The Art of Keeping Secrets

by Patti Callahan Henry

  “I think I want this story to be over,” Annabelle said, kissed her son’s cheek. “When tomorrow will she arrive?”

  “Evening,” he said.

  “Okay,” Annabelle said. “Okay then.”

  Shawn closed the pizza box. “I’ve got to go.” He lifted his hand in a wave goodbye, moved toward the front hallway.

  Annabelle walked with him to the front door. “Call us tomorrow?”

  “Why don’t you call me if you want to talk?”

  She took his hand when they were away from the kitchen, away from Jake’s eyes. “Shawn.”

  He freed her hand, put his forefinger over her lips. “Please don’t say anything, but do know this—I have always loved you. Always. Tonight wasn’t just about seeing you alone and sad. You have always been in the center of my heart. You are the emptiness in me, and at the same time, you are something complete in me.”

  He paused, then spoke with a steady, sure voice. “Sounds goofy, doesn’t it? It’s the only way I know to describe how I feel, but I’ll never bring it up again, I promise. Tomorrow just listen to what Sofie has to say . . . and move on. Beyond Knox. Beyond me. Past all this mess.”

  Annabelle closed her eyes, felt dizzy. “I don’t know what is beyond us. . . .”

  “You will,” he said, kissed her on the forehead. “You will.”

  She watched him walk across the porch, down the stairs. The light seemed to follow him.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  SOFIE MILSTEAD

  The long drive caused Sofie to feel as though sandpaper were embedded under her eyelids. She had thought adrenaline would carry her all the way into Marsh Cove, but fatigue caught up with her as though it had been chasing her Volvo down the highway.

  She entered Marsh Cove and wove her car down the forgotten streets of her young life. She moved past Marsh Cove Elementary, the tabby-and-stucco library and courthouse, then into downtown. She parked in front of the art studio and stared at the front doors, at the people coming and going. She tested herself. Had she really lived here? For so long, her mother had trained her to say she’d lived in Colorado, she had almost come to believe it.

  How many lies, she thought, do we tell others and ourselves before we believe them, and the made-up life becomes more real than reality?

  She rested her head on the steering wheel. When the car’s air conditioner threatened to quit, she pulled from the curb and drove to the Murphys’ home.

  Sofie parked in the bay’s paid parking lot, shoved quarters into the slender silver meter and walked the half block to Jake’s house. Late-afternoon sun headed toward the horizon to bring twilight to the day: her favorite time. In twilight she believed in possibility.

  A bird crowed from a magnolia tree in the yard, dove down to pick something off the lawn, then flew back to a branch. Sofie remembered the tree now, remembered this house and street. As though driving here had opened a dam of water-drenched memories, remembrances of Marsh Cove’s streets and houses poured in.

  Sofie took a step, then hesitated. She’d called Jake’s cell phone, told him she’d stop by around this time, but the house looked empty. Maybe they’d all left to avoid her. She took a breath and one step, then another, and then stood at the foot of the porch steps and realized she’d held her breath the entire way across the street. She breathed in the fresh air, and then startled as a teenage girl opened the screen door. She filled the doorway with her height and presence although she was small, thin and quiet. Wavy brown hair fell past her shoulders, and she wore a pair of rolled-up denim shorts and a boy’s white tank top. Her arms were tanned and muscular, her legs long and spread in a stance of defiance.

  The girl closed the door, stepped out onto the porch. “Are you Sofie?”

  Sofie lost her words, nodded. Coming here was a huge, monstrous, outrageous mistake. How could she have let a few friendly e-mails trick her into doing something so foolish?

  The girl looked behind her, then back at Sofie. “You can leave now. We don’t want to hear your story.” She shook her head a few times as if for emphasis.

  Sofie backed a few steps from the house, tripped on a tree root that had forced its way through the brick sidewalk. She caught her balance, grabbed on to a branch and stood her ground. “Is Jake home?”

  The girl walked across the porch, down the front stairs to come face-to-face with her. “Why are you here? Hasn’t your family caused enough hurt for a lifetime? What makes you think you can come here, ask for my brother, my mother?”

