Every Single Secret

by Emily Carpenter

  Daphne,

  A part of me is relieved you got in touch with me. Not that I’m happy Heath is suffering, I’m just glad someone cares enough about him to make sure he gets help. Heath Beck is a troubled person, Daphne, but you know this or you wouldn’t have written me. And maybe I should’ve reached out to you a long time ago. I’m sorry if I did the wrong thing.

  Heath and I were dating when you guys met, but I think you must be aware of that by now. Things weren’t going well with us. He’d been having nightmares. They were sporadic at first, but became more constant toward the end. He sleepwalked, tore all the blinds off my bedroom windows. Once he even smashed an antique mirror that I’d inherited from my great-grandmother. I don’t know what the dreams were about—he would never say—but after a while I didn’t care. I just felt afraid, and not only for my furniture.

  As far as his past, Heath told me his parents were strange people who lived this alternative, off the grid, hippie lifestyle somewhere in east Georgia. He said they were physically abusive to him, isolated him from the outside world, and he hadn’t seen them since he ran away at sixteen.

  He refused to see a doctor, although once he did float the idea of us attending a couples’ retreat he’d heard about. By then, though, he’d started not coming home, sometimes for days. And then one of my friends said they saw him out with another woman. You, as it turned out. It was just as well. I was done with him, ready to forget the things that had happened between us. And maybe I was wrong—or just not patient enough—but I didn’t really feel like our problems were a relationship issue. I believed something was wrong—is wrong—with him.

  I hope you can help him work things out, but I don’t know. He’s a locked door, Daphne. And he doesn’t like it if you knock too hard. Maybe he’s found someone more understanding in you. Anyway, if you don’t mind, I’d rather you didn’t bring up my name to him. I’d rather just forget I ever knew him.

  Annalise

  I stared down at the email, letting her words sink in. That wasn’t quite the story Heath had presented. He’d told me he and Annalise had drifted apart and basically ended things before we met. He’d said they simply hadn’t been a match, and I’d accepted the explanation. And, yeah, even if Annalise saw it differently, that wasn’t so unusual. There were two sides to every breakup story.

  But . . .

  A couples’ retreat? That was more than a little coincidental. Was it Baskens that he’d wanted to bring Annalise to? If so, he knew about the place at least a year ago and had lied to me about hearing about it from the guy in his office. It also meant I wasn’t the first woman he’d tried to get up here, or the first one he’d felt seriously enough about to consider therapy with. What was that stupid phrase? Sloppy seconds.

  Another thing: he had told me he was raised by a single mother, with a procession of bullying boyfriends, who died when he was sixteen. And he told Annalise he was raised by a mother and father in some isolated country cabin and ran away at sixteen. Two different stories—so clearly he had lied to at least one of us, maybe both. There was a chance he was still keeping the real truth of his childhood to himself.

  Something struck the roof of the car, and I jumped. I looked out the window, but there was no one there, at least no one that I could see. And then something hit again, this time on the hood. What the hell—

  Outside the windshield I saw a small object bounce onto the hood of the car and roll off onto the ground. An acorn. I collapsed against the seat, heart thundering. The goddamn thing sounded like a missile. I drew in a deep breath and blew it out. I cracked the door and sucked in breath after breath of cool air. I just needed a minute to settle down. This was what I’d wanted—to know the truth about Heath, so we could deal with it. And now I knew.

  The next move was mine.

  So what was that going to be? Should I march up to Heath and announce that after almost a year of trusting him, after almost a year of believing everything he’d told me about his past, I’d suddenly decided to reach out to his ex-girlfriend? Oh and hey, FYI, a few of your stories don’t line up, and also, is your smashing her house up the only reason she didn’t feel safe around you?

  There was no way that discussion was going to end well.

