The Art of Keeping Secrets Part 13

"Neither do I, but it must've had something to do with his pro bono work."

"Yeah . . . I guess." Jake leaned back in the chair. A waiter came and took their order, placed a basket of hush puppies on the table. Annabelle ate two. "These are wonderful." She pushed the basket toward Jake.

He popped a hush puppy into his mouth, chewed while he stared at the restaurant crowd. "Weird."

"Yes."

"Well, maybe I can talk to Sofie, find out something more."

"You can try-she wouldn't tell me anything else. I have no idea where she lives or works or anything."

Jake scooted back to allow the waiter to place water gla.s.ses on the table. "What else did she say?"

"Listen, Jake, I don't have anything else to tell you. That's all I know right now. Let's talk about you. How is school going?"

"I dropped out of the semester."

Annabelle's drink slipped in her hand; Jake grabbed it before the wine spilled.

"Sorry, Mom. That's why I've been avoiding your phone calls. It's why I bought you that drink." He smiled at her and made a face. "Don't lose your cool, okay?"

Oh, G.o.d, how she wanted Knox here. She wanted to look to him for the proper words to say, for how to respond to her precious son in a way that wouldn't ruin this fragile moment.

"Jake, why?"

"Mom, I didn't like the prelaw cla.s.ses at all. I think I want to teach. Or write. History probably. I'm not really sure. But I know I don't want to be a lawyer."

It was as if the news about the woman in the plane had upset a precarious equilibrium, tipping out a mess of confused goals, beliefs and misunderstood motivations.

"Honey, you've wanted-"

"I know. But I don't now."

"Okay, then let's talk about what you do want."

"That's the biggest problem. I'm not sure. I just know what I don't want. I know this is crazy for you to hear, Mom. I know this isn't the way your brain works. And I've practiced this speech five hundred times, but it still isn't coming out right. I know you can't support me while I figure it out, so I promise I'll get a job. If we're supposed to do something with our lives that inspires us and others, then I want to teach history." He held up his hand. "I know that doesn't make much money. But I love it. I love everything about it."

Annabelle looked across the table at her son in this strange town, in this foreign land where she had come to find out what her husband had been doing right before he died. "Jake, if you love history, then teach it, write about it. You do not need to choose a career to satisfy me or your father."

She spoke about Knox in the present tense, as if he were still there looking over them, judging Jake's decisions. A new freedom came over her, freedom mixed with a sense of betrayal; she didn't need to think about what Knox would say or how he'd react-he wasn't there. "Jake, you've loved history since you could read. While everyone else was reading the Hardy Boys, you read about the Crusades. While others did their school projects on the popular sports figures, you did yours on some Roman battle I don't even remember. While others dressed up at Halloween as John Elway, you dressed up as a gladiator. Don't try and please me with your choice of career or school." She grinned at him. "I never want you to blame me for whatever misery you bring on yourself. You already have enough to blame me for."

Jake looked toward the other side of the restaurant, but a mother knew the look on her son's face when he was fighting back tears. She couldn't tell what they were for-her mention of Knox or her release of his life-but she reached across the table and laid her hand on his forearm. "Hey, you okay?"

He looked back at her. "Mom, I have never blamed you for anything. Ever."

She smiled. "That was meant to be a joke, but you know what? Keeley does blame me. She hates me now. Do all sixteen-year-olds hate their mothers?"

Jake nodded. "That's what I've heard. Mom, I just think she is still really, really mad at Dad for leaving us."

Annabelle sat back in her seat. "I guess I've seen it, but ignored it, hoping it would pa.s.s."

The waiter returned, placed their plates on the table. Jake took a bite of the pecan-encrusted grouper he'd ordered, chewed and spoke simultaneously. "Mom, are you sure you don't know where Sofie lives now?"

Annabelle shook her head, laughed. "Don't talk with your mouth full." Then she looked away from him. "No, I don't know where she lives. I drove most of the night to get here, and then found her by accident at the church. Guess I'll have to do some sleuthing."

Jake stood abruptly and went to the bar, came back with a phone book. Annabelle laughed. "I would've thought of that . . . eventually."

Jake leafed through the pages until he came to the Ps for Parker. He looked up. "Nothing here with the names Liddy or Sofie, or even the initials."

"She said her name is Milford or Milstead now, something like that."

"Did she marry?" Jake sifted through the pages.

"I doubt it. In the church she was with an older man she called her boyfriend. She's awfully young to marry."

"Hmmm . . . don't I know someone who married the love of her life when she was twenty?"

"That was different," Annabelle said. "Very different."

"I'm sure it was." Jake laughed. He flipped through more pages. "Here's an L. Milstead with an address and a phone number."

"Liddy."

"You have a pen?"

Annabelle pulled a black Sharpie from her purse. "Here," she said.

