Secret Lives (53 page)

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.

“Do 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.