The Art of Keeping Secrets (20 page)

“What in the living hell is this?” Bedford’s voice echoed across the parking lot. Sofie broke away from Jake so abruptly that he almost fell.

Bedford stalked toward them; Sofie had never seen him so angry and she stepped in front of Jake. “Stop,” she said in a voice she hadn’t used with Bedford before.

“What?” He lifted his hands, took another step forward. “Did he hurt you?”

“No,” Sofie said. “He’s an old friend from where I used to live.”

“Colorado?” Bedford stepped around Sofie and glared at Jake. “You’re from Colorado?”

Jake moved to stand directly in front of Bedford. “Maybe.” He turned to stare at Sofie, and she closed her eyes as if to beg him to answer in the affirmative.

Bedford hollered, “What kind of smart-ass answer is that? You stay away from her—you understand me?”

“Not sure I do,” Jake said. “You her father?”

Sofie spoke between them. “Stop it now, both of you.”

They both turned toward her. Bedford spoke first. “Tell me what’s going on here.”

“I ran into an old friend—from sixth grade—at the Full Cup. We got to talking, and he wanted to see where I worked, see the dolphins. He’s majoring in Greek mythology and is interested in dolphin history—so I brought him here. He was hugging me goodbye.” Sofie glanced at Jake. She had just given him an excuse for being there, but also revealed how easy it was for her to lie, to make up a story full of half-truths, on the spot.

She felt dirty, almost obscene, as though she’d betrayed him. She looked away from his pained face and stepped toward Bedford, touched his arm. “He was just going,” she said.

Jake walked away from both of them, leaving Sofie with a desperate loneliness.

When Jake’s car pulled from the parking lot, Bedford took Sofie in his arms and became once again the man she knew: soft, caring. “Darling, what was that all about?”

“I just told you.”

“You recognized a boy from sixth grade?”

“No, he recognized me—said he’d heard we lived here from a friend of Grandma’s and had thought my mother still owned the art studio.”

“And then you decided to show him the research center?”

“He asked,” she said, feeling as though each half-truth she told destroyed a piece of her soul. But she saw no other way. Her mother had taught her well. Very well.

“My sweet girl,” he said, stroked her hair.

“Why are you here?” Sofie took one step away from him. “I thought you were writing today.”

He stuffed his hand into his pocket and pulled out something blue. “You left your computer’s memory stick at my house the other night. I keep meaning to give it to you.”

She stared at it in slight wonder. How could she have possibly left her precious work unattended? Hadn’t she put it in her purse? She took it from Bedford, clasped it in her hand, held it tight. She must never let her mind become so preoccupied that she forgot something this important.

“Sofie,” he said, “I looked at the work on it. You’re writing a book about how dolphins can talk.”

“Oh,” she said, blood flowing from her face to her toes in a rapid rush.

“Please tell me you aren’t going to try and publish something about speaking dolphins.”

“It’s a children’s chapter book,” she said. “And I didn’t want to tell you about it until I had finished it.” She looked sideways at him. “Your opinion means so much to me, and I didn’t want you to see it until I had polished it all up.”

“A children’s novel?”

“Just a fantasy story about dolphins. Nothing important.”

Bedford leaned down and looked into her face. “You believe that dolphins give humans names. We have been through this a hundred times. You cannot prove the un-provable. You just can’t. There is no empirical evidence to support your theory, and jumping off boats and recording sounds is not going to change that, Sofie.”

The truth of his words blended with her hopelessness, and she turned away from him. He was all she had left in this meager life she lived. His love. His protection. His adoration. And she was about to lose it all.

“You’re blowing things out of proportion, Bedford. Really you are.” She kissed him. “Come on. I’ve got to get to work. We’ll talk at dinner, okay?”

“I just wanted to let you know your work was safe.” He walked to his car, got in and slammed the door with more force than was necessary.

Sofie stayed on the seawall after he was gone, stared out at the water and thought of her mother’s painting, of the words below the pale, translucent starfish. One word came clearly to her: “Loss,” written in small, slanted letters beneath the starfish’s middle right arm. She clenched her teeth to keep the tears from rising.

