Secret Lives

by Diane Chamberlain

  “Sam just told me about Pop,” he said. “I'm so sorry, Sharon.”

  She said nothing and he felt an aching in his chest.

  “I wish you'd told me,” he said. “He was a part of my life, too.”

  “I know.” Her voice was husky. “I didn't know what I should…”

  He heard Jeff bark something in the background. “Could you please ask Jeff to give you a few seconds' privacy?” To his surprise, she spoke to Jeff and Ben heard the slamming of a door. Poor Sharon. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I don't want to create problems between you two.”

  “It's all right.”

  “How did Bliss take it about Pop?”

  “I don't think we should talk about Bliss.”

  Ben closed his eyes, let the ache spread, fill him up. “She's my child, Sharon.”

  There was another long pause before Sharon spoke again. “She doesn't really understand,” she said. “She keeps expecting him to show up at the door.”

  “Does she expect me to show up too?” He knew he'd overstepped himself the second the words were out of his mouth, but it was too late.

  “Why should she?” Sharon snapped. “You made it very clear to her—and to me—that your pride was more important than your family when you refused counseling.”

  “Sharon, I was innocent. I couldn't go—”

  “I'm getting off.”

  “Wait. Look. Just tell me how she is. How does she get along with Jeff? He sounds kind of gruff.”

  “At least he's not a wolf in sheep's clothing.”

  “Sharon, I want you to do something for me. Just entertain the thought that I might be innocent.”

  “I will not.”

  “You have to. Because if you truly believe something happened to Bliss and if I'm innocent, then someone else is guilty and ... Sharon?” He dug his fingers into the quilt. “Were you seeing Jeff while we were married?”

  Sharon drew in a sharp breath. “I can't believe you're asking me that.”

  “I'm sorry. But I—”

  “Ben, don't call again, all right? There's no point to it. It upsets me and it upsets Jeff. And Bliss is never going to know you called, so don't imagine that she will. She's so much better now. She's finally starting to forget you, and the last thing we need is to have you harassing us again.”

  She hung up on him, and he slowly moved the phone from the bed to the apple crate. She's finally starting to forget you. Maybe it was best for her that she forget him, that he become one-dimensional in her mind. The bad daddy. Make it simple. Visitation was a poor idea, a terrible idea. Bliss's counselor was right. It could only confuse her.

  He'd forgotten to ask Sharon if Bliss smiled anymore.

  He'd promised her pizza, and she'd driven up to the cabin expecting to be greeted by the aroma of oregano and tomato sauce. Instead all she could smell as she neared the open cabin door was the heat.

  He sat at the table in the center of the room, his back to her, and at first she thought he was working on the dollhouse. “Ben?”

  He turned around, clearly startled. “I didn't hear your car."

  She walked toward him. “You must be deep in thought.” She put her hands on his shoulders, and as she bent down to kiss the top of his head she saw the photographs lined up on the table in front of him. “Are these new pictures of Bliss?”

  “Sam brought them.” His voice was flat.

  “Sam was here?”

  He nodded.

  “I'm sorry I missed him.”

  Ben stared at the pictures in front of him and she felt the stiffness in his shoulders beneath her palms.

  “She reminds me of you,” she said. She was stunned again by the delicacy of this child. She looked as though a breeze might blow her away. “A blond version of you.”

  Ben suddenly jerked up his arms to throw off her hands. He stood up. “Sam thinks Jeff might have done it.” He looked at her briefly, then looked away.

  “But I didn't think he even knew—”

  He waved his arms in the air. “Who the hell knows who knew whom when? What does it matter? I'm in prison here while my daughter's living with some creep who might have…” He shook his head. “I can't talk about this right now."

  She sat down on the edge of one of the wooden chairs. “Ben…”

  “Do you realize how pointless my life is?” he asked. “People either despise me or they feel sorry for me. What's my next job going to be? It'll be charity, whatever it is. Maybe I'll make just enough money to keep food in my stomach. That's a great life, isn't it? And the one thing I care about—my daughter—might still be in danger, and I'm as helpless to do anything about it as if I were dead.”