  “Keeley?” Sofie asked. “Are you Keeley?”

  “Yes, I am. And you’re leaving, aren’t you?”

  Sofie astounded herself with her answer, with her strength. “No, I’m not.”

  Keeley stamped her foot; tears rose in her eyes. “Get out of here. I hate you. I hate your mother. I hate her art. I hate . . . this entire thing. Get out of here.”

  Sofie felt an odd urge to hug this girl, to save her from the revulsion that crept over her features. She tried with words. “It’s okay, Keeley. I understand. I’m here to take away the pain, not make it worse.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Please, just give me a chance to explain. Then you never have to talk to me again.”

  The two girls were staring at each other, Keeley standing with her arms crossed, Sofie with her hands spread wide, when Jake hollered from the porch, “Hey.”

  Sofie and Keeley both turned; Jake bounded down the front steps. He hugged Sofie before she could put her hands down. “You made it here safely. Great. You remember Keeley?” He stood with his arm over her shoulder. “Of course she was just a toddler when you lived here.”

  Warmth spread from Jake’s arm, across Sofie’s shoulder, through her body, to her heart. “We just had the pleasure of meeting,” Sofie said.

  Keeley glared at her brother. “You’re a disgusting traitor.”

  “Keeley,” he said, the single word a sharp stab.

  She spun around, ran toward the house, wrenched open the screen door, then the wooden door while Sofie and Jake watched her.

  “Well,” Jake said, tousled Sofie’s hair, “welcome to the Murphy home.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” Sofie said. “I didn’t even wait for your response. I just came. Stupid.” She banged her hand on her forehead.

  “If you’d waited for my e-mail, you’d know I told you to hurry up. I couldn’t wait to see you. . . . I’m . . . really glad you’re here. Forgive my sister.”

  “Let’s go somewhere else. I was a fool for thinking they’d want to hear my story. I’ll just . . . tell you.”

  Jake turned her to face him. “Sofie, let me ask you this. Does this story have anything to do with my father?”

  “Yes,” she said, averted her eyes.

  “Then it is for all of us to hear. Okay?”

  She nodded. Jake took her hand and led her toward the house. They entered the foyer and Jake called for his mother and sister. Sofie glanced around the entranceway. So this was how a real family lived. This was where a real family fought and loved and cried and ate. Tears welled up behind her eyes, gathered in the corners.

  Annabelle came from somewhere in the back of the house. Sofie stared at her; she’d always wanted to imagine Annabelle as an ugly woman, an almost-witch, who kept Knox Murphy from them. But here was a beautiful woman with a son, a daughter, and a dead husband. Sofie’s heart hurt. She placed a hand over her chest. “Hello, Mrs. Murphy,” she said.

  “Hello, Sofie.” Annabelle nodded once, then gestured into the house. “Why don’t we all sit down in the sunroom and have some sweet tea?”

  “Sounds nice,” Sofie said. “It was a long drive. . . .”

  “A long, boring drive,” Annabelle said in simple words of solidarity.

  “Yes.”

  “Jake?” Annabelle touched her son’s arm. “Will you please tell Keeley to come down?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He took the front stairs two at a time, and Sofie watched him until
he rounded the top of the banister. He hollered for Keeley.

  Sofie followed Annabelle into the kitchen, a large room painted a pale blue-gray—the color of the water in Newboro. Black-and-white photos of the land and sea were arranged on the walls along with photos of Keeley and Jake at various ages. A large framed photo of Jake and Keeley with Knox on the bow of a boat sat on the kitchen desk. Sofie walked over, picked it up. Jake’s hair had been lighter then, tousled and wet. Keeley was smiling up at her father. Sofie spoke without thinking. “He was a good father.”

  “Is that a question or a comment?” Annabelle’s voice came from behind her.

  Sofie placed the frame back down and turned to her. “A comment. Not because I would know, but because Jake is a good man and that couldn’t have happened if he hadn’t had a great dad.”

