The Art of Keeping Secrets Part 24

He glanced around the room as if he were searching for someone else, a reason she would utter these words, as though someone must be holding a gun to her head. He moved toward the canvas, and then gazed over his shoulder, up and down her jeans and the old T-shirt spattered with paint. "You've been painting."

"Yes."

"It's okay, Sofie. You're having a mild breakdown. It's going to be okay. You've never really processed your mother's death, and you've been alone for three days, embedded in her artistic pa.s.sion. You don't feel like yourself."

She laughed and the sound rising from her throat felt foreign and sweet. "I am not a chart, a diagram or a psych patient. I am not having a breakdown. I am not embedding myself in my mother's art. I finished a painting." She lifted her hands in the air. "Formulate a hypothesis, observe, a.n.a.lyze, interpret. I can say it in my sleep. You see life through the prism of the scientific method. What about mystery and wonder? What about love and G.o.d?"

"You want to believe in fairy tales and talking animals, Sofie. That is your problem-you can't face reality."

Bedford walked around the easel, brushed his hair back from his face. Sofie found the familiar motion irritating. "You play with your hair like a girl," she said.

His head snapped up. "What did you just say?"

"Bedford, please go home."

His clenched his fists at his sides. Control was his North Star, his guiding force, and she had just removed it. She reacted as she did when a shark came near the dolphin pod: remained calm, kept her movements slow. "Bedford, please don't say anything you'll regret."

He laughed. "Regret? I only regret the time I've spent with you. You're a spoiled child whose mother completely warped your sense of self and your notion of real life." His hands gestured wildly. "You live in a fantasy world, Sofie. You will never accomplish anything because you think Prince Charming is going to come in on a white horse and save you. That a dolphin will talk to you. And now you're throwing away the only true and solid thing you have: me."

Sofie stared at him, stunned that his brutal words brought her no pain, that they flew over her without damage. It was like standing in the middle of a swarm of hornets that buzzed around her, but never stung.

"Thank you for the lecture, Bedford. Leave now, please."

"No need to ask. I'm gone. You will so regret this decision."

"Hmmm . . ." Sofie lifted her finger to her cheek in mock thought. "Probably not."

He slammed the door; a small picture of a dolphin painted on a discarded windowpane shattered when it fell from the wall to the floor. Sofie went to the gla.s.s splinters, picked them up one by one and remembered when her mother had found the old panes behind a house next door that was being renovated. The wood frame around the window was a pale blue, and Sofie's mother had immediately known what should be painted on it.

This was what Mother had been good at: knowing what art would work in what medium. A sliver of gla.s.s sliced Sofie's palm and she dropped the gla.s.s, watched the blood leak in a thin line across her flesh: a crimson path across the palm that Jake had held only days ago.

She went to the kitchen, rinsed the cut, swept the gla.s.s from the floor and threw it all in the trash. What had her mother left her besides this condo, this one piece of unfinished art, some money in a bank account? Sofie had planned to get her master's degree and then make enough money to live on-nothing more, nothing less.

The ring of the phone caused her to jump. She recognized the caller ID-Joseph Martin. For a minute she couldn't think why this old friend would be phoning her. Then, like a dream that returned in the middle of the afternoon, she remembered her fogged day of going through papers, of calling a private investigator.

"Hey, Joseph," she said in a whisper, as though they were meeting in a secret place.

"Sofie . . ."

"Yes?"

"Do you know this woman Diane?" he asked.

She didn't know how to answer, so she didn't answer at all.

Joseph took a deep breath. "Listen, Sofie. This information was so easy to find, there is no way I can charge you. All you had to do was go back to old Ohio newspapers and search for her name."

"Okay," Sofie said, sat on the hardwood floor and leaned against the footboard of her bed while an old high school friend released her from the ties that had bound her.

When she hung up, she curled into a ball and wept. When the dull throb of shed tears brought a headache, she moved to stare at the finished painting. Now, finally, some things were complete. For the first time her tears were not of grief, but of relief. Joseph had told her who her father was, and what had happened to him. She'd been let loose from his threat. Knowing had set her free.

TWENTY-ONE.

ANNABELLE MURPHY.

The weeks that followed pa.s.sed for Annabelle in a succession of days blurred at the corners, sweet as spring headed toward summer. Her body moved with fluid motions as though something had been released inside her.

The jar of remember sh.e.l.ls overflowed onto the hall table until Keeley came home from school late one day with an antique apothecary jar she'd bought downtown, stating that they needed a bigger jar for the memories. Annabelle held Keeley's face in her hands, kissed her and waited until her daughter left to let her tears fall in private.

Some sh.e.l.ls had cracked under the weight of the others and yet the container remained full and beautiful-br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with reminders every time Annabelle felt the tug of doubt and darkness. Sometimes she'd remove a sh.e.l.l and hold it; other times she would walk to the beach and find another sh.e.l.l, another memory.