  “You're forgetting about people like me and Kyle and Lou and Sam. We're sticking by you because we care about you, not because we feel sorry for you.”

  He picked up a newspaper from the table and thrust it in front of her. “How about this? Great, huh? They don't know who I am now, but it's only a matter of time, isn't it?”

  She looked at the picture of her and Ben on the cover and her stomach lurched.

  “So how long are you going to stick by me now?”

  She barely heard his question. “What does the article say?”

  “Nothing.” He paced halfway around the table and back again. “They don't know a damn thing. They just had the picture that guy took in the Village and had to do something with it. Had to wreck a life or two.”

  “It's not a big deal, Ben,” she said, although the picture terrified her. “They publish stuff like this all the time. It'll blow over.”

  He stopped in front of her, dug his hands into his pants pockets. “Look, Eden, I need to be alone right now,” he said. “I'm sorry. There's just too much on my mind.”

  “Ben.” She set her hand on his arm. “Let me help.”

  He shook his head, led her to the door. “Give me some time alone, all right?”

  She spotted the package to Kim Parrish on his bed. She'd thought he'd mailed it long ago. “Do you want me to take that to the post office?”

  “It's already been. They sent it back. Didn't even open it. Maybe Cassie would like the furniture for her house.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  “Go.”

  She drove down the twisted road toward Lynch Hollow, her hands locked on the steering wheel. That tabloid. Had Wayne seen it? What price would she have to pay for that weekend in New York? What price would she have to pay for this relationship?

  Ben was shutting her out. Worse, he seemed volatile and agitated. His life was pointless, he'd said. He was as good as dead. She pictured the bottle of Valium on the edge of his sink and stopped the car. She waited for a van to pass her before making a K-turn on the narrow road. Then she pressed the gas pedal to the floor. Please, Ben, don't. Her heart raced as she pulled up in front of the cabin. The front door was still open, but the cabin was empty. Then she saw the crack of light under the closed bathroom door.

  She knocked on the door. “Ben?”

  There was a second of silence. “I thought you'd left.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I'm getting ready to take a shower.”

  “Let me in please.”

  “Eden, I told you, I really want some time alone.”

  She turned the knob, pushed the door in. He stood in front of her in white boxer shorts, his hands on his hips and a scowl on his face. “What the hell are you doing?”

  She looked at the sink. The bottle of Valium was still on the ledge. She could see the shadow of the pills inside. “I was afraid you'd try to hurt yourself.”

  He looked at the pills, so abruptly that she knew if he had not planned to use them at that moment, he had at some other time. He lost his scowl, and when he spoke his voice was soft. “I'm not going to hurt myself.”

  She drew in a breath and realized she was winded. “I'm sorry. I thought…”

  He reached out his arms and pulled her against him. “Eden,” he said.

  “It
scared me.”

  “I'm okay. I just had a rough afternoon.” He let go of her. “Did you happen to notice that Bliss isn't smiling in any of those pictures? Does she look like a happy kid to you? I just wish I could see her for myself. I wish I could be a fly on the wall in her nursery school. I want to watch her with other kids, see her laugh a little. She looks so serious.”

  Eden had a sudden idea. “I could see her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I visit schools sometimes. Usually kindergarten or first grade, but a nursery school would do. I read to the kids from my mother's books. It's publicity stuff and I haven't done it in a while. But I can fake it. I could see how she's doing and report back to you.”

  “I couldn't ask you to.”

  She walked back into the main room of the cabin and he followed. “Give me the name of her school,” she said.

  “Green Gables. In Annapolis.”

  She sat down on his bed and took the phone in her lap. She got through to Nina easily, as she'd expected. Nina was more than anxious to talk to her. She'd been calling her for a week now and Eden had returned none of her calls.

  “What is it with you, Eden?” Nina asked. “Who is this guy you're with? Michael's moping around. He's not eating. Looks like a scarecrow. I'm afraid he's going to start using again, and—”

  “Nina, shush for a second.”