  I closed my eyes and saw the child-psychologist’s office—worn carpet and dingy walls hung with framed diplomas and certificates. I felt the edge of the slick, uncomfortable sofa under my thighs. Smelled the stale smoke lacing the air. A woman with whiskery, cigarette-pleated lips and bloodshot eyes that regarded me frostily over wire-rimmed reading glasses. She asked me questions, her voice rough and laced with phlegm:

  Tell me what Mr. Al did to you, Daphne. Tell me, and you can go home.

  For some reason, that doctor kept asking all the wrong questions. Heading down a bunny trail, like Mrs. Bobbie used to say. I could have told her what really happened, who was the real evil person at the ranch, but then I would get myself in trouble. The police would take me away—from Omega and the other girls. From my home.

  So, instead, I tried to explain how good Mr. Al was. I’d heard about men like that, but he didn’t touch us in that bad way, and he never put a hand on me. He was really nice. He hung out at the clubhouse with us, built doghouses, and took us to the library. He laughed and acted silly with us.

  I told her just enough to send her down the right trail. And to get Mr. Al hauled from the ranch in handcuffs. The tragedy was, he was nothing more than a guy who liked to smoke weed—a stupid one, yes, since getting high with teenage girls was not an okay thing to do by anyone’s standards. But he was harmless. Better than that, he was kind. His concern for me was sincere, and it comforted me to know someone truly cared about me. Until Hap Silver, he was the closest thing I’d ever had to a father.

  I opened my eyes, tucked the iPad back under the mat, and got out of the car, leaving it unlocked for later. Shoving the keys in my pocket, I hurried back to the house, arriving just in time to see a man—Luca, probably—slip into the house through the screen door. I glanced at my watch. Lunchtime. There must have been someone eating out here.

  I crossed the lawn and found a graveled walk that led down the terraced levels. At the bottom, I could see a grove of gnarled trees with a concrete bench in the center. Heath sat there, two silver-covered plates beside him.

  “So this is the bird garden,” I said, coming up behind him.

  Heath twisted around. “You weren’t in the room, so I figured you went for a hike. Luca brought us lunch, just in case I ran into you.”

  He smiled at me, and I couldn’t help it—I pictured Instagram Annalise, her apartment filled with smashed glass. Cowering in fear before her boyfriend. I blinked the image away.

  “That was nice,” I said. “But aren’t we supposed to take our meals in our rooms?”

  Heath shrugged and removed a lid. “So we get a demerit. Who cares?”

  I took in the bird garden. A stand of mature redbud trees formed a ring around the small, smooth lawn where we sat. The trees’ heart-shaped leaves had gone bronze, and each branch was trimmed, like a Christmas tree, with dozens of wooden birdhouses. The houses were hopping, quite literally, with activity. Birds popped in and out, flying off in search of nest-building supplies or worms or whatever they ate, and returning. A giant avian-party apartment complex.

  I inspected one of the houses hanging on a low branch. Its walls had once been painted with a detailed purple-and-green-and-gray paisley design. Miniature birds made of tiny dots marched in a circle around the base of the house. It must’ve been painted long ago. The mountain weather had faded the colors so much they were only visible if you got close.

  “Come eat,” Heath said.

  I joined him on the bench and dipped into a bowl of thick butternut squash soup. “Was it bad? Your session?”

  He shook his head. “Not particularly.”

  I thought of what I’d overheard Dr. Cerny say in the office. Do you think having her here was really a good idea? I tucked my legs u
p under me. It was perfect here in the garden, sun shining in dappled splotches through the trees. The whistles of the birds. You could only see a red smudge of the house from here, high on the hill above us. I tried to let the peace soak into me. Tried not to think about Cerny talking about me. Or what Annalise had written in her email.

  “He asked me about my memories,” Heath said. “My first day of college. How strange it felt to be sitting in a classroom the size of a theater with all those other students. The papers shuffling and pens scratching. The smells of other people’s laundry detergent.” He seemed far away, staring past the trees and the swaying birdhouses. “I was just so glad to be there. To be lost in the crowd, one in tens of thousands. It was good to talk about it, which was a surprise. Easier than I thought.”

  He went back to his food. “I also told him about my mother.” He hesitated. “I told him that I wanted, more than anything, to be able to forgive her.” He paused.

