Secret Lives

by Diane Chamberlain

  “I'm not sure what age Katherine will have to be before I can play her. I'm already five years older than she was when she died.”

  The phone rang. Kyle stood to answer it but he turned to Eden before picking up the receiver. “You could pass for eighteen, sweetheart.” He spoke into the phone for a few seconds and then covered the receiver with his hand. “It's for you, Eden. Your friend, Michael Carey. You can take it in the living room if you like.”

  She sat on the love seat in the living room and waited for Kyle to hang up before speaking into the phone. “Michael?”

  “‘Morning.” He sounded half asleep.

  “God, Michael, what time is it? Is the sun up there yet?”

  “I'm calling you from my bed.” He yawned. “Wish you were in it with me.”

  She had never been in his bed, nor he in hers. She could picture him, though. The dark wavy hair against his pillow, the long-lashed brown eyes that drove women crazy. “The roses are beautiful,” she said.

  “I can't function without you, Eden,” he said, his voice syrupy with sleep. “Went to Sophie's party last night and left at eleven. Eleven. The women were beautiful and I couldn't have cared less. Had no interest in getting high either. Everybody said I was a wet blanket. You've ruined me.”

  She smiled. “I miss you.”

  “Well, shit. Did you really say that?”

  She could hear him moving, perking up, and she wished she could take back her words. It was not really Michael she missed. It was the safety of him, of the role she played with him.

  “I don't know. You'd better not give much credence to anything I say right now.” She turned her back to the kitchen door and spoke quietly into the phone. “I'm trapped in the boonies with two people I thought I'd escaped from years ago.

  “Hey, it's all for a good cause. Keep your goal in mind, baby. And as soon as I get a break I'll join you, okay?”

  They had discussed this without resolution. He could help her, he'd said. He could do some of the research on Matthew Riley himself. But she could not picture him here. She'd have to do a balancing act between him and Lou and Kyle. “I don't know, Michael. Let's talk about it again in a few days, okay?” She steered him into a conversation about Sophie's party and safer ground. It was a world she knew well, a world that welcomed her and honored her status. She had built it with no help from anyone and she couldn't afford to lose it. Without it she was uncertain of her next step.

  The trail through the woods was narrower and more primitive than she remembered. She imagined the camera following young Katherine as she walked along it barefoot and frightened. The trail seemed to go on forever and Eden was beginning to think she'd taken a wrong turn when she reached the steep, wooded embankment that led down to the cave. There was a fresh path zigzagging down the side of the hill. That was new. They would have to cover it up when they filmed. When she was small she just slipped and slid down to the cavern and the field below. But Kyle, with his arthritis, would need this trail now.

  She passed the sealed cave entrance and stepped out of the woods into the field. It ran between the embankment and wide Ferry Creek, stretching from the dirt road to the Blue Ridge foothills, perhaps a mile away. The section of the field directly in front of the cavern formed the archaeological site first discovered long ago by her mother. There were three pits open now, each about five feet wide by ten feet long, at varying distances from the cave. She'd been lucky the night before she hadn't fallen into one of the pits in the darkness.

  The site had a deserted, somber feel to it. She hadn't known that the grant would be up in December. For as long as she could remember, Kyle had talked about reopening this site after his retirement, spending the rest of his life sifting comfortably through his roots after the intensity of his work in South America. Losing the grant would put an end to his dream. Already the quiet, barren pits had the look of being abandoned.

  She walked slowly past the first pit. It was deep and empty, the bottom level, the sides square and straight. The floor of the second pit had been carved into different levels, large wafers of earth covered with sheets of plastic.

  As she neared the third pit, she saw that the site was not deserted after all. A man knelt in the far corner, engrossed in something on the ground. His back was to her and she watched him for a moment. He wore earphones attached to the tape player on his belt, and he was humming along with the music. His hair was brown lit with gold—Cassie's color—and a little too long in the back. He wore a blue T-shirt and jeans. His feet were bare, but his sandals were set neatly on the scarred grass at the rim of the pit. A white pickup truck Eden assumed to be his was parked in the shade of an elm over near the creek.

