The Art of Keeping Secrets Part 14

"Yep, and Delphinus is the constellation Poseidon put in the sky to honor the dolphin that brought him his wife, Amphitrite," Jake said.

Sofie picked up the story of redemption and love that she knew so well. "Amphitrite was hiding in a cave and wanted nothing to do with Poseidon when the dolphin Delphinus came and found her beyond the Pillars of Hercules, in the depths of the sea. Delphinus convinced her that Poseidon was the brightest of all G.o.ds and that she could be Queen of the Sea."

Jake sat up. "And then Delphinus performed the marriage ceremony."

Sofie traced the constellation again with her finger. "And Poseidon placed a constellation in the sky to honor the dolphin."

Jake smiled at her. "There are nine stars just like there are nine muses."

"Now that," Sofie said, "I did not know."

"Glad I could broaden your horizons," Jake said.

Sofie released a long breath. "Some versions even say that dolphins were once men. . . ."

"We have all these myths about the dolphins. Do you think they have myths about us?" Jake asked with a laugh.

A sudden feeling of lightness came over Sofie; she could not remember the last time she'd laughed. Jake knew about her love of dolphins without her having to speak of it. What alternate world was this?

Jake pointed upward. "So, you're into Greek mythology?"

"Nope," she said. "Not at all. Just dolphins."

Jake waved toward the building. "Thus the research center."

She nodded, although she wasn't sure he could see her. "Yes, I work here-for school. I go to UNC, but here at their satellite school. My major is marine conservation technology."

"All about dolphins?"

"No, my studies cover all marine animals. . . . Dolphins are my side work. So . . . where do you go to school?"

"University of North Carolina," he said. "Funny, huh? I went to the main campus in Chapel Hill-but I just dropped out for this semester."

"Dropped out? Why?"

"I was in prelaw and hated it. History was my minor, my side work. But maybe I'll make my side work my main work."

She stood now with the sudden awareness that Bedford was probably awake, looking for her. Guilt filled the back of her throat with a metallic taste. "I have to go. . . ." What was she doing talking to this man?

"Sofie, will you please tell me why my dad would come here-if you know?" Jake stood with her.

She stared at him, wanting to do two things she didn't understand: touch his face and tell him the entire story of his father. But she didn't do either; she said goodbye and then took slow, deliberate steps to her car and drove from the parking lot with shaking hands and liquid legs.

When she looked in her rearview mirror, she saw that he was still standing where she'd left him, staring up at the night sky.

The lights were on in the windows of her condo. Sofie looked at the digital clock in her car: twelve thirty. She parked and ran back into the building, took the stairs two at time. When she entered the bedroom, Bedford sat on the edge of the mattress punching b.u.t.tons on her cell phone.

She stopped short, stared at him. "What are you doing?"

He started, looked up at her. "Trying to figure out where the h.e.l.l you could've gone in the middle of the night without your purse." He pointed to the dresser, where her purse lay open. "Or your cell phone."

"I couldn't sleep and didn't want to wake you. I went to the center, sat on the seawall. You know how I do that . . . nothing else."

He placed her cell phone on the bedside table. "You scared me." He patted the bed for her to come sit next to him. "You're upset about something."

"No, just work." She sat and laid her head on his shoulder. What was she thinking, talking to Knox Murphy's son about dolphins, myths and school? It was as if their encounter only moments ago had been a dream from another life.

"Let's just go to sleep," she said. "I'm tired now."

Bedford laid her down and held her. Sofie rolled over and allowed sleep to come.

In her dream the dolphins were calling her name in their language, and Jake Murphy dove into the water with her to hear them. She jolted from her light sleep and stared across the room to her open purse and the shadows of gnarled branches from the live oak falling onto the dresser, floor and bed. She rose and waited for morning as she stared out the window to the east.

Bedford awoke at first light to find Sofie standing in the kitchen with a cup of tea. He rose and absently kissed her on the cheek, not caring that he'd missed her lips, then rushed off to his own home to get ready for his day, Sofie stared at her condo as though last night's conversation with Jake might have changed something, but everything was the same: the covered canvas; paintbrushes sticking out of a jar: the mussed-bed proof of her restless sleep beside Bedford. Her closet door was open, and Sofie stood in front of it, clothes hanging haphazardly. She slipped on a pair of jeans, a green tank top and a long silver chain necklace with a single peridot.

She grabbed her purse and headed out the door with the hope that routine behavior would return normalcy to her day, but she had the lingering feeing that her contact with Annabelle and Jake Murphy was already altering her life in imperceptible ways.

TWELVE.

