Secret Lives

by Diane Chamberlain

  –46–

  Every morning she rose from sleep with the certainty that Ben was beside her. Her hand rested on his stomach, just below his navel, his penis stiff and ready above her fingers. Or she had the taste of him in her mouth, or his scent on her pillow. Only when her eyes were fully open and the sun had swept the shadows from the room would she admit to herself that her hand rested only on the firm surface of her mattress, that the taste in her mouth was nothing more than the stale taste of a poor night's sleep.

  If it were not for Cassie chattering to herself in the next room while waiting for Eden to get up, she would roll over and go back to sleep so she could see Ben again, talk to him, touch him. She thought of calling him but couldn't face the hurt and anger in his voice. She thought of telling him her suspicions about Sam. But what if she was wrong?

  In a few days she would no longer have the temptation of knowing he was nearby. The Santa Monica house was waiting for her. She would be fine once she got there. She'd throw herself into the film, force herself to read the script for Treasure House. And she'd let Michael's new sober, tender side fill the emptiness Ben had left her.

  She spent her waking hours either with Cassie or at work on the screenplay. She was determined to have the first draft completed by the time she left on Monday, and it was going extremely well now that she was free to change her mother's history. She was good at fiction, at making up characters to suit the story, and the work kept her from thinking about Ben, about California.

  On Friday afternoon she wrote the scene of her own conception, with Kate finally yielding to the gently persuasive, sweetly sensual Matthew Riley. It was a beautiful scene that nearly wrote itself. Eden felt no guilt over the lie she was telling on the screen. She had come to believe it herself.

  She was nearly dizzy with fatigue by the time she went downstairs Friday evening. She had promised Cassie she'd play a game with her, but except for Kyle and herself the house was empty.

  “I sent Cassie and Lou to the store for ice cream,” Kyle said. He was sitting on the sofa, a clipboard on his lap and a pencil in his hand. “I wanted a moment alone with you.”

  Here it comes, Eden thought. Kyle wouldn't let her go back to California without first trying to settle their differences. She leaned against the wall instead of sitting down, waiting.

  “Ben called me from Annapolis a while ago,” Kyle said. “He's been cleared. His brother confessed to everything.”

  Tears quickly filled her eyes and she blinked them back. “That's wonderful,” she said.

  “He said he was grateful to you for going up to see Sharon.”

  She shook her head. “It doesn't seem like much compared to the grief I caused him.”

  “He's also gotten his job back for the spring and he talked them into providing funding and a supply of graduate students for the Lynch Hollow site—if he can produce one of the skeletons from the cavern.”

  She frowned, amazed that Ben had dared to suggest opening the cavern to Kyle.

  “I'm going to let him do it. I won't go in myself, but if he wants to…” Kyle shrugged. “He's right. It's the one thing that will save the site. The only thing. I've arranged to have a work crew out there tomorrow afternoon to move the boulders.”

  “How will he know where to look?”

  “I'm making him a map from memory.” Kyle lifted the clipboard in the air. “The main cavern shouldn't be a problem. It's that maze room that can turn you around.”

  The cave would be open. She could step inside it if she liked. She shuddered, and Kyle didn't miss it.

  “Do you want to go in?” he asked.

  “No,” she said quickly. “No, I couldn't.” She took a few steps toward the stairs. “Will you let me know when Cassie gets home?”

  “Sure. And Eden?”

  She turned to look at him.

  “That was a nice thing you did for Ben,” he said.

  She nodded. “I only wish I could have done it before I lost him.”

  Upstairs she sat in front of the word processor and composed a statement for the press. This one took no time at all. It flowed from her fingertips, despite the fact that it would incriminate her rather than Ben.

  “No way,” Nina said when Eden read it to her over the phone. “Your first statement was very well received, Eden. Let's just let it lie.”

  “I can't, Nina. He's innocent.”

  “So let him make his own statement.”

  “Nina, either you take this to the press or I will.”

  Nina sighed. “All right. Read it to me one more time.”

  The rain had settled into a steady gray drizzle by the next morning, but the downpour of the past few days was taking its toll.

  “The Shenandoah broke its banks last night,” Kyle said at breakfast. “Even Ferry Creek's about to spill over.”

  Cassie looked up at Eden. “What broke, Mom?”

  “The river broke its banks,” Eden said. “The water's gone up on the land.” She found herself avoiding the word “flood.” That word had always gotten stuck in her throat.

  “You're not eating, Ky,” Lou said.

  “I'm not hungry this morning.” Kyle tapped his toast on the side of his plate. Every once in a while he'd glance out the window. She understood his apprehension, maybe even shared it. Today the cavern would be opened, a gaping reminder of the past on his land. “Once that cave is open, Ben will have to work fast in case the creek gets high enough to be a threat.”

  “What time is the work crew coming?” Eden asked.

  “One. Ben will meet with them. I'm staying here.”