Jake scribbled the name, address and phone number on a napkin. "She must still live with her mother."

"She told me her mother left. That's all she said about her."

"Mom, this is all way weird."

Annabelle took a sip of wine, attempted to ignore her son's comment as she looked out the porthole window to Bay Street. Sofie Milstead knew more than she had told, and the information was like a stranger Annabelle was unsure she wanted to meet.

ELEVEN.

SOFIE MILSTEAD.

Bedford stroked Sofie's back, muttered the words she loved to hear. She never understood all that he said, yet she got the meaning-she was loved and adored. And above all else-she was safe.

He told her of her beauty and how her life had been made for his. If she examined this idea, if she probed for reciprocal feelings within herself, she couldn't find them. There was not a s.p.a.ce inside her that Bedford filled-only the dolphins did that for her. She understood there was something wrong with her, this failure to return his deeper love, but she basked in his adoration and a.s.sumed that eventually her immaturity would diminish and she would be able to truthfully love him back, tell him that he completed her.

Bedford dozed off with his hand flat on her stomach, and Sofie thought how the hours that had pa.s.sed that Sunday somehow added up to more than one day.

The humidity outside had settled inside her veins, her very blood bringing on a languor. When they'd set off for church that morning, she'd felt slightly guilty for not having told Bedford that Michael Harley, the art historian, had come calling. Bedford had looked down at her and kissed her on the forehead.

They had walked into the church as they had every Sunday since the first time she met him. He was a man of habit and of conscience, and these two qualities conspired to make him a churchgoer, if not a man of faith. This had baffled her at first-how could this man demand such strict church attendance when he found it hard to believe anything that couldn't be empirically proven? Then she realized that the familiar liturgy, the same words repeated in the same order week after week, appealed to his need for order even as they called to her heart.

They had walked toward their seats, the air dusty and stifling. Sofie had leaned against Bedford's shoulder and allowed the calm of this place to comfort her. People had filed into the church, sat in their regular seats and nodded h.e.l.lo to Sofie and Bedford, whispered, "Humid out there, eh?" as if no one else knew. Sofie had stared at the doorway, where the refracted light fell in a single path along the blue carpet; she thought how it looked like the path a dolphin might make in the water. A sadness rose in her, in a lump below her throat. She had started to look away, but a woman who walked into the shaft of light had caused Sofie to stop and stare.

She had dusty blond curls that fell wind whipped to her shoulders, and the awed, disoriented look of someone who had never entered this church before. She'd rubbed her hands together, then looked left and right and sat in the back pew to one side, her legs poised as if she might run at any minute.

Then the woman looked straight at Sofie, stared at her, through her. Electricity ran through Sofie and caused her body to quiver beneath Bedford's hand on her knee as she recognized Annabelle Murphy-Knox's wife.

Bedford patted her leg. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," Sofie whispered. "I'll be right back. I have to go to the ladies' room." She stood and walked down the aisle, avoided this woman's stare and entered the courtyard through a side door. This was it-this was when the consequences of her lies and secrets caught up with her.

The bench at the end of the church courtyard faced a playground surrounded by gravestones. Sofie sat and stared at the date on one of the stones: 1875. She counted inside her head: how long would it take Annabelle Murphy to come outside, find her?

She made it to fifty when Annabelle sat next to her, said her name as though they were intimate friends.

Sofie stared at Annabelle Murphy in wonder and dull amus.e.m.e.nt. This woman had always seemed little more to her than a name-more a concept or picture than a person. Knox Murphy's wife. The woman who had kept Knox from her mother and from her, a woman who only allowed Knox into their lives in small doses, none of them big enough.

The few words said between her and Annabelle replayed in Sofie's mind as she lay in her own bed next to Bedford and thought of all the events that had occurred that day. Chaotic feelings swirled while sleep eluded her. She rolled over and stared at Bedford's face as though he had brought all this upon her; then she rose, wrapped her robe around her middle and walked to the window. Moonlight spilled over the sidewalks and bushes in the front yard. He rarely slept at her condominium, and his presence there now filled the s.p.a.ce to overflowing.

Sleep would not visit. She took her car keys off the dresser, tiptoed around the condo. Confusion and chaos always drove her to the water, to the research center. In less than ten minutes, she pulled into the empty parking lot. In the absence of streetlights, the stars shone as though the heavens had turned up their brightness.

She walked to the seawall. Although she couldn't see them, she felt the presence of dolphins below her. She lay down along the length of the wall and listened for their cries and calls. "h.e.l.lo," she said in a whisper. The thought occurred to her that maybe they didn't want their names to be known-that they didn't want the human world to know they had individual souls. Hadn't Sofie's mother hidden her and Sofie's real names for a reason? Why wouldn't these brilliant animals do the same?