Jake arrived home with his Tahoe packed to the windows, his trunk half-open and tied with a bungee cord to hold his favorite threadbare lounge chair, which Annabelle absolutely refused to let back into the living room. Jake hauled all his college belongings upstairs to his old room, and once again the house overflowed with activity, conversation and warmth. He told her that Sofie had healed quickly after her diving injury, and when he dropped the subject, so did Annabelle. She basked in this full house as others did a bubble bath or a swim in the warm sea.

She'd gone into the office the day after her return from Newboro, asked Mrs. Thurgood to please allow her to continue in her job. Writing for the newspaper calmed her in a way it never had before. Annabelle read between the lines of the letters asking her advice, searched for more than a surface understanding of what the reader wanted. Mrs. Thurgood was pleased with Annabelle's work, satisfied that she'd returned unbowed and unbent, ready and able to do her job.

The article about Liddy's ident.i.ty and presence on the plane was, of course, front-page news in most of the local papers in North and South Carolina: Mystery Woman Identified as Ex-Artist from Newboro. The fact that Knox was taking the artist to visit her sick mother was also printed. If there was talk of Knox and Liddy having an affair, Annabelle never heard it. She was immersed in her job, her memories, her conviction in Knox's faithfulness.

The book she'd started five years ago began to speak to her in soft tones of seduction. Annabelle wrote a few paragraphs a day-like sneaking a tryst with a lover. She barely allowed herself to think, I am writing a book, but when the thought crossed her mind, a thrill ran through her. Soon a few pages gathered inside her Word file and on the side of her desk. She hadn't read through them, only kept adding to them. Sometimes she would fold the laundry or walk through the grocery store and realize that she was done with her tasks, yet the entire time she'd been thinking about the archaeologist or the man she loved in the page she'd last written.

Annabelle began to covet her personal writing time, and her time alone with Jake and Keeley. She didn't question Jake about his future, just enjoyed his presence at home. She ignored her friends in such a sweet and quiet way that they barely noticed she was avoiding them until one night they sent Cooper over to find her. The house was still and warm while Annabelle proofread her advice column about a woman who wanted to know if she should allow her son-in-law to borrow money to buy her daughter a birthday present. The columns had taken on a more honest tone, and Mrs. Thurgood was sending more difficult questions, those involving not simple etiquette but tough choices with far-reaching consequences, questions of honesty and trust, deceit and betrayal, the breaking and mending of family bonds.

A knock disrupted Annabelle's thoughts, and she looked up from her laptop. Cooper walked into the room without waiting for her to open the door. "Annabelle Murphy, get up. We are nothing without you." He grinned, but held his hands behind his back in that nervous way he'd had since childhood.

"Hey, Cooper," she said, closed her laptop and went to kiss his cheek. "How are you?"

"Seriously, Belle, we miss you. The dinner party at our house is going on right now, and they've sent me to get you."

She shook her head. "You're sweet, but really, I don't want to go."

He sat on the couch next to the dented s.p.a.ce she'd left. She settled in beside him. He shifted his weight and tilted his head. "Have you cut us out? Have you decided that you can't be around your dearest friends?"

"That's not it. I just want some time alone with Keeley and Jake."

He glanced around the house. "They're not even home, Belle."

"And myself," she said. "I need some time alone with me. I don't want to hear what everyone has to say, and I don't have anything to say to anyone."

"Don't you think that's a bit selfish?"

"Oh, Cooper, I don't mean for it to be. I'm so sorry. I would never, ever want to hurt y'all. I've just been trying to . . . sort through how I feel, get my family's feet back under us. I love all of you." She reached out and took his hand.

"What if we need you and not just the other way around?"

Annabelle rubbed her face with her free hand, remembering that she hadn't put on any makeup that day, that her hair fell free and wild over her shoulders and white shirt. "You all do not need me." She smiled. "I'd like to think that you do, and it's sweet of you to say so, but you don't. You have Christine. Shawn has all of you. Mae has Frank."

"That is ridiculous. We all need all kinds of people, not just one or two."

His words held a truth she couldn't fully see yet, and as though he'd written them on his forehead, she squinted at him. " 'We all need all kinds of people,' " she repeated his words, then stood up. "Cooper, I promise I'll be back, but not tonight. Not now."

"Christine thinks you're . . . unavailable because you think we're hiding something from you."

"No, I don't think that. I might have once, but I don't now."

"We're not. Listen, we're all just as hurt and confused as you are. Everyone is struggling with this . . . not just you."

"I know."

"Shawn quit his job-did you know that? Your friends' lives are still going on."

Annabelle shrank into her seat. "No, I didn't know that. How could he . . . not tell me?"

Cooper raised an eyebrow. "How? Telegraph?"

She attempted a smile. "Okay, I get it. I'll do my very best to get out of this sh.e.l.l because I love every single one of you. And how are you?" she asked.