  Annabelle nodded, handed Sofie a tall glass of iced tea. “Here, let’s sit.” She gestured toward the sunroom off the kitchen.

  The two women faced each other across an antique trunk painted bright green with small lanterns arranged on the surface. The iced tea glass was slippery with the sweat of the ice cubes. Sofie leaned back on the striped cushions and tried to control her shaking hand as she took a sip.

  Keeley and Jake entered the room, and Keeley sat on the couch farthest from Sofie.

  “I guess you’re probably wondering why I came here,” Sofie said.

  “I don’t care why,” Keeley said, folded her arms across her chest.

  “Keeley,” Annabelle said, “Sofie is our guest. Be polite.”

  “Go ahead,” Jake said, leaned forward and patted her leg.

  “I’m here”—Sofie took in a long breath—“to tell you my story. To tell you my mother’s story.”

  Cicadas and frogs began their evening song in the back-yard as twilight descended, as possibilities opened wide.

  “My mother told me this story ever since I can remember. It is a true story, although I didn’t know that until later in life. She told it to me so many times when I was young that I thought it was a fairy tale. I knew it by heart. I don’t recall exactly when I realized it was true, that it was my story. I think that sometimes . . . sometimes we don’t always know things right away—just slowly. And that’s how the truth of this story was for me. . . .”

  “Can we move this along?” Keeley said.

  “Not another word, young lady,” Annabelle said, looked over at Sofie. “Go on.”

  “My mother was always one to tell stories, use them as another would use Vicks VapoRub on a sick child. She told fairy tales, myths and stories of running and being saved. My mother told me that my name was always Sofie. She said that when she was pregnant with me, she understood from the very beginning that I was a girl and I would fill her with wisdom, which had escaped her in her earlier years.”

  Jake spread his hands like an offering. “That’s what you meant by the woman who gave birth to wisdom.”

  Annabelle shifted in her chair. “What are you talking about?”

  Jake looked at Sofie. “Nothing. I’m sorry. Just go on.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “The name Sophia means wisdom and was one of the first words in the Bible for God’s wisdom.”

  “Ridiculous,” Keeley said.

  Sofie ignored her and continued, feeling the strength of the story swelling. “Mother said the story was about a man with no wisdom. He was a man bent on control. A powerful man who wore a mask of gentility that fooled her into believing that what she saw was real. She’d say to me, always, ‘Remember this, my Sofie: what you see is rarely the full truth; things are not what they seem—except in maybe art and nature and even then be careful, be wise.’

  “She told me that my father was cruel with his words and with his hands. He hurt her. Badly. But she had no one to turn to for help. She’d come from the poorer section of her city, and this man took care of my mother and moved her mother, my grandmother, to a beautiful resort in Colorado. My mother didn’t understand, until later, that he did this to gain complete control over her. In this man, my mother thought she saw a chance to escape from poverty.

  “What she didn’t know was that sometimes we can escape into something even worse. He married her when she was eighteen. When she was twenty years old, he brought her to Charleston, said he wanted her to have a little vacation while he was on a business trip. She was pregnant with me, but hadn’t told him. She didn’t want to travel, but she went out of fear and a learned obedience.

  “When they arrived in Charleston, she felt as though she had come home. In every piece of her being, she felt as if she’d once been torn from there, although she knew she’d never been there before. Her husband was busy with his work while she wandered the streets of the city that captured her heart. In their preoccupation, they didn’t watch the news, didn’t pay attention to the incoming hurricane until the hotel personnel informed them that they had to evacuate. My mother felt she could never leave that place, that land. The thought of leaving broke her heart more than it had been broken in those months of fear and abuse.”

  Fatigue spread through Sofie’s body, as though the trapped story took her energy with it as she released it to the Murphy family. She wanted more iced tea, but she didn’t ask for it.

  “This man was confident in all his ways and didn’t believe they needed to evacuate. My mother stood on the deck of their hotel room, the opulence surrounding her like a thick, smothering blanket. She watched a man and woman below her balcony. The man touched the woman’s face, moved her hair off her cheek and gazed at her, and my mother knew she’d never experience anything like this with her husband.