  She worked on the screenplay most of the morning, taking a break to drive out to Coolbrook Park with Cassie to watch the swollen Shenandoah whip through the forest. The water was frothy and white. It swept entire trees downstream, tossing them into the air like toothpicks. The other spectators standing nearby talked excitedly about the possibility of a flood. Some of them stood around the tall slender marker at the corner of the parking lot, pointing to the yellow line a foot or so above their heads. There was a date below the line and Eden didn't bother to get close enough to see it. She knew what it said. The last time the water had reached that mark had been on May 29, 1959. She had been Cassie's age. She had very nearly drowned.

  She dropped Cassie off at Maggie DeMarco's for the afternoon and returned to Lynch Hollow and the screenplay, but as she sat in front of her word processor her concentration sagged and she found herself staring out the window as Kyle had that morning.

  Finally she put on her waterproof duck shoes, took Lou's enormous green umbrella from the hall closet, and left the house. Kyle had told her that the trail down to the cavern and the site had been washed out by the rain, so she walked down the driveway and out to the road.

  When she reached the field she was a fair distance from the site, and she saw three men standing in the trees by the cave. She walked forward a few steps until she was close enough to see that one of the men was Ben. She decided to watch from here. This was close enough.

  The men emerged from the woods and one of them picked up a sheet of paper from the ground near the second pit. They huddled around it, gesturing toward the cave as they spoke. And then Ben caught sight of her. He looked in her direction for a few seconds and then back to the paper. Did he think she had come to see him? Well, hadn't she? She had known he'd be here.

  After a moment the two workmen picked up a chain from the ground and headed back into the woods while Ben walked across the field toward her. She felt her heart kick up, her hand tighten around the stem of the umbrella. His hair looked a few shades darker from the rain and his shirt was soaked. She wanted to cry, wanted to throw her arms around him and tell him how happy she was for him, how sad for herself. But she stood still, clutching the umbrella, uncertain of what expression to put on her face, what mask to wear.

  “Hi,” he said when he was next to her. He put his hands in his pockets and turned to look back to the woods.

  “D
o you want to share?” She held the umbrella toward him and he slipped under it. Their arms touched, their shoulders. She could smell his after-shave.

  “Do you believe Kyle is letting this happen?” Ben nodded toward the cavern. “They're having some trouble figuring out how to move the boulders. Crowbars are useless. We're going to try to wrap chains around them and then hook them up to my truck. If that doesn't work, we'll have to get a backhoe in here. When Kyle sealed that cave he was counting on it being sealed forever.”

  “Yes, I'm sure he was. Will those guys go in with you?”

  “No.”

  It seemed unwise for Ben to go in alone, yet she was relieved. She didn't like to think of strangers inside her mother's cavern.

  “Eden.” Ben sank his hands lower in his pockets. “Thanks for what you did. You've turned everything around for me.”

  “I'm sorry I ever doubted you.”

  “Well, you had plenty of company, but it's over. All I care about now is finishing up my work here and moving back to Annapolis to start my life over. I want to make up to Bliss for the past year.”

  “How is she?”

  “Mixed up.” The muscles in his jaw tightened. “Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel as though I'm the only one who can heal her.”

  “I bet that's true.”

  Ben looked behind them. “I wonder how much higher the creek's going to rise.”

  “Cassie and I went to Coolbrook Park this morning. The river's really up and wild and people were talking about…flooding. Maybe you should wait till this blows over before you go in the cave.” Her throat felt tight. They were speaking to each other as though they were acquaintances, nothing more. She wanted to say, I dream about you every night. I wake up wishing you were next to me. But his coolness, his distance did not invite her to share her private thoughts.

  He shook his head. “If the water gets into that cave where the skeletons are, it could ruin them.”

  “Maybe they're already ruined from the last flood.”

  “No. Kyle said it never reached the maze room.”

  For a few minutes neither of them spoke. They stared at the woods, although there was nothing to see. The workmen were barely visible as they struggled to fit the chains over the boulders.

  Finally Ben drew in his breath. “I'm sorry Sam touched Cassie, Eden. Really.”

  “She's okay. I'm sure he thought that was the only way he could get me to figure out what was going on without actually telling me.”

  “I know.” There was another short silence before he spoke again. “So Monday's the big day, huh? Back to the land of alfalfa sprouts and glitter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where you can put this summer behind you.”

  She cringed. She'd said that in the first statement. She turned her head to look at him. “Ben, I'm sorry I ever—”

  “Don't apologize. I understand the feeling completely. I can't wait to have this past year and a half behind me.” He looked toward the cavern. “I'd better get the pickup over there and see what we can do.”

  Eden moved nearer to the cavern as the men attached the chains to the bumper of Ben's truck. Ben got in behind the wheel and slowly fed the truck gas. It moved a few feet along the side of the third pit before the chain slipped from the boulder. One of the men let out a string of expletives. After two more attempts the huge boulder tipped out of the opening, teetered precariously for a few seconds on its rounded stem, and began to roll, flattening several saplings in its path and stopping just short of the third pit.

  A cheer went up from the men, and Eden stared at the narrow black opening in the hillside. How many times had she stepped into that blackness as a child? How could it look so unfamiliar? It struck her how extraordinarily peculiar her mother had been to have made this forbidding hole in the earth her second home, to have made it the playground for her child.

