Secret Lives (38 page)

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.

“Did you get to see Bliss?” he asked as he
took his seat at the table. Jen set their plates in front of them.
She had made chicken salad with grapes and cold Oriental noodles,
all beautifully arranged on the black square china.

“Yes. She's adorable.” It was difficult for
her to hold Sam's gaze for long because she was certain he was
thinking, I am hot and you and I both know it. She wondered how his
female patients managed to sit across from him week after week
without drooling.

“She seems happy enough, don't you think?” he
asked.

“Well, I didn't get to see her that long. She
seems like a very serious child.”

“There's nothing wrong with that.” Sam
smiled. “I was one myself.”

Eden chewed on a grape. Perhaps she had to be
careful what she said here. After all, she was a stranger to Sam
and Jen, walking into their house, telling them she thought their
niece was imperfect.

“She said something I thought was strange.”
Eden told them about Bliss saying her daddy still visited her
sometimes.

Jen shuddered. “That's weird.”

Sam frowned. “I keep in touch with her
counselor and she's never told me that Bliss has said anything like
that.”

“Maybe someone should tell the counselor?”
Eden asked.

Sam shrugged. “I'll mention it to her, but I
think Joan Dove is probably right for the first time in her life. I
think Bliss is dreaming—-or maybe just fantasizing—that Ben's
visiting. It's her way of coping with the loss. I think she's
actually in good shape for all she's been through.” He was
obviously closing the subject.

They talked for a while about Ben, how they
missed him, all the things they used to do together, and she became
less and less comfortable with Sam. He was nice enough, but there
was the subtlest bit of acid in his voice when he spoke to her, and
finally she understood. He didn't trust her. When lunch was over
and they leaned back in their chairs he looked her hard in the
eye.

“Eden, I'd like to speak frankly to you,” he
said. “I can tell you care about Ben. I can tell you're sincere,
and I'm glad of that because I was worried you might be using him
somehow.”

“How would I be using him?”

“Well, you're an actress, used to the
excitement of Hollywood, and you're stuck in a rural area for the
summer.” Sam shrugged. “Ben's someone to do things with, someone to
help you pass the time away.”

“I'm not using him. I'm in love with
him.”

Sam smiled. “Yes, I can see you are. But I'm
still concerned about what happens down the road. Ben says you
worry about your image.” He said the word “image” as though it
tasted sour in his mouth. “At some point, Eden, the shit is going
to hit the fan. What will you do then?”

She wanted to tell him it was none of his
business, but thought better of it. “I don't see any point in
worrying about what might happen in the future,” she said.

Sam leaned toward her. “I'm not trying to put
you on the spot. I'm just afraid Ben is going to get hurt. You're a
nice person and I wish you all the best, but he's my first
priority. What are you going to do when the media finds out that
you're seeing a man who served time for molesting his
daughter?”

“Sam.” Jen put her hand on Sam's arm and
looked apologetically at Eden.

“I'm hoping that never happens,” Eden said.
“If it does, I'll deal with it at the time. I love Ben. I'm happier
with him than I've been in a long time and I'm not about to give
that up without a fight.”

Sam sighed and leaned back in his chair.
“He's my little brother, you know?” He smiled again and she
suddenly saw Ben in his smile. “He always will be. All our lives
I've tried to protect him, but this time I'm up against the wall. I
haven't been able to do a damn thing for him. I apologize. I've
overstepped my bounds. Ben would shoot me if he knew I was
badgering you.” He stood up and put his suit jacket back on. Then
he turned to her once again. “Please don't hurt him, Eden,” he said
quietly, and she felt sorry for Sam, for the impotence she saw in
his eyes. “He's taken just about all he can take.”

She had intended to go straight to Ben's
cabin after the three-hour drive from Annapolis, but she found
herself turning down the road to Lynch Hollow instead. She needed
to talk to Kyle and Lou first.

It was nearly six and she found them in the
living room. Lou sat at her easel; Kyle was drinking coffee on the
sofa, a fat book open on his lap.

“I need your advice,” she said to them.

Lou set her paintbrush down and Kyle snapped
his book shut. Eden smiled at the immediateness of their reaction.
This was probably the first time in her life she'd asked them for
advice.

She told them about seeing Bliss at Green
Gables, about the little girl's worrisome thinness, the sober,
adultlike expression on her face, the reported nightmares, the
fantasy of her father's nocturnal visits.

“I don't know what to tell Ben,” she said.
“My idea in going to see Bliss was to be able to report back to him
that she seems like a normal, happy kid. But she doesn't. Even if I
hadn't known her, if I hadn't been looking for a problem, she would
have stood out as being different from the others, disturbed in
some way.”

Lou shook her head. “That makes me very sad,”
she said. “I remember her as a happy, lively little girl. She
always had a smile on her face.”

“What should I tell him? Driving here, I was
thinking I'll have to lie to him. What's the point in telling him
the truth when there's nothing he can do about it?”

“If you were in his shoes,” Kyle asked, “and
a friend of yours had seen Cassie and discovered what you've
discovered, would you want them to protect you from what they'd
learned?”

Eden smiled. It was very clear. “No. But it's
going to upset him because there's nothing he can do to help
her.”

“But he can tell his brother what you've
observed, and maybe Sam can see that she gets more help than she's
getting.”