  “When Mother got to this part of the story, she always placed her palm over the place where my ribs met in a V, and told me, ‘There is a sacred place inside you that will always tell you when you see or meet something that is yours, that is for your heart.’ She said that when she saw that couple, she understood that this kind of feeling waited for her in this land. She also knew, despite what her husband told her, that the hurricane was coming. She saw it in the wind, the rain, and she also knew I was growing inside her. She decided right then to run with the storm.”

  Sofie stopped, looked at the Murphy family. Annabelle planted her elbows on her knees, leaned over. “The hurricane was Hurricane Hugo.”

  “Yes,” Sofie said.

  “Your mother ran into Hurricane Hugo.”

  Sofie nodded.

  Annabelle looked between her children, seemed to bite back words, then sat back, closed her eyes. “Finish, please.”

  “Mother said it mustn’t look like she ran on purpose, only out of fear of the wind and rain that she actually welcomed. The man—my father—was in the bar, drinking and laughing with other men, joking that anyone should be scared of a little storm. They knew nothing of nature’s fury.”

  “Whoa.” Keeley held up her hand. “You keep calling him ‘the man.’ Who calls their father ‘the man’? That’s totally weird, don’t you think, Jake?”

  Sofie pulled her feet under her, curled her spine into the back of the chair. “It’s because my mother never told me his name . . . ,” she said.

  “Oh.” Keeley looked around the room. “Oh.”

  “Anyway, Mother took very little from their hotel room: some cash and all her jewelry—which would not seem odd to a man who liked to see his wife decked in finery to prove his own worth. She left a note saying she didn’t want to bother him in the bar with his friends, but she had to go to the drugstore for some things she’d forgotten.

  “The note must not raise his suspicions about where she’d gone. She took the rental car and drove as far and fast as she could—past the city limits. She knew she had to make it look as if she’d died in the storm, that she was irretrievably lost.

  “The police flagged her down, told her she would not be allowed over the bridge toward the coast, only traffic going inland was permitted. She drove the car down a side road and wound through the streets. She made it as far as the Ben Sawyer Brid
ge and stopped, stared into the rushing water below. There she saw her answer: clear and running, moving and shaping her life. The traffic was clogged. She drove to the far end of the street that ended where a guardrail remained shattered from a previous accident—a providential one that allowed her to take advantage of another’s misfortune. She found a large rock, placed it on the gas pedal, stood outside the car and jammed the gearshift into drive.

  “Mother said the car took off like a lightning bolt, throwing her arm backward against her body, ripping a tear in her forearm where the side of the door caught her flesh. She had that scar the rest of her life. . . . Anyway, then she fell and watched the car enter the river without a sound. The fury of the storm and honking cars, of nature’s chaos, shrouded the sound of a single car entering the raging river. She stepped back and watched the car move toward the opposite shore, sent up a prayer that it would not wash out to sea. If he was to think she was dead, the car must be found.

  “Then she started to walk. And walk. She was scared for me, knew she needed to conserve her strength, find food and water. She walked through the storm, and when night fell and the storm hit its climax, she’d made it to Marsh Cove, where she saw a farmhouse on a small hill.

  “There was no strength left in her by then. She didn’t care if the storm took us both—at least we were free of him. She opened the wide red doors of the barn—thick with paint and solid as though they’d been left there for her. The hayloft was warm, dry, and there were no animals. She found out later they’d been moved the day before to a safe place inland. She crawled into the hay, and slept through the storm. Looking back, she didn’t see how this was possible—that she slept through the devastation that caused so many deaths, destroyed towns and families and farms.

  “Finally hunger woke her—and a panic that she’d threatened my well-being, not just her own. Hungry now, she tried to figure out what to do next, even as she wept with relief—she’d broken free of his chains, ones she thought would bind her forever.”

  Sofie rubbed her face; this was the part of the story where she could not tell them every emotion her mother had shared with her. Only the facts here.