  Ben knelt near the cave entrance, checking the wiring on his headlamp, and Eden turned and headed back to the road. She had seen all she cared to see of the cave and she did not want to watch Ben disappear inside it. She would go home and lose herself once more in the screenplay.

  But the screenplay offered her no refuge that afternoon. She thought of picking Cassie up early, taking her somewhere for the rest of the day and letting her daughter keep her mind occupied. Cassie would be disappointed, though, if her afternoon with Maggie's kids was cut short.

  She wandered down to the kitchen where Kyle was peeling apples and Lou was rolling out piecrust on the low, pullout counter. “Let me do that, Kyle,” Eden said. Kyle offered no resistance as she took the peeler from his hand and sat down at the table.

  “Thanks.” He looked at his watch. “I want to go have a look at Ferry Creek. I thought you were hard at work on the screenplay.”

  “I need a break.”

  “How's it coming, dear?” Lou asked.

  “Much better now that I've left it with Matthew Riley as my father. It's all falling into place.”

  A silence followed her words, and she knew she should have found a different way to tell them that things were going well.

  “I'll be back in a while,” Kyle said as he took the umbrella from the coatrack and stepped outside.

  Eden began peeling a small red apple.

  “Eden,” Lou said. “Set down that apple for a minute.”

  Eden looked up at her aunt.

  “Set it down. I want your full attention.”

  Eden set the apple and peeler on the table.

  “I can't take this anymore,” Lou said.

  “Take what?” Eden asked, although she was certain she knew.

  “Your attitude. Kyle will put up with it. He'll let you go back to California, let you run away again, but I won't. I can't. Not without a fight. Kyle will tolerate anything from you because he's so afraid of…Eden, think back. Remember the night of the accident?”

  Eden stiffened. “Yes,” she said.

  “You know, they say when you're in shock, when you go through something traumatic, you develop amnesia for it. You can't remember it. But I remember everything about that night. I remember following you and that boy who was bound and determined to take you away from us. I remember being scared for you—you were so young and so desperate. I remember thinking that Kyle would die if he came home and found you'd gone like that, without a word.” Lou's chin quivered and Eden dropped her eyes.

  “I remember seeing that car slide into me,” Lou continued. “Feeling it slide into me. My leg's been gone for seventeen years and sometimes I can still feel the pain. You tried to get me out. You were screaming and sobbing. I knew right then that you loved me. I actually thought that. Part of my mind was afraid I was going to die, another part was thinking: Why, this child loves me. She never says it, but I know she does.”

  Eden stood up. She walked to the counter and stared out the window. She could see the springhouse, the path into the woods that led down to the cavern.

  “I don't remember much about the ride in the ambulance,” Lou said, “except for you holding my hand and begging me not to tell Kyle your part in all of it, and a couple of days later I helped you concoct that story that you were in the car with me so he'd never know what really hap-pened.”

  “I'm sorry I did that, Lou. I wish I could take it back. I wish I could take back that entire night.” She looked at her aunt. “You never did tell Kyle the truth, did you?”

  “No. It's the only lie there's ever been between us. Eden, I want you to remember something. Why didn't you want Kyle to know the truth about the accident? What were you afraid of?”

  Eden shrugged. “I didn't want to get in trouble.”

  Lou rejected her explanation with a wave of her hand. “You'd been in trouble before,” she said. “You knew Kyle wasn't much of a disciplinarian.”

  Eden thought back to that night and immediately knew the answer to Lou's question. She remembered how she'd felt at nineteen, how she'd felt through most of her teenage years. “I was afraid he would hate
me if he knew the truth. I was always afraid of that, that he would stop loving me.”

  Lou nodded. “Yes. And that's exactly the reason he's never told you he's your father. He was afraid you'd stop loving him. That's why he'll put up with anything from you. He was so happy the first part of the summer when you were finally starting to relax around us, when you seemed to want to be with us. He began to think you could accept the truth about him. Now he's afraid he's lost you for good.”

  “He hasn't.”

  “You need to let him know that.”

  Eden sat down again and picked up the apple she'd been working on. “I'm not sure how to do that.”

  “Don't leave on Monday.”

  Eden's eyes filled. “I have to. I have to get away from Ben.”

  Lou reached over and took the apple out of Eden's hand. “You're not only running away from the family who loves you, but from the man you're in love with as well. Does that make any sense, Eden? It seems to me you have two men to make your peace with before you can leave Lynch Hollow.” Lou looked up as they heard Kyle's footsteps on the porch. He opened the door and turned to set the umbrella on the stoop.

  “Ferry Creek's rising fast,” he said. “It's nearly to the pits. If it keeps rising at this rate, it could be just a couple hours from the cavern. I have to go into the cave and tell Ben that if he can't find one of the skeletons within the next hour to forget it. It's not worth the risk.”

  Kyle was winded and red-faced. Perspiration dampened the gray hair at his temples. He couldn't possibly go into the cavern.

  “I'll tell him,” Eden said.

  Kyle frowned at her. “You can't go into a cave.”

  “Well, you can't either.”

  “You'll pass out.”