  “Have you read the scripts?”

  “No.”

  “Have you forgotten you have a career?”

  “Look, Nina, I need you to set up a school visit for me.”

  “What? Now is not the time, Eden. We have to get you working again before—”

  “Nina. Please. It's the Green Gables nursery school in Annapolis, Maryland.” She looked up at Ben. “Teacher?”

  “I think she has Joan Dove again this year.”

  She passed the name on to Nina, who was grumbling but writing down the information all the same.

  “Bless you, Nina. Now listen and I'll tell you what's going on with me. I'm happy. I'm in love. I haven't forgotten you. I'm madly working on the screenplay. I'll call Michael to see how he's doing, but if he starts using again that's his decision. I'll tell him he won't have a role in A Solitary Life, though, if he does.”

  She got off the phone and looked at Ben, who was leaning against the table in his sparkling white boxer shorts.

  “I'm going to see Bliss,” she told him. “No doubt about it.”

  –33–

  Eden knew Bliss the moment she stepped into the classroom at Green Gables, and now as she read Child of Fountains aloud, the other children were no more than a blur to her. This would have been true whether Bliss were Ben's daughter or not. Bliss stood out. She was taller than the others by a few inches and her thick, straight platinum hair was extraordinary. Eden sat in a low-to-the-ground beanbag chair with the children on the plush carpeted floor around her and their teacher, Joan Dove, in a chair nearby. Bliss sat immediately to Eden's left, as though she knew she should get as close to this stranger as she possibly could, and Eden could feel her fragility like something tangible in the air. She looked up from her book from time to time to see those enormous gray eyes watching her, alert and attentive. At one point during the story, Bliss asked a question—a serious, worried-sounding question about the welfare of the young heroine—and Eden reached down to touch her as she answered. She felt nothing but bone beneath her fingers. A knobby spine, ribs that could cut paper. The child was all bone and beauty.

  She had selected Child of Fountains because it was the simplest of her mother's stories. She had often marveled at how Katherine Swift's books grasped the attention of even small children and held it fast. The stories were marked by wholesome adventure and a subtly delivered moral message, qualities that Eden viewed with some skepticism now that she was coming to know the real Katherine Swift. She had viewed her mother as something of a nonperson all these years. She'd thought Katherine's cloistered existence was the result of her having few needs as an adult or as a woman. But the truth was far more complicated, and it was up to Eden to interpret her mother's life on the screen in a way that would not lose her the sympathy and admiration of the people who put their trust in her—those parents who picked up a Katherine Swift book for their children with the certainty that it would be entertainment in the purest sense.

  When she closed the book the children rushed her. She was accustomed to this, and she knew that these kids thought of her primarily as the beautiful witch from the film version of Child of the North Star.

  “How did you turn from that ugly girl into the pretty one?” one child asked. “Are you a witch in real life?” asked another. “Where is your big furry cape?” She answered them all, and then the more personal questions began, as they always did.

  “Do you have any little boys?” asked a freckle-faced boy.

  “No, but I do have a little girl.”

  “What's her name?”

  “Cassie.”

  “You should of brung her.”

  “Well, she's visiting her daddy right now.”

  “I visited my daddy in Charleston on Friday,” said the freckle-faced boy.

  “My daddy has come back to live with us,” said a little girl.

  And then Bliss spoke up. Although she'd been standing very close to Eden, she had been quiet since asking her question during the story. “My daddy is gone away,” she said softly. “But he visits me at nighttime sometimes.”

  “Does he?” Eden asked her.

  Joan Dove set her hands on Bliss's shoulders. “Her daddy's very far away, so sometimes she dreams he's visiting and it makes her feel happy—right, Bliss?”