  I knew what he was doing. He was giving me a chance to engage in his therapy. To help him in his search for closure. I forced myself to speak.

  “What do you have to forgive her for?”

  He got very still. A chill brushed my skin.

  “Were there boyfriends?” I asked.

  He put down his fork. “No. What I have to forgive my mother for was something different. Something I’ve never told you.”

  I gripped the edge of the bench with both hands, my knuckles gone white. What a fool I’d been, thinking I could control any of this, that I could somehow manage the way the truth came out. This freight train was coming, hard and fast, and I was tied to the tracks.

  He went on. “My mother was single when she had me—and older, past forty. She’d been hustling a long time . . . She was a dancer before I was born. And probably more than just a dancer, even though I didn’t have any proof of it. After she aged out of that career, she got a job at some taco place. Sold weed—and probably harder stuff—to the rich kids in the suburbs.” He let out a long breath. “She’d grown up Catholic enough to feel guilty that she wasn’t giving me a fair shot at life. So when I was still very young, she gave me away—to a couple she met. Well, not gave exactly. I’m fairly certain money changed hands.”

  So it was basically what Annalise said. He’d told each of us a portion of the truth.

  “From the time I was three or four years old, I lived with them.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “They were an older couple. And they wanted me—not because they wanted to be parents, but for other reasons. Disturbing reasons.”

  His words washed over me, and I started to go numb.

  “They owned me. Not to physically abuse. There was no sexual abuse, either, nothing like that. It was . . .” He scanned the woods beyond the garden. “Mind games.”

  “You don’t have to talk about it.”

  He gave me a quizzical look. “I know, Daphne. But they were my parents. The people who raised me most of my life. I want to tell you about them.”

  I laid down my spoon, my appetite gone. I shook my head, once, then twice, like some crazy windup toy.

  “Daphne,” he said. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”

  “It’s just, I don’t want you to feel any pressure.”

  He laughed in disbelief. “I lied to you, Daphne. I made up an entire story about growing up with my mother. About her having two jobs, us being poor, and all these guys she brought around that roughed me up. Doesn’t that bother you? Don’t you care?”

  “I do. It’s just—” I stopped.

  This is the one place I’m afraid to go.

  The one place I can’t go.

  “You’re afraid I’ll push back,” he said. “Expect you to tell me about your past. Isn’t that right?”

  “I just think you should focus on your sessions with Dr. Cerny right now, that’s all. That’s why we’re here. That’s the whole reason we came up here.”

  He pressed his lips into a thin line. “You’ve told me you lived in a house at a girls’ ranch. You said you had surrogate parents there and other girls you lived with and that they got you a scholarship to art school. That’s it. That’s all I know. You’ve never told me anything more.”

  My face felt hot. My whole body felt engulfed in flames. “Because you didn’t want me to!” I practically yelped. “Because we agreed the past wasn’t worth rehashing!”

  He inhaled and let it out slowly. “You’re right. We did agree, but I was wrong, Daphne. It was a bad idea for us to pretend certain things didn’t happen. That certain events didn’t change us. The things that happened to me did change me. They . . . poisoned me, in a way. And I’m afraid if I don’t talk about what happened—if I don’t get the poison out—it will kill me.”

  My eyes burned and I felt tears welling. Shit. Shit. I couldn’t refuse to listen, couldn’t watch him suffer like this. I had to fucking pull myself together and be here for the man I loved.

  I sniffed. “So tell me. Get it all out.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded.

  He looked down at his hands. “I don’t know how to describe it exactly. It was lonely and isolated, so lonely that sometimes I thought I was going crazy. No one ever came to the farm to check on me, no police, nobody from child welfare. I wasn’t adopted legally, of course, but who cared? Nobody knew, and honestly, how difficult could it be to buy an unwanted toddler off a half-starved crack whore?

