Secret Lives

by Diane Chamberlain

  “You'll fall and break your neck.”

  “All right, all right,” Lou said. “I'll go.”

  Kyle laughed and looked at Eden. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You just need to get to the tunnel entrance and call to him. Your voice should carry, though you might have to go in a ways.”

  Her heart started thumping. “How long is the tunnel?”

  “Thirty yards or so.” He looked at her doubtfully. “Remember, honey, it's not going to be like it was when you were little. There won't be any light other than what you take in with you.”

  She went to her room to get a sweater and when she returned to the kitchen Kyle handed her a green helmet with a headlamp attached to the front. She put it on. It was a little loose. “How do I look?” she asked.

  “That helmet's proof that you'd look good in anything,” Kyle said as he handed her a flashlight. “I'll walk over with you. If I think the creek's getting too close I'll call you out.”

  He told her about the maze room as they walked out to the road. “I tried to tell Ben where to look,” he said, “but my memory's not that clear on it, and that part of the cave is a spelunker's nightmare.”

  “My God,” she said when they'd reached the field. Ben's truck was parked up on the road, and that was fortunate because Ferry Creek had devoured much of the field. The turbulent green water clawed at the rim of the first pit. “It can't possibly get higher than this,” she said.

  “You don't remember, huh? It can and it might.”

  As they neared the cavern entrance the enormity of what she'd agreed to do struck her. She looked into the black wound in the side of the hill and steadied herself against the entryway.

  “You don't have to do this, honey,” Kyle said.

  “I want to. I'm all right.”

  She turned on her flashlight and headlamp and stepped inside. Almost immediately the floor tipped beneath her feet, and her heart rocketed. She had forgotten this descent. God, how the water would pour in here. She turned to look back at the entrance, but already the walls of the cave hid Ferry Creek from her view.

  She stepped forward, the beams of her headlamp and flashlight illuminating the long, narrow wonderland of stalactites and stalagmites in front of her. The floor began to level out slowly until she no longer felt as though she might fall with each step. The cavern smelled musty after being closed up all these years. Her lights were bright, but the glow they cast was foreign. The cave had taken much of its personality from Katherine's lighting, from the lanterns and candles she'd strewn around its walls and ledges.

  After a few more steps the narrow cave suddenly opened into the great room, and she had to clutch a stalagmite to keep her balance. She felt the jolt of the familiar. She knew where she was. All around her the tites and mites formed walls of orange curtains and fountains of frothy rock.

  She continued walking, looking up into the great vaulted ceiling where she could see the spiky stalactites captured in her headlamp. Her toe caught on something and she nearly tripped. She looked down and caught her breath. The typewriter. She knelt next to it. It was on its side, rusted nearly beyond recognition. She touched the keys and her fingers came away covered with orange dust. The lid was thin and crusty and gave way beneath her fingertips.

  She stood up again and looked around her. This was the level area where the furniture had been. Kate's desk had been to her right, and Eden could see the ledge where she'd hidden her journal and, deep in the crevice, her wistful stories of herself and Kyle, the stories he'd found and burned although Lou had called them Kate's best work.

  Eden turned and looked back the way she'd come, but the darkness had swallowed any light from the entrance. She wasn't sure she could go on. She was gulping air, breathing so deeply that the cool air seared her lungs. Kyle is out there, she reminded herself. He's sitting just outside the cave, waiting for you, and Ben is in here somewhere. All around her she felt the benevolent ghosts of the past. Her mother. Matthew Riley. Kyle. She pictured them sitting on the settee and the rocker, reading by yellow lantern light as though they were in someone's living room. She imagined how Kyle's Spanish music would have echoed in here, how it would have filled this room as Lou danced among the rocks.

  She walked on, finally reaching the back of the cave, where she saw the still, black water of the reflecting pool. The pool was carved into the rock at the height of her waist, the ceiling just a yard or so above it so that the thousands of tiny stalactites were reflected in the water. In front of her, jammed against the wall that formed the pool, was the old furniture. The frame of the settee was nearly intact, the upholstery completely rotted—or eaten—away from it. It was tipped on its back, its rusted springs exposed. Her mother's desk lay on its side, the wood dry and cracked. A chair lay in splinters nearby.