ANNABELLE MURPHY.

Morning sunlight replaced the shadows of the previous night; the town emerged as a new place washed clean. Annabelle walked along the sidewalk checking addresses, looking down at her torn paper, then back up again to the numbers on the buildings. Jake hadn't risen this morning no matter how hard she pounded on his door, so she had ventured out to find Liddy Parker's address on her own. She needed to ask Sofie a few more questions-she didn't want to scare the girl, just find out who was on the plane.

Annabelle stopped in front of a brick condominium building with a metal plaque stating that the structure dated from 1773. A flash of something Knox once said came to her. They'd been in Paris on vacation, just the two of them, drinking too much red wine, going to art museums and historic places, eating food they couldn't p.r.o.nounce and making love to the sound of Parisians on the street below.

Later, she and Knox had stood in front of a building with a plaque on it. He'd shaken his head, touched the date. "Eight hundred years old. And we think we have old buildings in South Carolina," he said, kissed her on the lips and then they'd entered the cafe.

Now Annabelle ran her hand along the plaque on a North Carolina building, shook off the feeling that her Knox could have had another life in this building, another life in which she didn't know where he went or why.

She stepped into a narrow hallway and glanced at the list of names and numbers for each condo. The Milstead sign was exactly the same as the others, but with the number 7 stamped in black. Annabelle glanced up and down the hall. She touched a brick, ran her fingers along the grout, wondering if these walls had seen her husband come and go. Her purse slipped from her fingers, the metal chain clanging on the tile floor.

A woman poked her head out of a door, blue curlers sticking from various angles under a hair net. She pulled her bathrobe tight around her chest, squinted at Annabelle. "May I help you?"

Annabelle stood straight. "Yes, I'm looking for Sofie Milstead."

"She lives upstairs. I am about sick of sending people up to her condo. So irresponsible the young are these days-don't you think?" The woman picked something out of her teeth with her pinky nail, then looked back at Annabelle. "Now why would you be looking for Sofie? You into the art, too?"

"No, I'm an old friend from where she used to live."

"Colorado? You don't look like someone from Colorado. Not that I'd know what someone from Colorado looks like."

Annabelle stepped back; her stomach plummeted as a strange knowing took shape in the corner of her mind. "No, from South Carolina."

"Oh, then you must have the wrong girl. Her and her poor dead mama were from Colorado."

"Dead?" Annabelle said, although she didn't hear the word come from her lips.

"Her mama died in a car wreck out there in Colorado, and she left poor Sofie all alone here in Newboro. Guess I can't blame her for being a little s.p.a.cey sometimes. Guess I would be, too, if my mama left me all alone in the world."

Annabelle put her hand on the woman's door, afraid she would shut it. "She died in a car wreck?"

"Yeah, guess she went to visit her own mama, who was dying." The woman shook her head. "Just terrible."

Annabelle closed her eyes, fought backward in time to a conversation she'd had with Liddy years ago about how she'd lost both her parents in a train crash in some state north of the Mason-Dixon line. Annabelle opened her eyes, stared at the woman. "Are you sure?"

"Oh, yes. Very. We had a memorial service for her right there on the harbor. She was buried with her own mama in Colorado, but I'm shootin' sure about the memorial service. I was there."

Annabelle believed in the woman's certainty, which only meant that what she thought she knew about Sofie and Liddy was wrong. "Where is Sofie's condo?"

"Number seven, upstairs-has the best view in the building. Stairs are there on the left. I keep on telling Sofie that if she's going to spend the night out at her boyfriend's so often, I'd like to buy her condo, but she refuses. I heard the two of them making quite a racket leaving early this morning."

Annabelle nodded at the woman, took the stairs up, hoping her knees would hold as they shook beneath her. At the top of the staircase, she shoved open a metal door and went halfway down the hall before she stood in front of number seven-a door painted bright blue. Annabelle took a deep breath and knocked. She waited at thirty-second intervals and continued to knock, although she knew it was a futile effort.

What next? She had banged on the door once more when Jake appeared at the top of the stairs. "Mom?"

Annabelle startled, stepped back. "Guess great minds think alike," she said, went to her son and hugged him, let her head rest on his broad shoulder. Then she leaned back. "She's not here. Her neighbor told me she thought she heard her leave pretty early this morning with her boyfriend."

"Oh."

"I tried to wake you earlier."

"I was out late."

"Doing what? We got home at ten p.m. Where could you have possibly gone?"

A hinge creaked, and Annabelle and Jake turned to see a young woman standing in the doorway of the next condo. "You two planning on talking and banging around for a long while now? Or are you about done?"