Sofie sat up, swung her legs over the wall and stared into the vast darkness. The crunch of gravel and the squeal of brakes caused her to turn around, stare over her shoulder. A squat dark car pulled into the lot and parked. A tall man unfolded himself from the front seat, looked around and then walked toward the research building.

Sofie sat on the edge of the seawall and watched the man place his hands on either side of his face and peer into the windows. She held her breath until he went to the south side, out of sight. She stood, walked to her car, sidestepping stones so as not to cause noise in this quiet, starlit night. Whoever he was, she didn't know this man or his purpose for being at the research center in the middle of the night.

The car door squeaked as she opened it; she stood frozen, afraid he would come around the corner. She wanted to leave, call the police. She had never felt afraid here before, and she was unsure how to react now. The man didn't return as she climbed behind the wheel, thinking she was a fool for not bringing her cell phone.

She released a long breath, started the engine. A knock on her window startled her so that she jammed the car into drive instead of reverse and rolled into the yellow concrete barrier in front of the tires. The man jumped back, laughed. Sofie stared at him through the driver's-side window, tilted her head in confusion. She did know this man, and something in his face caused all fear to empty out of her in a rush.

He smiled at her and leaned down to the window. His face was full of a warm smile, stubble on his chin, tousled brown hair moving in the breeze. There was something safe and calm about him. She opened her door and stepped out, but didn't say a word, just stared at him.

"Are you okay?" he asked in a voice she didn't remember, but found familiar nonetheless.

"I think so," she said, walked to the front of the car, looked at the b.u.mper. "Just a scratch." She turned back to him. "Do I know you?"

"Yep, you stole my crayons in first grade and blamed it on Chandler Hoover."

Sofie's mind reeled backward. "I didn't . . . live here in first grade."

"No, you lived in Marsh Cove."

Memories came to her in random order, half-remembered like the words that were painted under layers of paint on her mother's canvases: phrases and pictures that were covered up and masked.

The man tapped his chest. "I'm Jake . . . Jake Murphy."

Her hands flew to her face, her mind registering that a single news story was causing an ever-widening ripple of events over which she no longer had any control. Her initial reaction was wrong-totally wrong. Jake Murphy meant danger, not peace. She backed away from him.

"Don't you remember me?" He held his arms apart.

"Of course I remember you," she said, glanced around the parking lot as though expecting to find someone there to help her.

"Don't be afraid of me. I shouldn't have followed you-don't freak out. I went to your condo, then saw you leave. . . ."

Sofie nodded, trapped now with the keys still in her car. He rubbed his forehead. "Wow. You know, you look the same as I remember you. I mean taller, of course, and all that, but same cute face."

She felt herself blush and hoped the meager starlight was not enough to let him see. "I have to go . . . please." She stepped toward her car.

"Please, just wait." He moved away from her even as he said this, as though he were trying to prove he wasn't a threat.

"I can't," Sofie said.

"Okay," Jake said, and strode off toward the water. Sofie meant to climb in the car, shove it in reverse and leave, but without thinking she followed him.

They reached the seawall and stood next to each other without speaking. Then Sofie turned to him. "You look just like your dad."

"That's what they say." Jake ran a hand down his face. "We really weren't much alike, though."

"In what way?"

"Oh, in the things we liked and didn't like. But we got along great." He turned to Sofie. "I mean, we used to get along great."

"I'm sorry about your dad. I really am. I loved him, too, you know." Her words came as a surprise to her. She held up her hands. "Not like . . . that."

"Did you know him . . . here?"

"Yes, he did some legal work for the underprivileged, helped . . . people."

"Why here?"

Sofie battled within herself whether to tell him the entire truth, but the ingrained need for secrecy and safety held her tongue as surely as it ever had-as though her mother had locked the truth shut and taken the key with her. "I don't know," she lied.

Jake sat on the seawall, and then as Sofie had done only moments ago, he lay down along its length and stared into the southern sky. "Triangulum," he said, traced his finger along the stars, and then lowered his hand to the right. "Pegasus." Then to the right again. "Delphinus."

Sofie sat down next to him. "How do you know the constellations?"

He craned his neck to stare up at her. "Oh, I don't know all of them-just the Greek G.o.ds. I haven't seen stars this bright since I went skiing in Utah last year. Are they always like this here?"

"Not always, but yes, we can see them better out here where there aren't any city lights." Sofie traced her finger along the same figure in the sky that he had. "Delphinus," she said. "That's the only one I know besides the Big Dipper."

He took her finger and traced it along a path. "That's Pegasus. He is a complicated constellation and sits right next to Delphinus. One story says he is the son of Poseidon."

"G.o.d of the sea," Sofie whispered, dreamlike, untethered from the logic of night and day.