  His partner, Kyle had said. She'd expected someone closer to Kyle's age, someone content to spend his last active years in a small, quiet site. She hesitated a few yards from the pit, staring at the faint snow-angel pattern of sweat on the back of his T-shirt, the faded-to-white denim covering his thighs. Even from this distance she felt something long buried, at once compelling and dangerous.

  Snap out of it. She lifted her chin and walked toward the pit, relieved as the old, familiar armor closed protectively around her.

  “Are you Ben?” she asked when she'd reached the edge of the pit.

  He jumped to his feet, pulling the earphones from his head as he turned to look at her.

  “Sorry I startled you,” she said.

  “No…no problem.” He looked up at her, the pale gray of his eyes holding the sunlight, and she let herself stare for a moment, unnerved. This was ridiculous. She was surrounded by attractive men in L.A. and felt nothing. Then she meets this sweaty, scruffy guy in a hole in the earth and she…

  “Have a seat,” he said.

  She lowered herself to the edge of the pit, her knees at the level of his shoulders. He looked away from her, adjusting the tape player on his belt, and she sensed his discomfort. She was used to it. People often squirmed when they met her. She reached out her hand. “I'm Eden. Kyle's niece.”

  “I know.” He wiped his hand on his jeans but she still felt the warm layer of dust against her skin as he pressed his palm to hers. “You're doing research on Katherine Swift for a movie.”

  “Yes. Kyle said you could show me around.”

  He nodded. “We can start right here.” He motioned toward the ladder and she climbed into the pit, feeling him watching her from below.

  “I'm at the four-thousand-year level here.” Ben knelt down where she'd first spotted him and pointed to a foot-wide plateau carved into the bottom of the pit. “About two thousand B.C. These are pieces of pottery.” He touched a few tiny lumps of dirt resting on a piece of newspaper.

  “They are?” She knelt next to him.

  “Nothing fancy. They didn't do anything fancy back then, just functional. They look like dirt right now, but they won't disintegrate like dirt when they're washed. You'll see.”

  He showed her how to dust the ground for the clay fragments. He seemed relieved to have the work to focus on. Shy, perhaps. These scientific types often were. She didn't want to intimidate him. She asked him questions, hoping to boost his confidence and get him to look at her—she wanted to feel the pull of his eyes again. But he answered her with his eyes on the ground.

  “You can work here and I'll start in the back corner of the pit,” Ben said.

  For the next hour neither of them spoke. At first Eden was fascinated by her hands, imagining the camera on them as they swept, as the fine tan earth began to coat her fingers. But her shoulders grew stiff as she dusted layer after layer of earth and came up with nothing. She began to understand why those little lumps of clay seemed so precious.

  “Are you having any luck?” she finally turned to ask him.

  He laughed but didn't turn around. “Bored already?”

  “Is this usual? I mean, not finding anything?”

  “Think of it as examining a space, so it's just as significant if there's nothing there as if there's somethi
ng there.” He turned now and smiled at her. “You are the first person to touch that dirt in over four thousand years. Does that help?”

  She laughed. “Not really.”

  Ben sat back against the side of the pit. “Your mother never got down this far. She'd be amazed by what we're finding now.”

  “Where are all the artifacts she found?”

  “In the museum in Coolbrook, for the most part. Kyle has the rest of the collection. He keeps it in the old springhouse.” He suddenly grinned and shook his head. “I can't believe I'm digging in the dirt with Eden Riley. You look like a regular person. I don't think I'd recognize you if I passed you on the street.”

  “Good. I'd like to be incognito here for as long as I can get away with it.”

  Ben picked up a clump of earth and studied it for a moment before crushing it between his fingers. He looked at her. “What did Kyle tell you about me?”

  She shrugged, surprised by the question. “Just that you're his partner.”

