Secret Lives (18 page)

“What was he like? Matthew Riley?”

“A good match for your ma, that's what. He
was smart as she was and bookish like her. Only he was respected
where she was just thought of as a little…off, you know? When we
all found out about the cave, we knew she was even weirder than
we'd imagined.” Sara Jane bit her minuscule lower lip. “I'm sorry,
dear. I'm speaking very rudely to you. But you said…”

“That's all right. Go on.”

“Of course, when her books started coming out
we could hardly believe it was the same girl we knew who'd written
them. They were wonderful, but it took me a long time to realize
that. I guess I didn't give them a chance at first because I
disliked Kate so much. And yet, she had a soft side. That was the
most confusing thing about her, something I've never known how to
make out. When Ellie was born, and Kate found out about her, about
her hands, she came over here to visit. We were about twenty years
old at the time, and she rode a bicycle over here from Lynch
Hollow. She never went anywhere, so you can imagine my shock when I
opened the door and saw her standing there. I didn't trust her a
whit. I thought she'd come to make nasty cracks about my baby. But
she had an armful of flowers she'd picked for me. And I let her in,
mostly because I was too stunned to do anything else. She came in
and sat down. She seemed real nervous, but in those days your
mama…I think she had that sickness where you can't leave your
house, you know?”

Eden nodded.

“Anytime I saw her out she had that look, you
know, like a scared rabbit, always on the alert for danger. Anyhow,
she sat right on that sofa and I brought Ellie out to her and I was
ready to tell her if she made one crack about my baby I'd shoot
her. But she held Ellie and tears filled her eyes and she let Ellie
hold her finger. I'll never forget that. Nobody'd done that, you
know, played with Ellie's hands. Everybody except me and Tom
avoided them, just pretended they weren't there. I think maybe Kate
knew what it was like to be different, you know? She came a time or
two after that to visit Ellie, but I think it was hard on her. Once
Kyle brought her, but Tom…He didn't want Kyle in the house, thought
maybe he was trying to start something up with me again.” Sara Jane
narrowed her eyes at Eden. “Is that going to be in the movie? About
Kyle and me being…close? Tom knows, of course, but I don't know how
he'd like the rest of the world to see it. He was upset last year
when Kyle moved back here.”

Eden nodded sympathetically, trying not to
smile at the thought of Kyle being a threat to Sara Jane's
marriage. “I may put it in, Mrs. Miller. I think it's important to
understanding my mother's life.”

“Oh, Lordy.” Sara Jane reached toward the
tray. “I need a cinnamon bun.”

They talked a while longer, Sara Jane
offering a few more anecdotes about Kate and suggesting some people
Eden could interview at the Coolbrook Chronicle about her
father.

“You've been so helpful,” Eden said as she
stood to go.

“Anytime, dear. I enjoyed it. You want to
talk more, just come on over. You don't need to call first.” Sara
Jane heaved herself out of the chair. “Wait a minute now,” she said
as she disappeared into the kitchen. She returned a moment later
with a bakery box tied with string. “Lemon meringue pie,” she said
as she opened the door for Eden. “By the way, I admire the work you
do with that Children's Fund. I wish they'd had something like that
when Ellie was little. Tom and I give money to it every year.”

Eden squeezed her hand, touched. “Thank you.”
She stepped onto the landing and looked up to see a blue sky
struggling to break through the clouds. “It's clearing up.”

“About time.” Sara Jane held the screen door
open. “How is your uncle, Eden? I see Lou quite a bit, but Kyle
doesn't get into the bakery much.”

“He's doing very well, thanks.”

“He was something else, your uncle.” Sara
Jane reddened again. “Now, don't you go telling him I said
that.”

–
18–

Eden was lighting the citronella candles on
the picnic table when Ben arrived. He stopped first at the grill
where Kyle was fanning the coals and handed him a bottle of
brandy.

“Peace offering,” he said quietly.

Kyle set his hand on Ben's shoulder and Eden
wondered what had passed between them that required an offer of
peace. She hoped it had nothing to do with her.

Kyle went into the house for the hamburgers
and Ben walked over to her. He leaned his head toward hers, and she
thought he was going to kiss her cheek, but instead he whispered,
“Don't mention anything to Kyle about the skeleton. I spoke to him
about it this morning and he nearly snapped my head off.”