Eden groaned. “That man can't admit there's
anything wrong.” She told them about her visit with Sam and
Jen.

“Well, he's in a bad spot too,” Kyle said.
“He's trying to help Ben, and trying to look out for Bliss, and he
must have to watch his step around Sharon and her new husband. You
probably just look like a major complication to him.”

“I used to worry about Ben getting any more
bad news,” Lou said. “But I don't now, because you're here. You're
a comfort to him, Eden. He'll be okay.”

Ben met her at his door. “God, you're late,”
he said. “How did it go?”

She sat him down on the sofa and held his
hand while she told him moment by moment and word for word about
her morning at Green Gables. She presented it as fact, didn't color
any of it with her own interpretation, because maybe she was wrong.
Maybe he would see nothing worrisome in the way Bliss's ribs felt
like carving knives beneath her fingers, and maybe Bliss had always
awakened from her naps on the edge of a nightmare and that was
nothing new, a symptom of absolutely nothing. He listened without
comment, without change of expression, and when she was through he
began to cry. She held him. “It's all right, Ben,” she said,
stroking his back, kissing his hair. “It's all right.”

Sometime in the middle of the night he woke
her up. His body was hot and damp next to her, and he had kicked
the sheet off. It lay tangled over her legs and hips.

“You didn't tell me how it went at Sam and
Jen's,” he said. His voice was so clear that she knew he had not
slept.

She put her arm across him, her head on his
chest. She heard his heart beating and felt the softness of the
hair on his chest beneath her cheek. “It was fine,” she said. “I
really liked Jen. And Sam thinks Bliss is doing well. So maybe this
is an improvement over where she was.”

“No,” Ben said. “What you described is not a
goddamned improvement. Did you tell Sam what you saw?”

“I think Sam thinks I caught Bliss on a bad
day.”

“Yeah, and he said those pictures of her at
Saint Michaels were taken on a bad day too. I'll have to talk to
him and—”

“Ben.” She raised herself up on an elbow to
look at him. “Please don't say anything to Sam that will make him
think I'm interfering or being pushy or ... Maybe you'd better not
mention me to him at all.”

“What are you saying?”

“He's worried I'll hurt you.”

She could see his smile in the thin moonlight
that filtered through his window. He reached up to touch her hair.
“I'll tell him you're the only thing in my life that doesn't hurt
at all.”

She drove back to Lynch Hollow early the next
morning. She had poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot in the
kitchen and was about to take it upstairs with her when she heard
Kyle's voice from his bedroom.

“I just read the notebook over and I don't
see how I can possibly give it to her,” he said.

Eden froze at the bottom of the stairs. She
wondered if she should call out, let them know she was home. But
before she could decide Kyle spoke again.

“Maybe I should just tell her about it
instead of letting her read it.”

There was no response from Lou, and for a
moment Eden wondered if Kyle was talking on the phone. Or to
himself. But then Lou spoke.

“You've brought her along this far with the
journal, Ky,” she said. “And you know it was what Kate wanted.”

Eden was afraid to listen any longer. She
walked quietly up the stairs to her room and sat down in front of
the word processor. She hated hearing that worry in Kyle's voice.
She hated that she was causing him any concern at all. She thought
of telling him she'd overheard his conversation with Lou, that if
he wanted to just tell her about the next notebook that was fine
with her. He had shared so much of himself with her; she could ask
no more of him. But she couldn't tell him she'd listened in. She
would have to let him make his own decision on this.

She worked the entire day on the screenplay,
except for a quick break for lunch and a long, satisfying phone
call to Cassie. When she went downstairs for dinner she spotted the
next notebook, black with age, on the counter and knew Kyle had
made his decision. “Is that for me?” she asked as she took her
seat.

“What are your plans tonight?” Kyle
asked.

“Ben needs a good night's sleep after last
night, so I'm going to stay home. Get a little more work done.” She
nodded in the direction of the notebook. “I could read that tonight
if that's okay with you.”

“Why don't the three of us go out?” Lou
suggested.

“That's a good idea,” said Kyle. “What
movie's playing in town?”

“Well, I think I'll just—”

“Come with us, dear,” Lou said. It was more
of a command than an invitation.

So she rode into Coolbrook to watch a rerun
of Vertigo at the renovated movie theater. The movie was so old it
was lined and crackly on the screen—one of those movies that
reminded her of the days when she longed to be an actress, when she
thought that nothing else in life could ever satisfy her.

She sat next to Kyle in the theater. He'd put
on a beige cardigan for the air-conditioning, and he smelled of Old
Spice. She felt his presence like an old quilt, a comforter.

After the movie Kyle insisted they go to The
Scoop Sboppe for ice cream sundaes, and after that Lou suggested
they “stroll and roll” down Coolbrook's deserted Main Street.
Anyone watching them would think they wanted to avoid going back to
Lynch Hollow at all costs. So it was nearly eleven-thirty when they
got home. Ben had left a message for her on Kyle's answering
machine. Eden sat on the living room sofa, listening to him tell
her that he felt better today and that he loved her.

She clicked off the machine just as Kyle
walked into the room with the notebook. She stood to take it from
him, and he wrapped his arms around her for a hug that lasted a
long, long time.

–
34–

August 2, 1954