The Art of Keeping Secrets Part 7

She dropped a block of St.-Andre cheese and a package of water crackers in the cart. After this, the dry cleaner, the garden club meeting (they'd forgiven her for forgetting flowers for the retirement home), then preparing for the dinner. In between these ch.o.r.es she needed to finish her advice column.

She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to face Kristi Miller, the owner of the local art studio. "Hey, Annabelle," she said.

"Hi, Kristi. How are you?"

"I'm good. Just wanted you to know I've been thinking about you."

"Thanks," Annabelle said.

Kristi leaned in. "Did they find out who the woman was?"

Annabelle had thought she'd fortified herself for these questions, had even rehea.r.s.ed the answer. Oh, of course I'm fine. I'm so grateful they found his plane. It's a relief. Then she'd nod and smile, almost console the person who had asked. But staring at Kristi, she felt the tingle of tears behind her eyes. "No, they don't know yet."

Kristi touched Annabelle's arm. "I don't know how you're doing it, but please know how much we all loved Knox. He was a terrific supporter of the Marsh Cove Art Studio, and we remember him with great fondness."

Annabelle nodded, and walked toward the checkout counter. A treble vibration of something resembling anxiety filled her gut; she attributed it to the mention of his name by yet another well-meaning friend. Yes, Knox had been a grand supporter of the Marsh Cove Art Studio in downtown, had even invested through the years. But he had done this with many new businesses. If he thought they'd benefit the community, add to the town's charm and bring in tourism, he'd invest.

Annabelle glanced at Kristi, who now stood with her back to Annabelle, grabbing orange juice off the shelf. Even in the grocery store, she was reminded of Knox and the good things he had done. See, she told herself, there was nothing about him to doubt.

Annabelle pushed SEND and off went her advice column in response to the woman who had written asking if she should let her eighteen-year-old son's girlfriend spend the night with him in his bedroom. Annabelle had to make up for her last sarcastic column, which had received e-mails and phone calls of complaint. She had promised Mrs. Thurgood a particularly sensitive answer.

It always baffled Annabelle that full-grown women asked questions they already knew the answers to. Mrs. Thurgood often told her they just wanted to hold the column up to their friends or the offending party and say, "See, Southern Belle said I was right."

A sudden, piercing thought made her laugh: she wanted to write in and ask Southern Belle what to do about the woman on Knox's plane.

Annabelle glanced at the clock: six p.m. She had an hour before the dinner party, was already dressed and ready, the appetizer in the warming drawer, Keeley dropped off at her friend's house to do homework. She could be early for the party, or read a book, or take a walk. She and Knox would have sat on the front porch, talked about their day and then strolled the two blocks to Cooper's house.

Annabelle sat back down at the computer, clicked open the unt.i.tled novel she'd started the year before Knox's plane went down. As it popped up on the screen, she thought again that writing a book was just a dream for her. She hadn't taken writing courses in college, had no formal knowledge of how to compose a full-length novel. An advice column was about all she could handle. But this story-one about a woman who was a battlefield archaeologist-had seemed like a good idea when she'd started it.

She'd never told Knox about the book-clearly they hadn't told each other everything. Maybe there were other secrets they had kept from each other-harmless secrets, or not so harmless ones.

She hadn't said anything to Knox about the book because she wanted to wait for the right time, or until she finished, or until she was absolutely sure it was something she wanted to do. Or-and this thought brought a stab of truth-maybe she just wanted something that had nothing to do with family, house and work. Maybe she wanted something that was all hers. Maybe that was all he had wanted, too. . . .

The words on the screen blurred in front of her eyes. What if Knox had just wanted something that was all his-something that didn't fall under the scrutiny of family?

Annabelle rubbed her eyes and read the two paragraphs she'd written all those years ago, poised her finger above the DELETE b.u.t.ton, but couldn't push it. Maybe one day she could return to this story.

Instead of deleting, Annabelle typed another paragraph:

Unearthing evidence of past events thrilled her in a way she couldn't explain to other people. Why would she want to dig around in old fields to find out how how a battle was fought? So much work for so little information. But others didn't understand that unearthing the truth was akin to creating it: something new and profound appeared where it hadn't been before.

Even as she typed, she felt a shimmer of excitement as she captured a sliver of insight in the words. If writing a single paragraph felt like a miracle, how would it feel to write an entire novel?

The phone rang across the room and Annabelle jumped, hit SAVE and closed the doc.u.ment as though the person on the other end of the line might see her foolish endeavor.

Shawn was calling to ask if she wanted a ride to Cooper's; he was close by and could pick her up. Annabelle waited on the front porch with her appetizers wrapped in tin foil.

He pulled his convertible in front of the house, jumped out and opened the side door. She climbed in. "So," she said, "this early and impromptu dinner party is to soothe me, eh?"

"Oh, you think it's all about you?" he teased.

"Yes, I do." She grinned.

He exhaled. "I guess we all need a little soothing. It's been a tough few days on everyone, and Cooper thought a get-together would do us all good."

"Hmm . . . but I'm really fine, Shawn. A girl is allowed a few days of freaking out, right? Then she's fine."

At a stop sign he gazed into her eyes. "Are you really?"

"I really am." She touched his hand. "Come on, let's go. I hate being late to Christine's. She gets that look on her face."

Shawn pulled the car forward. "What look is that?"

"Can't quite define it, but it has something to do with my personal inadequacies."

