Secret Lives

by Diane Chamberlain

  I won't cry over this although the tears are begging to come out. I still think of calling him, pleading with him to give me a chance to prove I can be different. But the truth is, I doubt it myself.

  Kyle asked to hear Seth's letter and I finally read it to him. Kyle is so delicate these days, so full of hurt and guilt. He listened to the letter, put his arms around me, and did my crying for me.

  –32–

  “Whatever happened to that little boy you hit, Kyle?” Eden asked her uncle at lunch the next day. Lou was out once again with her painting friend from Georgia, and Eden was beginning to suspect that Lou's absences were designed to give her time alone with Kyle.

  Kyle scooped a spoonful of potato salad onto his plate. “You've met him,” he said.

  “I have?”

  “Fred Jenkins. He's head of the Children's Fund in Richmond.”

  Eden stared at her uncle, openmouthed. She had not made the connection between the victim of Kyle's accident and the dynamic blind director of the Children's Fund she'd had lunch with in Richmond. It sent a chill up her spine to see the course Kyle had set for this man so long ago. “God, that's ironic. He never mentioned a thing about it.”

  “No, he wouldn't.”

  She stood up and carried her plate to the sink, then leaned over to give Kyle a hug from behind, resting her cheek against his temple and, she knew, surprising him. “You had some terrible experiences, Kyle,” she said.

  He reached up to squeeze her hand. “I don’t have much to complain about,” he said.

  She straightened up and faced him. “I’m ready for the next notebook,” she said optimistically, but Kyle’s eyes held the same reluctance she’d seen in them the night of her arrival.

  “Soon,” he said. “You can have it soon.”

  “All right. But after reading this notebook, there’s one thing I have to know now. Did my mother ever take a lover before my father?”

  Kyle looked surprised and then he smiled. “No, honey. Your father was Kate’s first and only lover.”

  Ben drove into Coolbrook to pick up groceries for dinner. He was going to make pizza for himself and Eden tonight because it would be cheap. The trip to New York had nearly depleted his funds, but it had been worth it. Except for that mishap in the restaurant the last night, it had been a perfect trip. And that incident was a blessing in disguise because it led Eden to tell him everything she'd been holding inside half her life. She was lighter now. Freed up. And the bond between them was stronger because of what they knew about one another.

  He bought mushrooms and green peppers in the little store on Main Street. He picked up a pepperoni at the last minute—an extravagance, but it matched his mood. He wondered how the pizza would turn out in his old oven. It didn't matter. He knew Eden would eat without complaint anything he made.

  He stopped in the post office to check his mailbox. It was nearly always empty, so he was surprised to find a notice telling him he had a package. He turned the note over to the woman behind the counter and waited, wondering who could be sending him something. When he saw the package his heart sank. It was the box he'd sent to Kim Parrish, the dollhouse furniture. It had not been opened, the seal unbroken. Alex and Leslie's address had been crossed out with a red arrow pointing toward Ben's return address, along with the words Return to Sender. Damn!

  There was a blue BMW in the dusty clearing in front of his cabin. Ben parked his pickup next to it just as a man stepped out of the car. Blond hair, wire-rimmed glasses. Sam.

  Ben smiled as he jumped out of the pickup. “Sam!” He pulled his brother to him, felt Sam's damp cheek against his own.

  “I was just about to leave you a note,” Sam said. “I was afraid I was going to miss you.”

  Ben grinned at his brother. “New car?” He nodded toward the BMW.

  “Yeah.” Sam set a hand on the hood, casually, as if the car meant little to him. “Runs nice.”

  Ben couldn't stop grinning. “It's great to see you. What are you doing here?”

  “I'm on my way to a conference in Charlottesville and I thought I'd stop in and see how you're getting along.” Sam reached inside the car door and brought out his briefcase and a large tin which he handed to Ben. “Jen's macaroons. Your favorite. She made them for you last night. What's in the package?”