She was a fool for allowing herself to reveal so much to Jake Murphy. Something had happened between the myth of the dolphin and the reality of her research, and her heart had split wide enough to allow Jake Murphy to enter her world. She would not let it happen again.

Control was her goal now—force Michael Harley to leave town; hide her research from Bedford; make Jake go away; remove the disapproval from Bedford’s face. If she focused, she could do it all.

FOURTEEN

ANNABELLE MURPHY

The Charmed Knits shop was located on a corner lot directly across from the church where Annabelle had run into Sofie just yesterday. Or was that a lifetime ago? A life in which she doled out advice in a newspaper as if she were the queen of knowing, as if she knew exactly what to do in every situation, as if her life were in perfect order.

Behind a plate-glass window, sweaters, booties and scarves hung from flowered mannequins. Rolls of yarn in candy colors were arranged on a large antique chest, tempting Annabelle, who had no interest in knitting, into thinking she, too, could walk into this store and make a sweater worthy of being worn when the next cold front went through.

Annabelle pushed open the door; a bell tinkled a hollow sound and an overactive air conditioner blew cold air in her face. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms and then walked to the back of the store, where a group of six women sat in a circle talking in another language—knitting language. Annabelle had no idea what a stockinette or garter stitch was, so she cleared her throat.

An older woman with a knot of white hair on top of her head, and a wide smile, which made her look younger than the color of her hair suggested, glanced up. “May I help you?”

“Yes,” Annabelle said, nervous as the other women stared at her. “I’m looking for Jo-Beth.”

“Guilty,” the woman said, and stood.

“May I talk to you in private for a moment?”

“Sure thing.” Jo-Beth walked toward Annabelle, her long peasant skirt swishing, her hand-knitted shawl flowing behind her as Annabelle imagined her hair would if it were released from the knot.

She followed the other woman to the other side of the store. “I’m so sorry to bother you while you’re teaching . . . but I want to ask about an old friend.”

“You want to ask about Liddy,” Jo-Beth said.

“How’d you know?”

Jo-Beth shrugged. “A good-looking fellow came in here asking about her earlier today, and I figured this was just a follow-up.” Jo-Beth leaned against the counter, picked up a pair of knitting needles looped with brilliant red yarn. Jo-Beth’s hands worked even as she looked directly at Annabelle; the needles seemed to be an extension of her hands. “So shoot. Whatcha need?”

“A man was looking for her?”

Jo-Beth picked up her glasses, which were hanging off a beaded chain on her neck, put them on. “You’re not with him?”

“Not unless he was a very young man—twenty or so.”

“No, this was an older man looking after Liddy because he thinks she knew something about some famous artist named Ariadne or something like that. I told him the same thing I’ll tell you. Liddy owned the Newboro Art Studio, but she never, ever told me who Ariadne was. She herself didn’t even paint.”

Annabelle shook her head. “Yes, Liddy did paint.”

Jo-Beth set her knitting down on the counter. “No, really, she didn’t. She took photographs, did some knitting and even wrote poetry, but she didn’t paint.”

“I’m telling you I knew her when she lived in Marsh Cove, and she painted. Beautifully, actually.”

“We must not be talking about the same woman. Liddy was from Colorado and didn’t paint.”

Annabelle reached behind her for a chair, but met empty air. Jo-Beth leaned forward, touched Annabelle’s elbow. “Are you okay?”

“This Liddy you knew—did she have a boyfriend? A husband?”

“Oh, Liddy always had a man.” Jo-Beth pulled two stools from behind the counter. “Here, you look like you need to sit a spell.”

Annabelle sat and leaned over, her elbows on her knees. “Did she ever tell you the names of her . . . men?”

“Well, I knew the ones here, but I don’t think I could tell you any more than that.”

Annabelle’s lip quivered, and she tried to cover it up by lifting a hand to her mouth. “I really am sorry to bother you. It seems as though you have been pestered enough, but I’m not sure how to tell you how important this information is to me, to my family. It is more important than you can imagine.” Annabelle took in a deep breath. “Did she ever marry?”