  “Mmm,” Bliss said noncommittally, her eyes on Eden all the while. Eden wondered if there was something in her own face that led Bliss to trust her, to lean forward and whisper, “He really does come sometimes.” Her words sent a shiver up Eden's spine

  She wanted to watch them play, wanted to be able to report back to Ben that she'd seen Bliss have fun. So she stayed for their recess, a disorganized free-for-all on the grassy Green Gables playground. She sat with Joan Dove on the steps.

  “How did you happen to pick Green Gables?” Joan asked.

  Eden shrugged and smiled. “My agent handles that end of things and I just show up.”

  “I'm so glad you did. The kids loved it.”

  Bliss was playing on a swing set. She climbed up on the support bar, hung by her knees, sat upright, jumped off, and sat down on one of the swings, all without saying a word to the other two girls who shared the swing set with her.

  “The tall girl,” Eden said to Joan. “She's striking.”

  “Yes. But she has a lot of problems.”

  “Really?”

  “That stuff about her dad visiting her.” Joan shook her head. “Her father abused her. Molested her. She's been through more hurt and trauma than anyone should have to go through in a lifetime.”

  Eden frowned. “That's horrible. How is she doing now?”

  Joan sighed. “All right, I guess. She still talks about her father a lot. Her real daddy, she calls him. She has a stepfather now, who seems pretty nice, but I don't think she's really bonded to him yet. She's not allowed to see her real father, but she can't seem to get him out of her head. He was one of those guys who could really charm you—you know the type.”

  “Hollywood's full of them,” Eden said, and then grimaced at herself in disgust.

  “Even I thought he was the nicest guy before all this happened,” Joan continued.

  “You never can tell,” Eden said.

  “No, you sure can't. So Bliss, that little girl, lost a lot of weight she's never put back on. She's in counseling, but she's still not sleeping well and you can just tell she's got a heavy load she's lugging around with her. Even here at school she wakes up in the middle of her nap with a nightmare sometimes.”

  “Poor thing,” Eden said. Joan began talking about some of the other children and Eden half listened,
trying to make appropriate comments. But her eyes were on Bliss, who was now in competition with the girl next to her on the swings. She was trying to go higher, pumping her long, thin legs hard, her head thrown back and her mouth wide open. Was she laughing? From a distance her expression could have been either fear or joy, but Eden looked away before she knew for sure. She would tell Ben she'd seen his daughter laugh.

  When she left Green Gables she followed the map Ben had drawn for her to Sam and Jen's. She'd told him she wanted to meet them, and now after listening to Joan Dove's description of Ben she was particularly desperate to be among his friends rather than his enemies.

  Jen Alexander answered the door of the stately red brick colonial. She was a pretty woman who reminded Eden a little of Nina, with her shimmery dark hair and pixie face. She held out her hand with a smile. “Eden, I'm Jen. Please come in.”

  Eden stepped into a large foyer. The floor was green marble tile, and a huge crystal chandelier hung above their heads. She thought of Ben's cabin. No wonder he hadn't visited them since his move to the Shenandoah Valley.

  “Sam will be home for lunch any minute.” Jen led Eden toward the back of the house. “We've been looking forward so much to meeting you.”

  Eden sat on the sofa in the family room, which was an extension of the enormous kitchen. The shine from the hanging copper pans was nearly blinding. “I've wanted to meet you and Sam, too,” she said. “Ben's so grateful for your faith in him.”

  “Well, I have to say, even I had a few moments of doubt in the beginning, but the bottom line is, that's just not Ben.”

  Eden moved to the table when Sam arrived. He wore a pale gray suit, and he took the jacket off and hung it up before shaking her hand. As he sat down he took off his glasses and put them in a case on the table. He was one of the best-looking men she'd ever seen, inside or out of Holly-wood, but she would never have guessed he was Ben's brother. She struggled to find a resemblance. Sam was green-eyed, blond, and mustached, and he was impeccably groomed, every hair in place—no doubt kept there with spray. The man had found himself one hell of a barber. She wondered if this had always been the difference between the brothers, if Ben had always been the more casual of the two, the less vain, the brother who had elected to spend his life with his hands in the earth. She could not picture Sam on his knees in one of the pits.