  She knew that the tunnel was to her right. She found it quickly and stood at the entrance. The ceiling was low, nearly to her head. Ben would have had to stoop to get through it. She cupped her hands around her mouth and called, “Ben!” She cocked her head to listen but heard nothing in response. Thirty yards, Kyle had said. She'd need to get a little closer.

  She ducked her head and started walking through the tunnel. After she had gone several yards the walls began to close in around her. The ceiling was lower. She couldn't stand up straight without hitting her head, or unfold her arms without scraping them on the walls. She stopped and tried to calm her breathing.

  “Ben!”

  There was still no response and she felt she had no choice now but to go on. She would rather find herself at the end of this tunnel with Ben than back in the blackness of the cave with the entire length of the great room to walk before she reached daylight. She concentrated on setting one foot in front of the other. The ceiling dropped lower still, the floor rose, and she was nearly crouching. She turned a corner and a huge rocky protrusion blocked most of the passage in front of her. She felt paralyzed, afraid to try to squeeze past the craggy rock and afraid to turn back. She dropped to her knees, unable to hold her stooped position any longer.

  “Ben! Ben!”

  “Eden?” His voice sounded far away, but she could hear him clearly. “What the hell are you doing in there?”

  “I have a message from Kyle. But I'm stuck. It's so narrow.

  “It gets wider,” he called. “Keep coming.”

  She tried to stand again and remembered to hunch over just in time to prevent herself from hitting her head on the ceiling. She slipped past the protruding rock and let out her breath.

  “Eden? Are you still there?”

  “Yes.” She walked on, stooped and shivery-kneed, and soon saw a pale yellow light against the rocks up ahead. She turned another corner and was nearly blinded by Ben's headlamp.

  “Just another few yards,” he said as he backed out of the tunnel ahead of her. She followed him into the maze room. She wanted to fall into his arms with relief, but he just touched her shoulder, lightly, briefly, while she leaned against the wall and gasped for breath.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes, but Ferry Creek is nearly to the pits. Kyle says you have less than an hour left. He says to forget the skeleton if you can't find it soon, and get out of here.”

  Ben nodded. “It's slow going in here. Look at this place.” He waved the beam of his flashlight around the room. It was indeed a maze, a never-ending dense forest of stone columns. “I haven't been able to go in too far because I've stayed tied to the entrance so I can find my way out again.” She saw the rope tied from a column near the entrance to his belt. “But since you're here, I can leave my flashlight to mark the exit and we can both look.”

  She nodded and started snaking her way through the maze as silence fell between them. She wanted to speak to him. She needed to. She could start with something safe.

  “It was a strange feeling to walk through the cavern after all these years,” she said.

  For a moment he said nothing. She heard him mo
ving through the other side of the maze room, saw the shadows shift around her as the beam of his headlamp bounced around the walls. “Let's just work, Eden,” he said finally. “We don't have time to shoot the breeze.”

  Her cheeks burned. A dozen responses came to mind but she said none of them. She would let him have his silence.

  She angled her body back and forth to walk between the columns and within a very short time found herself in a more open area. She knew even before she examined the floor that she'd found Rosie's resting place, and sure enough, the skeleton lay no more than a yard from her feet. She called to Ben and knelt down to look at the skeleton. It was small. A child. Not much bigger than Cassie.

  Ben stood above her and shook his head. “I've been scouring this place for over an hour and you walk right to it. Spooky.” He lifted his camera and took a few pictures, then laid a sheet on the ground as close to the skeleton as he could. The skeleton was embedded in an inch or so of earth. Ben pulled a brush from his jeans pocket and cleared the loose dust away. Then he dug carefully at the dirt with his pocketknife, and as always, Eden felt electrified watching his hands. They were strong hands, well shaped and efficient. He touched these bones as though they offered him clues to their existence, as though he felt something with his fingertips that she could never hope to feel.