  Ben thought of making something up. He hated Sam to know just how bad things were for him. But instead he shrugged. “A gift for Kim Parrish. I sent it to her but it came back unopened.”

  “Postal service is doing a great job these days, huh? I can take it—” Sam stopped in midsentence and looked Ben in the eye. “You mean Alex and Leslie sent it back to you?”

  “Afraid so.” Ben opened the cabin door and the stuffy hot air hit their faces. He set the package on his bed and walked across the room to turn on the fan.

  Sam shook his head. “God, I can't believe they'd do that.”

  “No big deal. So. Did you have trouble finding this place?”

  “It wasn't easy.” Sam looked around the tiny cabin and Ben's cheeks reddened. He wouldn't be able to kid Sam into thinking he was living comfortably after today. He moved some pieces of dollhouse furniture from the sofa to the coffee table.

  “Have a seat. Want some iced tea? Beer?”

  “Beer,” said Sam. “It's hot out there.”

  “It's hot in here, too. Sorry.”

  “You're making another dollhouse?”

  “Yeah,” Ben said from the kitchen. “For Eden's little girl.”

  “I hope our baby's a girl so we can get a dollhouse out of you.”

  “How are the adoption plans coming?”

  “Great. January or February. We've got the nursery wallpapered and we're picking out a crib next weekend.”

  Ben handed Sam his beer and sat down on the other side of the coffee table, grinning again. “You look good,” he said. Sam was one of those men whose looks only improved with age. He had their mother's coloring—blond hair, green eyes—while Ben favored their father. His mustache was fastidiously trimmed, his hairline just beginning to recede. The glasses brightened his eyes and gave him some credibility as a psychiatrist.

  They had often been lumped together as kids. The Alexander boys. Sam had been a straight-A student in high school and a hard act to follow, but he never held his accomplishments over Ben. Ben was nearly as old, nearly as bright, nearly as handsome as Sam, but not quite. And though the rivalry was slight it was there nonetheless, so that when Sam announced he was going to major in premed in college Ben knew that was one major he could rule out for himself imme-diately.

  The only thing Ben had ever beaten Sam at was fatherhood. The fertility tests had found Sam's low sperm count to be the cause of Jen's not getting pregnant, and he made it no secret to Ben that he'd trade in all his success for the chance to be a father. Ben took no pleasure in the fact that he'd finally done something better than his brother. He'd encouraged this adoption from the start.

  “Have you seen this?” Sam opened his briefcase and pulled out a newspaper, the type you'd see in the grocery store checkout. On the cover was a picture of Ben and Eden.

  The caption read: EDEN RILEY AND MYSTERY MAN PAINT BIG APPLE RED.

  “Oh, shit.” Ben held the paper on his knees. He looked up at Sam. “We went to New York with Kyle and Lou, and when we were leaving a restaurant some jerk sprang out of nowhere and took this picture.”

  “Well, I never would have recognized you, except for the fact that I knew you were seeing her, so I gave the picture a second look. No one will know it's you without your beard. And the article doesn't say much. They don't have a clue who you are."

  It was true that the picture didn't look like him. The angle of the camera threw his features off, made him look thinner, heavy-lidded. He shook his head. “She doesn't need this, though. She worries about her reputation.”

  Sam laughed. “So she takes up with you? She doesn't sound too bright.”

  “She is bright. And beautiful. And amb
itious. A little screwed up, but who am I to talk?”

  “Does she know?”

  “Everything. And she believes me. She really does, Sam.”

  Sam smiled. “You've got it bad.”

  “Feels good to me.”

  Sam shook his head. “What happens when it's time for her to go back to Tinseltown?”

  “We're not thinking that far ahead.”

  “You can tell her from me that if she does a number on you, I'll boycott her next movie.”

  “Sam. Chill out.” Ben smiled, both amused and touched by his brother's concern.

  Sam reached into his briefcase again. “Here's another journal article for you. And Winston will testify, if we can ever get a court date. I'd like to get some guys from the Accused Group to help us.”