Annabelle placed a hand over her mouth. "Oh, I'm sorry. Were we disturbing you?"

"If you don't count the incessant banging on the door, no."

Jake held up his hand. "I'm sorry. We're leaving."

Annabelle took a step forward. "Do you know Liddy and Sofie?"

The woman moved into the hall, held the door open with her foot. She was a beautiful young woman with long, dark curls, round violet eyes and full lips that needed no makeup. She pulled her hair back from her face, then wound her arms around her small waist so that it appeared as though she were hugging herself or had a stomachache. "Of course I know them-I live next door. Well, I knew Liddy. You know she died."

"Can I ask you a question?" Annabelle spoke in a soft voice.

"Seems like people been asking a lot of questions about them lately. Listen, Sofie still lives here-if you want to know something, you should ask her."

"I'm trying," Annabelle said, stepped forward, distracted by her need for more information. "Do you know if there was a man who came here frequently? A man named Knox?"

The woman smiled. "How would I know? Listen, Liddy Milstead had men. If I started naming names, now wouldn't I be able to send some people reeling?" She looked at Jake and smiled.

He smiled back, and Annabelle saw him turn on the light inside him that made things happen, that charmed all those around him. Knox had also had that light, one that could be turned up or down at will, but never off. "Listen, we're just looking for information about a man named Knox and wondered if he'd been here," Jake said.

The woman shrugged. "I really don't know." Jake kept his eyes on hers until she added, "But I can tell you the name of Sofie's boyfriend, Bedford Whitmore. He's a professor, lives about a block over on Floyd Street. And beides the men who came and went, Liddy's best friend was Jo-Beth, who owns the knitting store called Charmed Knits."

"Thanks," Jake said. He walked toward Sofie's door, shoved a small piece of torn paper under the door; then he took Annabelle's arm. "Let's go, Mom."

They reached the sidewalk, and Annabelle was filled with love for this man who was her son. When she looked at him, she saw all the ages he ever was-not just the man he was at that moment. This was what people without children didn't understand; you were never just looking at or talking to the ten-year-old, or the fifteen-year-old, or the full-grown man. You were also seeing the infant, the toddler, the child you loved from the moment you had known he grew inside you, part of you but separate.

Annabelle spoke first. "What did you put under her door?"

"A note," he said. "I'm going to go look for Sofie; why don't you see if you can find the best friend?"

"You think you'll do better with Sofie? Do you even remember her?"

"I know where she works, Mom. I found out last night. . . ." He looked away, as though he had something else to say, then turned back to her with that light in his eyes. "Let me do this-you already spoke to her once."

"Well, the woman we just talked to confirmed what a woman downstairs told me," she said.

"What?"

"Liddy is dead. But the woman downstairs told me she died in a car crash in Colorado . . . and that she was from Colorado. . . . I don't get it."

"Mom, don't go jumping to conclusions. I'll find Sofie. . . ."

After they hugged goodbye, Annabelle yanked her cell phone from her purse, called information and asked for Charmed Knits. The operator searched for the address while Annabelle felt as though the unknown past was now rushing forward in time, moving toward her with a runaway power she couldn't stop.

THIRTEEN.

SOFIE MILSTEAD.

Prisms of light flickered across the water and reflected off the land. Sofie stopped her car at the harbor and stared out to where the sun hung naked and low in the morning sky. She parked her car, and then stood on the seawall, used the sight of water to calm her mind, her spirit before taking a mile-long walk around the harbor park. She didn't have to be at the center for another couple hours, but she thought she'd sneak in some of her private work in the quiet office.

After her walk, she was inside the center, the iron door slamming behind her, before she realized she'd left her logbook at home. "d.a.m.n," she said to the empty corridor as she turned around and ran back to her car. She drove the few blocks back to her condo, blaming her forgetfulness and preoccupation on the disruptive presence of Jake Murphy.

A car pulled out of a parallel parking spot in front of her condo building, and Sofie drove in right behind it, slammed the gearshift into park and jumped out the driver's side. She ran into the hallway. Her pounding feet brought Ms. Fitz to her door. It was the last thing Sofie needed this morning. In Sofie's humble opinion, Ms. Fitz needed to get a hobby that did not involve knowing the ins and outs of Sofie's life. Sofie turned and smiled at her. "Good morning, Ms. Fitz."

"My, my, you've been a busy girl. You've had nonstop visitors." Ms. Fitz smiled. "I'm glad to see you're getting a social life."

Sofie bit the inside of her cheek. "Thank you." She turned and moved toward the stairwell.

"Don't you want to know who's been calling on you?"