He offered a tight smile more resembling of a grimace.

  I hated him. Thoroughly and completely despised him. “Where’s Eleanor?”

  “Shh … look, I don’t know. She ran off last night. I looked for her, but I couldn’t find her. It was too dark.”

  He paused, draining his glass, glancing quickly at Aunt Smyrna before he spoke again. “You really upset her, Stevie.”

  “How dare you! You’re the one who did this, not me,” I hissed, wishing I believed my own words–that I was truly blameless.

  He stared at me with the cold unblinking eyes of a reptile, the fabricated smile altogether gone.

  “And don’t be so sure I won’t talk. Maybe I’m just waiting for the right time before I do,” I said leaving him there to worry through my oath, stumbling my way along the dark hallway to the stairs, wanting only to be away from the stark evilness of everything I was convinced I saw in him.

  As it had been in every other part of the house, the shivery damp had steeped its way through the walls and into my bedroom, and I bundled under the bedcovers without bothering to undress, wrapping my arms around my bent knees and pulling them to my chest.

  The pounding of the sea and machine-gun fire of rain hammering the clapboards and windows lashed out from one hour into the next; the weight of the heavens slamming against the earth in a punishing assault, unrelenting in the fierce determination to wrench everything from the land.

  And as nature seethed and raged outside, the tumult bred by my own terrible accusations and poisonous words unleashed the previous night came crashing back in horrible sickening waves. Because, while I wasn’t especially remorseful for the things I’d said–not then–it was jarring to think Eleanor would elect to brave a hurricane if it meant avoiding the storm awaiting her at home.