Ah, so that was it.

He touched her elbow. “Let me say hello to
Lou.”

She had known, perhaps intuitively, not to
talk to Kyle about the skeleton. It was not so much the skeleton
that was off limits. It was the cave itself. Kyle had sealed that
cave in a fury. He took his anger over Kate's death out on it, and
although Eden didn't have her own memories of this, the story grew
like a legend that Kyle had single-handedly pushed the largest
boulder into the opening while the men from the neighborhood looked
on in stupefied silence. No one was to mention the cavern to him
again. Somehow everyone knew, then and in the years that followed,
to keep their thoughts about the cave to themselves when Kyle was
around. Before reading the journal Eden had only partially
understood Kyle's sadness over losing his sister. She had not known
the bond that existed between them, their dependence on one
another. In Kyle's mind the cave had become a living being,
responsible for the hold it had over Kate and for making her its
victim.

“We have a foursome tonight,” Kyle said to
Ben during dinner. “You know what that means, don't you?”

Ben caught on immediately. “Tramposo!” he
said.

“It's been so long,” Lou said. “I'm not sure
I can remember the rules.”

The men laughed at what was apparently a
joke. Ben must have seen Eden's look of confusion. “It's a card
game we used to play in Colombia,” he explained. “You'll see.”

After dinner they sat at the walnut dining
room table and played tramposo. Ben was her partner. With his eyes
and with his foot beneath the table he cheated shamelessly, letting
her know what was in his hand, when she should make a move, when
she shouldn't. At first she was uncomfortable. She sent him
incredulous stares across the table and did the opposite of what he
requested in an effort to put an end to his brazenness. But
gradually she realized Kyle and Lou were cheating as well. It was
part of the game, a game with no rules. The cheating mounted until
the cards themselves were almost immaterial and it boiled down to
which team was more skilled at nonverbal communication. It was no
contest. Kyle and Lou, with their years of practice at cheating
together, slaughtered the competition.

Kyle poured them each a glass of the grape
brandy Ben had brought and told her about the first time they'd
played tramposo with a few rough sorts in a small Colombian
village. They played with three teams: Kyle and Lou, Ben and
another archaeologist, and the two Colombians, who upped the stakes
by threatening to kill the losers.

“Of course they wouldn't have,” Ben said,
“but we really weren't sure at the time. They were just trying to
get us into the spirit of the game. We cheated like our lives
depended on it.”

“Desperate people take desperate measures,”
said Lou.

Eden thought of the few evenings she and
Wayne had spent with Kyle and Lou. She had dreaded those visits,
and the memory alone was enough to bring on the burn behind her
breastbone, the damp palms. It had been nothing more than a duty to
visit with these two relatives who had taken her in and from whom
she'd fled. The atmosphere on those occasions was always stiff and
formal. They would never have played cards. They would never have
played a game of any sort. Each of them would have chatted politely
about their work: Kyle's latest project, Lou's painting, Eden's
movies, Wayne's cases. Conversation that was lifeless, hollow, dry
as bone.

Tonight had a completely different quality.
She realized now that she and Wayne had set the tone for those
evenings, that Kyle and Lou had probably felt the discomfort as
keenly as she had. She was jealous of the easy camaraderie between
them and Ben. He treated them like peers. Intimates. His love and
admiration for them was candid and genuine. She wished she could
express her feelings for them so easily.

“Let's move into the living room and have
some of that pie Sara Jane sent you home with,” Kyle said.

Lou wheeled herself into the living room. “I
don't know if I want you to eat any of Sara Jane's cooking, Kyle,”
she said. “Eden thinks she still has a crush on you.”

“‘Crush’ is the definitive word in that
sentence.” Kyle laughed as he walked into the kitchen for the
pie.

Eden was taking the dessert plates from the
china cabinet as Lou started to shift herself from the chair to the
sofa. Suddenly the chair slipped out from under Lou's hands,
sending her sprawling onto the hardwood floor.

“Lou!” Eden ran to her aunt's side. Lou was
struggling to sit up, her skirt up to her thighs and the stump of
her right leg flailing the air. Ben was quickly behind her,
supporting her back with his arms. Eden pulled Lou's skirt over her
knees and helped Ben lift her to the sofa.