  She helped him lift the skeleton onto the sheet. He wrapped it up and slipped a black plastic bag over it, all without saying a word. Eden was afraid to say anything herself for fear of being reprimanded again.

  It took them a few minutes to work their way back to the exit. He went into the tunnel first, pulling the skeleton behind him as delicately as he could. She followed, stooping awkwardly, lifting the bag as they turned corners and stepped over rocky patches in the earth. The stooping was taking its toll, and her shoulders ached along with the muscles in her thighs and the small of her back. But she felt no apprehension this time. There was no longer any unknown here. And she was with Ben.

  Once they were in the great room, Ben lifted the bag into his arms and carried it like a child. She walked on ahead, lighting their way.

  “Your mother was a strange duck for thinking this was a hospitable place,” Ben said.

  “Imagine how inhospitable her own home felt to her that she preferred being here,” Eden replied.

  Kyle was waiting for them under Lou's big green umbrella just outside the cave entrance. “I'm glad to see the two of you,” he said.

  “Holy shit,” Ben said as he watched the water of Ferry Creek pour into the pits. It had nearly filled them to the top. “If I'd known the water was this high, I don't think I would have been all that relaxed in there.” He started toward the truck. “I'll take this back to the cabin, Kyle, and up to the university on Monday.”

  “Can you use some help?” Eden offered. She needed to talk to him. You're running away from the man you love.

  “No,” Ben said without turning around. “I'll be fine.”

  She walked up to the road while Kyle helped Ben put the skeleton in the truck. They set it on the front seat, out of the rain. She didn't watch. Ben wanted nothing more from her. They were finished and he was willing to let it go. Anxious to let it go and get on with his life. And what did she want? Not this. Not this achingly cold good-bye. Yet she had lost him all on her own. There was no one else to blame. She had mistrusted him; she had maligned him. How could she expect anything from him now?

  Kyle started walking toward her and she lifted her face fully to the rain to erase any trace of emotion. They were up on the road when she heard Ben start the ignition in the truck. He would have to drive past them. She would lift her hand and wave. It would be simple.

  “You want to be with him,” Kyle said as they started walking.

  “He doesn't want to be with me.”

  “Bull,” Kyle said.

  Ben drove past with a couple of taps on his horn and she raised her hand without looking up from the road. She and Kyle walked back to the house in silence, but once they were inside, surrounded by the smell of apples and cinnamon, he turned to her.

  “I'll pick up Cassie at Maggie DeMarco's,” he said. “You go on up to Ben's.” He took her car keys from the rack by the door and pressed them into her hand, then opened a drawer in the hutch and handed her a darkened notebook. “The last one,” he said.

  –47–

  By the time she reached the cabin, the rain had stopped. The gray clouds split open above her head, revealing a deep blue-violet sky as evening settled over the Valley.

  Ben opened the door before she'd had a chance to knock. He had showered and changed into a pair of faded jeans and a blue chambray shirt she had never seen on him before.

  “May I come in?” Her voice sounded timid to her ears. There was nothing welcoming in his face.

  He let go of the door and walked into the kitchen, poured himself a glass of orange juice.

  “Want some?” he asked.

  She shook her head and looked around the cabin. The skeleton in its black plastic bag rested on the table in the center of the room, but something else was different.

  “It's cool in here,” she said, and then she noticed the air-conditioning unit where the fan used to be. “An air conditioner!”

  He leaned against the counter. “I brought it from home. Along with a VCR and an upgrade on the stereo. I could have taken anything I wanted. Sharon is a very guilt-ridden woman."

  “So am I.”

  He sighed and set his glass down on the counter. “Look, Eden. I guess you think we need some sort of resolution to this whole mess, that we need to talk it out or something, but I'm not interested in doing that. I've accepted the fact that you and I are through, and now I want to think about the future. It's been a long time since I felt as though I had one.”