“No. Liddy was not one to talk about her past. The only thing she told me was that they were from Colorado and that Sofie’s father was dead. That’s it. I don’t know how much help I can be. As I told the other gentleman, we all loved Liddy, but she was very private. She showed up ten years ago with her daughter, opened a much-needed art studio in town and became one of us until we lost her two years ago. Even if I could tell you more, I wouldn’t. I don’t know you and we all loved her and I want to honor her desire for privacy. She was . . . beautiful in her own eccentric and heartbreaking way.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Jo-Beth looked up at the ceiling, then over her glasses into Annabelle’s eyes. “I can tell that you’re desperate for something I can’t give you. Liddy lived in some combination of real and imagined romance, constantly searching for a peace within herself that she never found. She loved deeply and impulsively, from one moment to the next, from one person to the next. Sofie is the one who can give you names if you need them. Liddy never once mentioned any names from her past. I respected her and never probed, although our friendship was deep and lasting. I’m sorry I can’t help you any more than that.”

Annabelle touched the woman’s knee, as if this might release more information. “I know I sound desperate—I am. Did she have someone, a man, who came to see her from her old hometown?”

“The only thing she ever told me about her past and old town was that she had one true love and one sad affair—neither of which worked out.”

Annabelle gathered a deeper strength to ask, “Do you know if the man she deeply loved and the man she had the affair with were the same person?”

Jo-Beth smiled. “No. I asked her—once—and she stared off toward the water for so long, silent tears pouring, that I thought I had broken something in her that could never be fixed. She didn’t answer and I never asked again. You have to understand that even though she is gone, her memory is very dear to me and I have no wish to betray her. I don’t know what your family situation is, or why you need the information, but please respect that I have told you all I can.”

“Yes, thank you.” Annabelle stood, and walked to the front of the store. Hushed voices from the women in the knitting group followed her, and she longed to join them, to sit down, pick up a ball of clean white yarn and make something with these women whom she didn’t know: to fashion something soft and new with her hands.

She pushed the door open and gulped fresh air.

Annabelle said these words out loud, yet found them empty of meaning. She leaned against a brick wall and attempted to right this world, which spun out of her control.

Annabelle didn’t eat for the rest of the day as the sun moved high and brutal in the sky. A quick, warm wind came without warning around corners, off the harbor and into her face. She walked out onto a pier that extended far over the water and counted the moored sailboats she passed—twenty-seven.

When Jake called on her cell phone, she knew it was not good news. After her son quietly told her that Liddy Parker was the woman on the plane, that Knox was taking Liddy to see her own mother, Annabelle sat at the end of the dock and attempted to stay her weeping. The love of her life, her husband, Knox Murphy, had flown to this town to be with Liddy Parker, and then he’d died with her. What Sofie had described as a mission of mercy no longer seemed so simple, or so innocent.

How was she to absorb this truth? She wanted to run back to the stone church where she’d first seen Sofie, burst inside and beg the preacher to give her back her faith in her life, in her husband, in her marriage.

Such faith was now wavering. She rode on a rapid river, toward another shore of doubt and grief. Her past beliefs could no longer anchor her amidst this tumult.

The day seeped away as Annabelle wandered the streets of Newboro and tried to find a trace of her husband, wondering if he could have been here or there with Liddy Parker. She even stopped by the art studio, but it was closed.

For the second time in her life, Annabelle didn’t have a way of navigating the waters of her life. It was as if the world she knew had been swept away. Questions that had never before come to mind now wandered through it freely and openly, as if they’d always been there and she had just not acknowledged them.

The sun sank on the far side of the harbor, casting shadows across the water, over the sailboats. How had an entire day gone by while she merely
thought
? She’d remembered days and years she’d spent with Knox, things he’d said, motions he’d made, places he’d gone. She just wanted to find one moment, one single moment when she could say, “Aha, that is when he was with her. That’s it, right there.”