  “After I ran away, I was so traumatized, I couldn’t bring myself to report them. I believed they could somehow find me, take me back to that place.” His voice trailed and he shook his head. “I’m glad they’re dead now. I’m just sorry I wasn’t able to tell you the truth.”

  “They’re dead?” It was the only question I could think to ask.

  He faltered. “I mean, I assume they are. They were old when I was a child. I haven’t heard from them since I left.”

  We were quiet for a moment, then I spoke. “What about the mirror?”

  “What mirror?” he asked.

  I hesitated. “You always talk about a mirror, when you’re dreaming. Break the mirror, smash the mirror, stuff like that. I thought it might be something from your time with those people. I thought it might be some clue to unlock . . .” I laughed self-consciously. “I don’t know. Now that I’m saying it, it sounds stupid.”

  He stared at me for a moment, then got up, walking over to one of the gnarled trees on the opposite side of the lawn. I looked up at a birdhouse hanging just to my right, almost within reach. If you looked close enough, you could see it had been carefully painted with a design of leaves and vines, all shades of green and yellow. Someone had labored over this tiny shelter, taken hours probably to make it unique and beautiful. And for what—a couple of birds, who wouldn’t know the difference? It was ridiculous. I wanted to pull it down and bash it against the tree trunk. Stomp it until it broke into a million pieces.

  I averted my gaze from the birdhouse. Heath was standing in front of me, a resolute look on his face.

  “I don’t remember any mirror in the house where I lived that scared me,” he said. “Or if there was, I guess there’s a possibility that I’ve blocked it out. Jesus. What kind of fucked up would that mean I am?” He laughed harshly.

  I kept very still. “I’m sorry, Heath.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” He let out a long, trembling breath, scrubbed his face with his hands. “I was scared if you knew how I was raised, that you would see me as damaged. A freak. I thought you might leave me.”

  I nodded.

  He let his eyes shutter. “Dr. Cerny thinks if I can talk about all this, and how it affected me, the nightmares will stop.”

  “That’s good. Really good. I admire your courage.”

  He looked down at me again, his face broken and sagging. For the first time since I’d known him, I thought I could imagine what he would look like when he was an old man.

  “I want you to know me, Daph,” he said. “Even if you don’t like what yo
u see. Even if you don’t want the same in return.”

  I started to say something, then stopped.

  “Just don’t leave,” he said.

  “I won’t.”

  When I stood to kiss his cheek, it felt cold.

  Chapter Ten

  We sat in the bird garden for another half hour and watched the birds zoom in and out of their faded houses. They hopped out on the perches and dive-bombed each other, playing some mysterious bird version of king of the hill.

  Heath told me a few more details about his childhood. The couple who had taken him in lived in a house deep in the country, east of Atlanta, on a large piece of land bordered by a creek and fallow cotton fields. He was never allowed to set foot off the property.

  Public school was out of the question, and there was no church attendance nor any social gatherings. The couple he lived with weren’t religious, Heath said—or, at least, they hadn’t ever talked about God to him. As far as he could figure out, keeping him separated from peers and other adults was more of a privacy issue. They didn’t want to get arrested for buying a child.

  I didn’t mention Annalise Beard or her email. It seemed like she was beside the point now, and bringing her up would probably just create more noise around the situation. Heath didn’t need that, not right now. What he needed was to sit with the story he’d just told, let the realization of it sink in. Then maybe, just maybe, he would come to the conclusion that he didn’t have to stay up here to fix it. That he didn’t need Dr. Cerny, because there was someone else who was here for him. Maybe he’d remember what he’d said to me when we first met, that the only thing he believed in was the right person.

  And I was that person.

  I figured Heath could use some space, so when he gathered the dishes and went inside to get ready for his next session, I stayed behind and prowled around the property. I ambled farther than I’d ventured yet—into the woods, following a narrow trail that wound down to a stream and then looped back up to the yard. The double doors of the barn were chained and padlocked. I stared at them, not seeing rotted wood and lichen but picturing a hawk bobbing, effortless, in a cold blue sky. Oh, to be a hawk. To be any kind of bird.