  She shouldn't have come. Kyle had been wrong about Ben wanting to see her. She felt as though she was in a strange cabin, talking to a man she didn't know who wore clothes she'd never seen. She looked out the window where the sky was quickly turning black. “Do you want me to leave?”

  “I really don't see much point in you staying.”

  “You're still furious with me.”

  “No, I'm not.”

  She hugged her arms across her chest. “You must be to be treating me so coldly.”

  “I just don't want to feel close to you again. I'd like to barely notice that you've left on Monday. I've reached my limit on suffering. I'd like to be able to wake up Tuesday morning and say to myself, 'Eden's gone. Big deal.’”

  She winced, and he looked away from her.

  “That wasn't too nice,” he said. “I'm sorry. I guess I am still angry. I want to hurt you. I want to hurt everybody, but I shouldn't have said that.”

  “I still love you, Ben.”

  He laughed. “You know what? I don't think I believe you. I don't trust you. You said you were in love with me, and then you spent one lousy hour with Michael Carey and suddenly you're treating me like I'm Jack the Ripper. Next thing I know, people on the street are calling me scum, and I read in the paper that I mean nothing to you. I was a mistake, a lapse in judgment. I was convenient, wasn't I? Good enough for you in private, but God forbid anyone might see you with me.” He walked over to the door and pulled it open. “How does it feel not to be trusted?”

  She swallowed hard. She walked to the door and turned to face him. “I wish only the best for you, Ben.” She walked across the clearing, got into her car, and pulled it out on the road before she let herself cry.

  Ben left his cabin shortly after Eden. It was nearly nine and he was hungry—he'd had nothing to eat since lunch. He drove the few miles to Sugar Hill, wishing the last half hour had not happened. That battered look on Eden's face when she left his cabin was going to haunt him all night. He'd hurt her all right. She shouldn't have come over. It would have been better if she'd left the Valley without any words passing between them at all.

  Sugar Hill was surprisingly quiet for a Saturday night and he had n
o trouble finding a table. Ruth walked toward him carrying the unnecessary menu and he braced himself for her snarly greeting, but she surprised him.

  “May I sit down for a minute?” she asked.

  He looked up, stunned. “Yes.”

  She sat across from him, licked at her orange lips. “I owe you one hell of an apology,” she said.

  “What for?”

  “For thinking all those months that you'd hurt your little girl. We all thought that, and we treated you like we thought you deserved to be treated. Now that we know different, we feel right small, I can tell you.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “How do you know I didn't do it?”

  “That article in the paper.”

  “What article?”

  “You haven't seen it? Well, I don't suppose you would of. It's tomorrow's paper, the Sunday, but. my boy gets a big hunk of it in the city on Saturday and brings it up here when he comes for the weekend.”

  He frowned, trying to follow her. “There's an article about me in tomorrow's paper?”

  “Wait a minute.” She got up and returned in a minute with the Style section of Sunday's Post. “Here it is.” She opened the paper to page three and set it in front of him. “You want your regular, hon?”

  Hon? “Yes, please.”

  There was that picture of him and Eden taken in the Village, and several quotes from Eden that not only exonerated him but indicted herself for her denunciation of him. “I made a mistake,” she said in closing. “I was frightened for my daughter and my career and I protected myself the only way I knew how at the time. As a result, I hurt someone I love very much.”

  The words blurred on the paper in front of him. He stood up and found Ruth. “I need to leave, Ruth.” He set his hand on her shoulder, a shoulder he wouldn't have dared touch an hour ago. “Is it too late to cancel my order?”

  “No problem, hon. Come back tomorrow night. It’ll be on the house.”

  She read Cassie a story, the words pouring mechanically from her lips. She kissed her good night, closed the door, and walked across the hall to her own room, where she changed from her jeans and T-shirt to her white satin nightgown and climbed beneath the covers. It was early, but she was exhausted from her work in the cave and from the confrontation with Ben. Her shoulders ached from stooping in the tunnel, the muscles in her thighs burned.