“What's going on?” Kyle peered into the
room.

Eden opened her mouth to say that Lou had
taken a terrible fall, but Ben spoke first. “Lou just took a little
tumble,” he said. He sat next to Lou on the sofa, his arm across
her shoulders.

“Are you all right, Lou?” Kyle asked.

She waved him back to the kitchen with her
hand, but she was clearly shaken. Her face was drained of color,
and her hand shook violently as she tried to brush the long strands
of her salt-and-pepper hair back into her bun. Eden knelt in front
of her.

“Are you sure you're okay?”

“I'm fine.” But even Lou's voice seemed
weakened by the fall.

Ben tightened his arm around her and pressed
his lips to her pale temple. “You gave us a scare, Lou,” he said.
Sitting next to Ben, Lou looked frail enough to break under the
weight of his arm.

“Would you like some iced tea? Lemonade?”
Eden asked.

“Iced tea,” Lou all but whispered as Kyle set
the pie on the coffee table.

Once in the kitchen, Eden began to cry. She
leaned against the refrigerator and pressed her hands to her face.
Her head filled with the image of Lou lying on the floor, her legs
thrashing the air in a desperate attempt to right herself. God,
she'd kidded herself into thinking Lou didn't suffer.

“Eden?”

She turned to see Kyle in the doorway of the
kitchen. He walked toward her. “Lou's okay,” he said. “Her pride's
hurt more than anything.”

“You didn't see it, Kyle. She fell hard. Ben
made light of it to spare her embarrassment.”

Kyle set his brandy glass on the counter.
“I've seen her fall before,” he said.

“You mean it happens often?”

“More often than she'd admit to you.”

“Maybe she needs a different kind of chair.
The Children's Fund makes this chair you can stand up in and—”

Kyle shook his head. “Her chair's fine. I
long ago stopped trying to protect her from everything that could
possibly happen to her. She doesn't want that, Eden.”

Eden's eyes filled again. “I don't want to
see her suffer.”

Kyle put his arms around her and she didn't
resist. For a few minutes she cried softly against his shoulder
while he stroked her back. Not since that day in the orphanage a
lifetime ago had she let him hold her, and she wondered if he would
be holding her now if he knew her part in Lou's tragic loss.

She returned to the living room with the iced
tea, but Lou was back in her wheelchair. “I'll take it to bed with
me, dear,” she said. “I'm tired all of a sudden. I'll just read for
a bit.”

Kyle wheeled Lou into the bedroom, and Ben
looked up at Eden. “You've been crying.” He reached up to take her
hand. She drew his hand against her leg, and the electricity she'd
felt between them the night before shot through her again.

“A little.” She looked down at the pieces of
pie on the coffee table and shut her eyes. “I'm not hungry.”

Ben stood up. “Neither am I. I'm going to go.
Walk me out to the truck?”

Cicadas had taken over the night outside,
their song rising and falling in gentle waves. The air was still
damp from the rain and sweet with honeysuckle. It made Eden feel
dizzy. Or drunk. She wasn't sure which and didn't care. When they
reached the truck Ben turned her toward him, sandwiching her
between the truck and his body.

“I've been waiting all night to do this,” he
said as he lowered his head to kiss her. She opened her lips,
tasted brandy on his tongue. When he finally leaned away from her
she was winded, her lungs fighting to pull in the thick, wet
air.

“Catch your breath and we'll do it again.” He
smiled.

She let her head fall back against the cool
metal of the truck as he slid his hands from her back to her sides.
He raised them slowly until his thumbs rested just shy of her
breasts. She wanted more. She felt his hard but uninsistent
erection and pressed her hips against him. He drew in a quick,
sharp breath, dropping his hands to the seat of her jeans with an
intimacy that startled, then pleased her as he pulled her even
closer. Her legs turned liquid. She closed her eyes, let her head
fill with the sound of cicadas.

“I'm a little tipsy, I think,” she said. “Not
responsible for what I'm doing.”

He laughed. “You know exactly what you're
doing. You speak very fluent body language.” But then he drew his
head away, his hands, his hips, and took a step back from her. “We
need to have a talk,” he said. “A serious one.”