Secret Lives (55 page)

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 no 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.

She lay still for a few minutes, staring at
the black ceiling. Finally she switched on the lamp on her night
table and pulled her purse from the floor to the bed. She would
read the journal Kyle had given her. The last one.

She reached into her purse, but her hand
froze as she heard the slamming of a car door in the driveway. She
held still, listening to the knock at the kitchen door, to the
quiet murmur of Kyle's voice, to the footsteps on the stairs.
Ben.

She set her purse back on the floor and
folded her hands in her lap.

He knocked softly on the door. “Eden?”

“Come in,” she said.

He opened the door and shut it softly behind
him. He sat down on her bed and pried one of her hands loose from
the other so he could hold it on his knee.

“I was a jerk earlier,” he said. “I'm
sorry.”

“It's all right.”

“Ruth had a copy of tomorrow's paper. Your
retraction is in it.”

“Good.” She was relieved he had seen it. She
might leave Monday a miserable woman, but at least her conscience
would be clear.

“You didn't need to be so hard on yourself,”
he said.

“Yes,” she said, “I did.”

He looked down at her hand, stroked his thumb
across its smooth surface. “Did you mean it earlier when you said
you still love me?”

“Yes.”

He smiled, a bit wistfully, and squeezed her
hand. “I saw Heart of Winter last night. It's playing in Gloverton.
I stopped on my way back from Annapolis.”

“But you'd already seen it twice.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “But I had to see
you, and that was a safe way to do it. I could watch you
without…being tempted by you. Without any danger of making a fool
out of myself, or…I was so grateful to you for helping me get out
of the mess I was in, but I didn't want to forget what you'd done
to me.” He shrugged. “It wasn't very satisfying, seeing you up on
the screen. It wasn't you up there. You were the woman in the
movie, Lily whatever-her-name-was. You were her completely. You're
an excellent actress, Eden, but it still irked the hell out of me
seeing Michael Carey paw at you, watching you kiss him.” Ben
shuddered. “I left before the climax, so to speak.”

She smiled, raised her hand to touch his
cheek.

“I love you too, Eden,” he said.

“Then tell me you don't want me to leave on
Monday.”

“Please don't leave.”

She rose to her knees to kiss him, but the
pain in her shoulders and legs made her cringe.

“You're sore from the tunnel?” he asked.

She nodded.

“I'd offer to give you a massage but I'm
afraid once I touch you I won't be able to stop.”

“Touch me, then. Please.”

He stood up and hit the lock on her door and
returned once again to her bed. “This is beautiful.” He stroked the
back of his fingers down the white satin between her breasts. “How
come I've never seen it before?”

“I never needed it at your cabin. We just
went from dressed to undressed.”

“Well, I think we'll have to take it off you
in order for me to rub your shoulders properly.”

She felt suddenly shy at the thought of
pulling her nightgown over her head, sitting naked and vulnerable
in front of him, but he leaned over to switch off the lamp on the
night table and the darkness filled her with longing. He slid the
gown up her body and over her head and set it behind him on the
bed. “Lie on your stomach,” he said.

She lay down willingly, her head resting on
her arms, and waited while he took off his shoes. He straddled her
and his first warm touch on her shoulders brought tears to her
eyes. It had been too long since she'd felt his hands on her, since
she'd felt any love from him at all.

“You're tense,” he said, gently pressing,
kneading. And then his hands stopped, rested flat against her back,
and she knew he could feel the spasms as she tried not to cry. She
felt his lips on her back. “No,” he said. “Please don't cry.” He
pulled her into his arms and she clung to him.

“I was afraid I'd never get to see you
again,” she said. “Or talk to you, or hold you. I'm not used to
caring that much. I figured I'd be okay once I was back in
California where I could pretend everything is all right. I don't
feel pain there, but I never really feel happiness either. This
summer's been different. I've felt everything. My emotions have
been all over the map—up and down, back and forth—but they're my
emotions. They belong to me, not to some character I'm playing. Not
to some plastic Eden Riley.”

He kissed her shoulder. “Lie back again,” he
said.

She lay on her back as he set his hands on
her thighs. “Show me where it hurts,” he said.

She guided his hands to the line of fire in
her thighs. He ran his thumbs along the bruised muscles and she
gripped the sheet in her fists and tensed against the pain.

“Try to relax,” he said.

He was good at this. She let go of the sheet
and closed her eyes, and gradually her muscles loosened beneath his
hands.

She knew he was through with the business end
of this massage when his thumbs slipped from her burning muscles to
the inside of her thighs. And she knew she was through with the
pain when her legs parted of their own accord.

She remembered suddenly where she was, with
her daughter next door and Kyle and Lou downstairs.

"We have to be quiet," she whispered, but
what she was thinking was that she was safe. Safe and happy,
surrounded by the people she loved.

“Please come back to the cabin with me
tonight,” he said one long amazing hour later, when the room was
still and her heartbeat had slipped back to normal.

“All right. Only I'd like to be back early in
the morning, before Cassie wakes up.”

But Lou and Kyle told them not to worry about
Cassie. “We'll take her in our bed with us in the morning,” Lou
said. “Go on now. She'll be fine.”

Although it was that hour in her bed that
Eden would remember best, she knew it was the rest of the night
spent in Ben's cabin—the hours of talk and reconnection—that bound
them together, that set their future course.

He told her about his few days in Annapolis,
the nearly unbearable roller coaster of emotions, the mix of wild
anger toward Sam and pure love for his daughter.

“Are you still in love with Sharon?” she
asked. They were in his bed, under a blanket to keep off the chill
of the air conditioner.

“No. I could never recapture the feelings I
had for her and I have no interest in trying. I feel terrible for
her, though. She's really been through hell.”

“Did you see Sam?”

“Oh, yeah.” Ben's body stiffened next to her.
“My incredible brother. The one person in the world I thought I
could always count on. Parents die, friends come and go, spouses
might come and go. But your brother. Sam was someone I thought I
couldn't lose.”

He told her about his meeting with Sam, the
satisfaction he took in hitting him. She had difficulty picturing
Ben hurting anyone, although wasn't that what he had done to her
earlier that evening when she'd stopped by his cabin? He hadn't
used his fists then, but she had felt the force of his attack all
the same.

“I have so much fury in me,” he said. “I know
it's meant for Sam, but it's coming out all over the place. I don't
know how I'll ever deal with him. One minute I want to kill him,
the next I want to hold him and tell him I'll do absolutely
anything in the world to help him. What I really can't stand is
imagining him with Bliss.”

“What was it like seeing her?”

“Terrific, although you were right about her
being way too thin and fragile. She looks haunted to me. And she's
into Barbie dolls.” He laughed. “Five years old. I was hoping it
would never happen. I feel like it's my fault. If I'd been there I
could have somehow protected her from the influence of her
misguided peers.”

She smiled. “It's so good to hear you
laugh.”

He pulled her closer, and his voice softened.
“One day Bliss is going to realize what happened—that because she
thought Sam was me, her parents split up and her father went to
jail. How do I protect her from that, from blaming herself?”

“You'll find a way,” she said. “Something
that always touched me about you was the way you put Bliss ahead of
yourself. Even when things were at their worst for you.”