  “No way,” Ben said. The Accused Group was an organization of men who felt themselves wrongly accused of molesting their sons or daughters. They held workshops to learn ways to discredit their children's accusations, egging each other on. He'd gone to one meeting at Sam's insistence and came away repulsed. “They only care about what this has done to them,” he'd said to Sam after the meeting. “Not one of them mentioned what their kids are going through.” He'd left that meeting certain he was the only innocent man in the room.

  “I really think they could help us, Ben. They have the contacts.”

  “Forget it.”

  Sam reached into his shirt pocket and handed a few photographs to Ben. “I brought some pictures of Bliss for you.”

  Bliss stood under an umbrella watching a fisherman weigh a small bluefish. “Where is this?” Ben asked.

  “Saint Michaels. Remember, I told you Jen and I took her there a few weeks ago?”

  Bliss was inches taller, her body stretching out, her pin-straight hair cut to the tops of her shoulders. She looked like a street urchin—beautiful, but lanky and underfed.

  “I can't believe how much she's grown,” Ben said. He looked through the pictures, all of them of Bliss on the waterfront. Her face was somber and unsmiling. In his memory, she smiled all the time. In the last picture she was waving at the camera, but still there was no smile.

  “Doesn't she smile anymore?” he asked.

  “Oh, sure. She was a little grumpy that day.”

  Ben sat back with a sigh. “I guess we'll be doing this until she's eighteen, huh? You sneaking me pictures?”

  “I'll do it as long as you want me to.”

  “I know it puts you in an awkward position with Jen.”

  “Blood's thicker than marriage.” Sam stretched, looked around him again. “Speaking of Jen, she wants me to talk you into coming for a visit. You can bring Eden, if you like. We miss you. We used to spend practically every weekend together, remember? Always had some project we were helping each other with.”

  “I'm not ready to go to Annapolis. I can't be that close to Bliss. I'd try to get a look at her.”

  “Mmm.” Sam nodded. “By the way, did you know Sharon's father died?”

  “No.” Ben felt wounded, forgotten. “I thought he was doing better.” Sharon should have called him. Regardless of what had happened this past year, she should have let him know. “I can't even call Sharon to…Do you have her new number?”

  “Yeah, but Ben, I really can’t.”

  “I just want to tell her I'm sorry about her dad. Come on.”

  Sam was easy on this one. He pulled out his wallet and read him Sharon's number from a scrap of paper. “Don't tell them I gave it to you,” he said. “By the way—I've found a couple of names of therapists up here. Why don't you let me…?”

  “Can't afford it.”

  “I'll take care of the cost.”

  “No, Sam. You know that's just not my way of dealing with things.”

  “Do you need a refill on the Valium?”

  “I haven't taken any.”

  “Good. I really wish you wouldn't. You look like you've lost a little weight. Are you eating? How are you sleeping?”

  Ben loved this side of Sam—the soft, concerned, nurturing side that was the reason for his success as a psychiatrist. He would make a wonderful father. “I'm fine. My best nights, though, are the nights I'm not sleeping because I have Eden with me. I've had some very sleepless nights lately.”

  Sam laughed. “My baby brother's sleeping with Eden Riley. Amazing.” He swallowed the last of his beer and set the empty can on the coffee table. “There's just one more thing I have to tell you and then I've got to get back on the road.”

  “What's that?”

  “Well.” Sam took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I hesitate to tell you because there's nothing we can do about it and I figure you're already feeling helpless enough.”

  Ben sat forward. “Tell me.”

  Sam looked him in the eye. “I think Sharon was seeing Jeff when you two were married.”

  Ben shook his head. “She barely knew him, if she knew him at all.” Sharon didn't fit his image of a woman having an affair back then. “What makes you think that?”

  “He slipped when Jen and I picked Bliss up to go to Saint Michaels. He said he and Sharon took Bliss to Wild World two summers ago. Sharon corrected him and he argued with her and then realized he was incriminating himself and shut up."