  “Partner? That's what he called me?”

  “Yes. Isn't that what you are?”

  Ben shook his head. “Jesus, he's amazing. I'm his employee. I was a student of his and we did some work together in South America. That's all.”

  It suddenly fell into place for her. She remembered letters, remembered hearing his name. And she remembered a jealousy she'd had no right to feel. “You're the guy Lou and Kyle used to write me about,” she said. “You traveled with them, didn't you? You've known them a long time?”

  “I met Kyle shortly after you…left them.”

  Eden smiled. “I'm sure that's not the term he used to describe my going to California.”

  “He said you ran away. But you were nineteen, right? Old enough to make your own decisions.”

  “I thought so.” She brushed the dust from the front of her shorts and looked up at him again. “Ben Alexander. I remember now. They wrote about you all the time. I was jealous. I guess I wanted them to mourn when I left, and instead they seemed to adopt you. You replaced me.”

  He shook his head. “That wouldn't have been possible. They adored you. And they mourned you all right. If that's what you were after, you got it.”

  She felt her cheeks flame as she turned back to the square of earth. “Well, I'd better get back to work on this old dirt,” she said. No doubt about whose side this guy was on.

  She knew it was another minute before he turned around himself.

  The soft bristles of her brush caught on something. She slipped them over the earth again and again, and a small, hard mound, about the size of a dime, began to form beneath the bristles. “Ben? There's something here.”

  He sat down on the ground next to her and watched as she swept the earth away from the object. “Go easy, now,” he said. “You don't want to lose anything that might be around it.”

  “Maybe you'd better do it.” She held the brush out to him.

  “Uh uh. It's yours. You're doing fine.”

  He was so close she could smell the sun on his skin. She edged away from him, closer to the cool earthen wall of the pit. She was not accustomed to men like him. All the men she knew were actors, predictable in the personas they'd adopted. They were either gay, blood-and-guts macho, or strong and slickly sensitive, a facade Michael had perfected and others copied. They were like comic book characters. What could be safer than a paper-thin man?

  When she thought of the men in her life she did not even include Wayne. He didn't count as a man. Sorry, Wayne, but it was true. That was one reason she'd sought him out so long ago. His asexuality. His harmlessness. She'd been just a kid then, looking for someone safe to lean on. But the man next to her right now seemed anything but asexual, anything but safe. He was mercurial—self-conscious one minute, brazen the next. She watched him run his fingers over the earth in front of her. She couldn't categorize him. He was a different type of man than Wayne or Michael. Entirely different.

  The mound was now the size of a silver dollar. “Is it pottery?” she asked.

  “Yes. And it looks like it's going to be the biggest piece I've seen in this pit.”

  She looked at him in apology. “I'm sorry.”

  “Don't be silly.” He motioned her to continue.

  The mound grew until the bristles of her brush finally caught on an edge. By that time the rounded piece of clay was larger than her hand.

  “Beginner's luck,” Ben said. He stood up to take a clipboard off the rim of the pit and drew the location of the pottery on a chart. Then he carefully slid his fingers beneath it and lifted it out. He held it in front of her. “It's part of a bowl. Would have been about ten inches in diameter.” He ran one dusty finger across the curved surface of the clay. “They started mixing the clay with vegetable fiber around that time. The deeper we go, the less pottery we'll find. It'll be replaced with stone bowls.” He wrapped the pottery in a piece of newspaper and set it on the rim of the pit.

  It was nearly noon. She wanted to get to the archives in Winchester before they closed. “I'll come here in the mornings, if that's all right with you,” she said. The work in the pit would give her time to digest what she read in the journal.

  “Stay for lunch,” Ben said. “I have two sandwiches.”

  “I don't want to take your lunch.”

  He patted his flat stomach. “I really don't need two sandwiches.”

