The Art of Keeping Secrets Part 16

She ran her finger along the stone wall. "Well, whether dolphins talk to each other or not ought to be something we can prove empirically."

He shrugged. "Maybe." Just when she thought the danger had pa.s.sed, his next words sent a shock wave through her body. "Can you tell me who was on the plane?"

She stood. "I can't. . . ." She wrapped her arms around her middle, hugged her body. "I have got to get to work." Yet when she looked at his face, she wanted to relieve some of his pain. Her hands fluttered in front of her, as if she meant to take his hand or touch him, and then she dropped them to her side.

He nodded. "Of course." He held his hand out for her. "Please stay another minute."

"Jake, I have to go to work."

"Do you remember the day you found out your mom had died in a car crash?"

She closed her eyes. "Of course."

"Well, it's like that for us all over again. Just when we thought maybe, just maybe, there was life beyond the void of his death, the emptiness returned. It's like he died yesterday or an hour ago all over again. All the questions. Don't you remember how desperately you wanted to know the answer to all the questions?"

His face was contorted in a sad, beautiful way as he continued. "Don't you? Why did they crash? What happened? Was it the engine? Was it the weather? All those questions that will never be answered. Now, here my family is with new questions. Who was on the plane and why? And it seems you're the only one with the answers."

Sofie shut her eyes against the growing sadness. "It doesn't matter."

"Yes, it does." His voice was deeper, and she opened her eyes to look at him.

Her heart ached for Jake, like a bruise under her ribs. A crack opened inside her, where she kept all her secrets, and she said the words before she understood their implication. "It was my mother. My mother was on the plane." She covered her mouth with her hand to stop the words already released.

Jake stumbled backward. "I think I already knew this."

"They weren't running off together or anything like that. He was taking my mom to visit her mom-my grandma, who was sick." Sofie's words came rushed, tumbling over one another in her need to explain. "I'm sorry. Please . . . you can't tell anyone else."

"Why? My mother has to know. The FAA will find out. . . . The truth will come out anyway. What are you hiding?"

"I'm not hiding . . ." Panic faded and flowed in her chest, the word "truth" sounding like a foreign language.

"You don't think you can trust me."

"It's much more complicated than that, Jake."

"We both lost a parent that day," he said, moved toward her.

"Listen, Jake, I don't want you to think . . . that he was my father or anything weird like that. He wasn't. I wished he were sometimes, but no, he wasn't."

Jake looked away. "I don't think I thought that . . . or maybe I did. I don't know. I can't even absorb all this yet. . . ." He faced her and then did something she was completely unprepared for, yet somehow hoping for. He drew her into his arms, held her against his chest. For a brief moment, until a car screeched to a stop in front of the seawall, they were one, fused in grief. Why else would she have told him this secret but for this brief moment of respite?

"What in the living h.e.l.l 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-a.s.s 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-gla.s.s 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 st.i.tch 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 gla.s.ses, 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 gla.s.ses 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.

One true love.

One sad affair.

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.