"I'm hurt, Annabelle. Hurt that one of my best friends never told me what he was doing. That he lied about going on a hunting trip alone. I'm sick of the whole thing and want us all to just be the way we were."

"That's the problem. We've all kept secrets. And they've changed us."

Cooper stared at her for a long time. "What secrets are you talking about?"

"We all have them," Annabelle said, and felt a moment when she wanted to release one of them. "Did you know that I was pregnant when Knox and I married?"

"No, but does it matter?"

"It matters because of the motivation. Maybe, just maybe he wouldn't have married me if I hadn't been carrying his child. Or maybe he would have. Either way-he did marry me, and we never told anyone."

"What do you want me to say, Belle? We're all best friends. We need each other. We need you."

"Thanks, Cooper." She hugged him goodbye, walked him to the door.

He left, but looked over his shoulder as he went down the porch steps. "What are you waiting for?"

She shrugged. "I'm not sure. Thanks for being such a good friend. I promise I'll be part of y'all's life again."

"We love you, Belle," he said.

"I know," she said. "I love all of you, too."

He drove off in his car, and Annabelle said the word again: "Love." It was a word that had once seemed simple in her known world, yet now the definition expanded in its implications, in its possibilities.

TWENTY-TWO.

SOFIE MILSTEAD.

Sofie focused on her work, spending long hours at the research center as the weeks pa.s.sed. Every spare moment she swam with Delphin-asking him to speak to her, to tell her what to do now. She felt suspended between two worlds, the past and the future, and she was unable to cross the divide between time and s.p.a.ce.

All this time, Jake's e-mails, funny and full of the life she longed for, came across her screen. This was safe, this e-mailing. She wanted to tell him the truth, but she wrestled with how to reveal it, when to tell him, then again whether to tell him at all.

Some things were best left alone. Hadn't her mother always told her that? When she asked about finding her father, or the past, or the future, "Some things are just best left alone," Liddy would say with a kiss and a smile.

Telling Jake the full story was like that-wasn't it? But somehow Jake seemed the person least likely to be "best left alone." Everything in her wanted to do everything with him except leave him alone. Oh, she tried. Sometimes she went three or four days without e-mailing him. Then she'd run in from work and find a message, and her heart would fill to the edges at the sight of his name on the screen.

They played a game: Jake would e-mail her a myth recast in present-day names and circ.u.mstances and make her guess what myth it was, what G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses the stories were about. Sometimes it would take a day or two, but she always figured it out. When she tried this game back at him a couple of times, he always had the answer in less than five minutes.

They communicated about everything and nothing-his search for a new school, her research on the dolphins, the weather, the equinox coming next month. They did not mention Bedford, Liddy or Annabelle or even his sister, Keeley. How long could they go on pretending these people weren't part of the story?

After the FAA had contacted her about her mother's remains, Sofie had taken her mother's ashes to the seawall and said goodbye one last time by scattering them on the waves. This farewell had been more real, more complete than the memorial service two years ago. Somehow her mother felt truly gone now. Her echoing instructions and fabricated life floated away.

News sources were asking questions about her mother, and Sofie told them she'd known her mother was on the plane, yet she'd told them nothing else. The secrets were gradually being exposed.

Once, Bedford came to the house to beg for their reunion, in his own way, which meant telling her how wrong she was and how much she needed him. He could have been a stranger, a talking head on TV, for all the emotion he aroused in her. She smiled at him, and told him that it was funny how he always thought he knew what was best for her, but he'd never really known-not once.

She'd apologized to John, sought him out at the dock and asked his forgiveness for frightening him the day of her botched dive. She promised never to do it again. He'd stared at her for a long time and told her that the demons that had chased her to the bottom of the ocean would never leave her unless she released them. She'd mumbled something about appreciating him and his understanding.

The morning she was summoned to the research center, she drove to work with a knot in her stomach, the kind that made her think she might be getting sick. She took a seat in Andrew Martin's office. He appeared unusually disheveled, his gray hair mussed, his baby blue b.u.t.ton-down shirt wrinkled, his Conservation Matters lapel pin crooked.

"Okay, give it to me. What's happened?" Sofie asked.

"I might as well shoot it to you straight, Sofie. Our funding has been cut."

"What?"

"You'll have to stop the work you've been doing. The center has all they need from your project, and the funding is being channeled elsewhere."

"But . . . we can't stop. We can't make our case unless we understand the dolphin's behavior." Sofie's voice shook.

"Yes," Andrew said. "But we have to let it go. We have to stop the research . . . for now."

"We can't," Sofie said in stuttering words, lifting her chin. "You can just tell the foundation that we aren't done yet. We're almost there . . . but not yet."

"Sofie, we don't have any choice. Funding has been cut everywhere. It's not just our center and it's not just your project. The time and money are better used elsewhere. We can give the National Science Foundation what we've got, still publish the results of the data you already have."

"But I'm not done." Sofie shook her head. "When does this happen?"

"Now," Andrew answered.