  They climbed into the bed of the pickup truck and sat under the shade of the elm. Below them, Ferry Creek slapped against its banks, and Eden could hear the groaning of the suspension footbridge that spanned the width of the creek. She'd played on that bridge as a child. Cassie would probably love it.

  Ben threw her a beer from his cooler and handed her a cheese sandwich. She peered inside at two orange slices of American cheese, iceberg lettuce, mayonnaise, and catsup and bit her lip.

  “It's the catsup, huh?” he asked.

  She nodded. “A little odd.”

  He handed her the plain piece of bread from his own sandwich.

  “Music?” He turned on the tape player still attached to his belt. The music was fast, full of accordion. The lyrics were in French. She looked at him questioningly.

  “Zydeco.”

  “Interesting.”

  “It's happy music. I have no idea what they're singing about, which is fine with me. You don't speak French, do you?” He looked worried until she shook her head. “Good. It'd wreck it if I knew what they were saying. This way I can pretend they're singing about whatever I choose. Make it up to suit my mood.”

  She smiled at him. Had she really thought a few hours ago that he was intimidated by her?

  He leaned back against the side of the truck. “I read most of your mother's books when I was a kid. They were full of adventure.”

  “I'm afraid my mother's only adventures were in her mind.”

  “I tried reading one of them to my daughter, but she'd rather watch the movie. Typical kid, I guess. She's a big fan of yours.”

  So, he was married. She wasn't sure if she felt relief or disappointment.

  “I told her I sort of knew you,” he said.

  “Now you can tell her you really do. I'd be happy to meet her, if you like.”

  “Well, I don't get to see her that often. She lives with my wife.”

  “Oh. Where does your wife live?”

  “Annapolis.” He stretched his legs out in front of him. “Your daughter's about the same age as mine. Cassie, right?”

  “Do you know about her from Lou and Kyle?”

  “Everybody knows about Cassie, don't they? Including all the personal details of how long you tried to get pregnant, how you spent the last three months of your pregnancy on bed rest, et cetera?”

  She made a face. Wayne had said he was sick of people learning the most intimate details of their lives while waiting in grocery store lines.

  “How do you tolerate having so little privacy?” Ben asked.

  “Sometimes I don't tolerate it very well.” After Hear
t of Winter, her face had been on so many magazine covers that she'd lost count. That had been fine until Wayne left. Then she'd wished she could have disappeared from the public eye altogether.

  “So how do you go about writing a screenplay?”

  “The research comes first. I thought I'd have to pick Kyle's brain, since he's the only person still living who knew Katherine well. But last night he told me she kept a journal. It would make my work much easier, except that it's written in a dozen notebooks and Kyle plans to feed them to me one at a time.”

  A smile broke slowly from Ben's lips. “He wants to keep you here as long as he can. He was so excited you were coming.”

  “I don't know why. I didn't give him the most pleasant years of his life. Anyhow, I don't want to work strictly from the journal, because I have a specific idea of how I want to present her…” She cocked her head to look at him. “How do you think of her? I mean, as someone who only knows about her from the media?”

  He swallowed a bite of his sandwich. “As an isolate,” he said. “A woman who valued solitude above anything else. That's something hard for me to understand. I'd rather get hit by a train than spend my life alone.”

  “Exactly,” Eden said. “No one understands her because of the way she's been presented in the past. I want to normalize her. I want people to see this film and be able to relate to her, not think, oh, here's that weird Katherine Swift again.”

  “How old was she when she started the journal?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “What does a thirteen-year-old have to write about?”

  “Plenty. She was feisty and impulsive. And lonely. The other kids didn't like her. She got into a lot of trouble. She got her first period and her mother—my grandmother—was so crazy she cut off all Katherine's hair. So she ran away. That was when she found the cavern.”

  Ben looked in the direction of the cave. “Do you remember what it was like inside?” He almost whispered the question, as though he understood that the cave was a subject to be treated with reverence.

  Eden stared across the field to the wooded embankment. She could just make out the dark patch through the trees where the boulders marked the entrance to the cave.