  “Pretty slim evidence, Sam.”

  “Well, I asked Bliss about it and she thought it was two summers ago too.”

  “Bliss's memory is pretty unreliable.”

  “She calls him Daddy, Ben.”

  At first he didn't understand what Sam was suggesting. He only felt the sting of the word, remembering Eden's reaction when Cassie referred to her stepmother as Mommy. But then he caught on.

  “Do you think…?”

  “I don't know. I know you didn't do it, and if Jeff was really around during that time…”

  “But Bliss said it happened when she was in bed in her own room.”

  “Maybe when you were traveling.”

  “Christ, Sam, why don't you just punch me in the stomach and get it over with? Sharon wouldn't ... You know her better than that.”

  Sam shrugged.

  “She had back problems all that year. She wasn't even interested in sex.”

  “Maybe she just wasn't interested in sex with you. Or maybe not with Jeff either. Maybe she drove Jeff to Bliss or—”

  “That's crazy,” Ben said, but what he was remembering was the time he'd called home from Colorado and a man answered. Sharon had told him it was someone from school. She was having a meeting of some of the teachers. “Assuming it is true—what can we do about it?”

  “That's just it.” Sam put his glasses back on. “There's nothing we can do. I spoke with Barbara McKay and the social worker who investigated the case. They said there's nothing concrete to go on.”

  “I can't believe Sharon would let me go to jail for something Jeff might have done.”

  “You confessed, remember?” Sam had been furious with him for his incriminating outburst in the courtroom.

  “I didn't feel as though I had a goddamned choice. They were going to torture Bliss.”

  “She's not as fragile as you think.”

  Ben set his beer down. He looked over at his brother. “Do you remember Randy?”

  Sam frowned at him. “What are you dredging that up for now?”

  “I've always wondered if you understood why I didn't want to let Bliss testify. I still remember what it was like having all those questions thrown at me.”

  “You really need to see someone, Ben. You should have put that stuff behind you a long time ago.”

  “It is behind me. Or it was until I saw that scared look on Bliss's face.”

  Sam stood up. “Maybe I shouldn't have said anything. Would you rather I just kept this sort of information to myself?”

  “No.” It took all Ben's strength to stand up himself. He didn't want Sam to leave. “Please don't start keeping things from me.”

  “Okay.” Sam put his arm around his brother's shoulders
and started toward the door.

  “Thank Jen for the cookies.”

  “Sure.” At the door Sam turned to face him. “I don't know how to say this other than just to say it.” He pulled a check from his shirt pocket and pressed it into Ben's hand. “Use this for whatever you want. A better place to live, maybe. Or a trip for you and Eden. You should get away. Relax a—”

  “Forget it.” Ben's cheeks burned. He put the check back in Sam's pocket, but Sam extracted it again.

  “Please, Ben, take it.” There were tears in Sam's eyes, ready to spill over. Ben looked away, opened the door wider.

  Sam set his hand on the doorknob. “I can't stand to see what's happened to you. This isn't right. It isn't fair. Please let me help with the money. It's the only way I can.”

  “No.” Ben stared out at the BMW next to his pickup. He couldn't look at Sam's face, didn't want to see if the tears were making their way down his cheeks.

  “You know how much we love you?”

  Ben nodded. “Drive carefully, okay?”

  He stared at the number for a long time before dialing the phone. He held his breath as it rang, grimaced when Jeff answered.

  “This is Ben,” he said. “I'd like to speak with Sharon.” There was a moment's hesitation on the other end of the line.

  “How did you get this number?”

  “It doesn't matter. Is Sharon there?”

  “She doesn't want to talk to you.”

  “Let her tell me that herself, okay?”

  He heard Sharon's voice in the background, then Jeff growling, “You don't have to talk to him.”

  “Ben?” It was Sharon, and he felt an old rush of love for her.