Shawn parked in front of Cooper and Christine's cedar shake house and smiled at her. "Do you have any?"

"More than you know."

"I guess we all have our secrets, don't we?" He laughed, got out and opened the door for her.

And although she knew he was joking, she felt his words vibrate below her heart as she entered the lively house.

Christine's table was set with family china that Annabelle had always been afraid to eat off. It was an old Wedgwood design of cobalt blue ships set against a cream background. The chicken and asparagus dinner lay splattered across the porcelain sailboat as though it had drowned in a sea of green. Annabelle pushed the food around her plate, then took another swallow of red wine. After focusing on kids and work, the conversation eventually turned to Knox.

Cooper, at one end of the table, folded his hands. "Belle," he said. Everyone fell silent. "Any new information about Knox's plane since the article came out?"

"No," she said, twirled her fork on her plate, where it made a high screeching sound.

"Nothing?" Mae asked.

"Nothing," Annabelle said, leaned back in her chair. "Unless someone comes forward and tells us they know who she was, we'll be left to make up our own story about her." She smiled to let them know she was okay with this.

Christine stood, grabbed another bottle of wine from the credenza behind her and handed it to Cooper with the wine opener. "Well, someone has to know." She glanced around the table, and then as though the glance was contagious, everyone took a quick look at everyone else.

"Listen, Christine." Annabelle lifted her hands. "We've been through so much together-I can't think of much else a group can go through and still remain as we have. If there was something to be told, I hope it would have been told by now."

"Yes, I'm sure it has been." Christine glanced at Shawn.

Frank, who was usually quiet and un.o.btrusive, stood. "I've thought of a hundred memories of our friend, and I just can't believe this woman was on that plane for a terrible reason. The Knox who could coach his son's baseball team in the middle of working on a high-profile embezzlement case, or the Knox who helped old lady Morgan fight the scam artist who almost took her life savings-that Knox would not be-"

"Cheating," Annabelle said.

"Exactly," Frank said, and then sat down. "He just couldn't. I don't believe he was capable of being two different people."

Christine leaned back in her chair. "I don't think we can ever know what anyone is capable of. . . ."

The energy at the table changed that quickly, and Annabelle stared at the empty plates and half-empty gla.s.ses and felt drained of any and all answers. She stood and stared at Christine. "Yes, I'm sure we all have our secrets," she said, and then grabbed a few plates, headed for the kitchen, hoping Christine would understand she was talking about the time two years ago when she'd seen Christine behind Bubba's Shrimp Shack crying and holding Mark Rider's hand while she stepped from his shrimp boat. Christine had seen Annabelle, turned away, then later made a curt comment about how sad it was that Mark had lost his shrimp boat to a big commercial concern, and how it had made her cry.

Yeah, sure.

Annabelle leaned against the kitchen counter and took a deep breath. Shawn came in, put his arm around her shoulder. "You okay?"

Annabelle nodded.

The conversation rose in the next room, and Shawn and Annabelle looked at each other. "Listen," she said. "I really don't want to talk about this anymore. Please stop looking at me like a little kid who just lost a parent or something. I don't need pity or rea.s.surance or anything else. We've all lost Knox; I'm not the only one who has been forced to think about him all over again. My kids are missing him. Y'all are wondering about your best friend. . . . I don't need anything."

"We all need something," Shawn said.

Annabelle smiled at him. "I did need something. And I had it." She touched his arm, knowing that what she would say might hurt him after losing Maria all those years ago. "We all want someone to walk into our life and touch our soul, enter our heart and stay there. I had that. That's all that matters now."

He closed his eyes. "Yes." Then he opened them and stared at her. "And sometimes we get to keep them and sometimes we don't."

"Exactly," she said. "Please tell everyone to stop asking after me, checking on me. Okay?"

"Okay." He stepped back, and together they walked back into the dining room.

The winegla.s.ses were all empty-a sign that someone would eventually say something they regretted. But even if they did, all would be well; this group forgave, moved on and laughed about it at the next party. Like the time Mae told Cooper he really shouldn't have cut his hair because it made his head look like a bowling pin, or when Christine told Mae she was off her rocker to own a horse farm without horses. Well, maybe not everyone forgave her that one, but it hadn't been mentioned since.

Annabelle helped clear the table and dully heard the conversations through a blur of red wine and one martini-straight up-that Shawn had made her before dinner. He did this, she knew, to soften the tumultuous emotions, but actually alcohol only intensified everything she felt, gave it the sharp edges of broken gla.s.s. As she watched the married couples lean in for private jokes or the other two women laugh about their husbands, her lonesomeness increased, her sense of isolation keen.

She headed toward the kitchen with a handful of empty plates, heard Cooper's and Shawn's voices in a familiar melody. She stopped before the kitchen door, leaned up against the wall to listen, their hushed words filtering through the doorway.

She heard Cooper say, "It's her, old buddy, isn't it?"

Silence was the answer and Annabelle wished she could poke her head into the kitchen, see the expression on Shawn's face. She should never have alluded to Maria. Now Shawn's past heartaches had come to visit also.

Annabelle clung to the plates for fear she would drop them, shatter Cooper and Christine's family china and give away her presence.

Shawn answered, "It's always been her . . . then and now."

"I'm sorry, buddy.

A long, drawn-out silence followed, and Annabelle stayed frozen behind the swinging door-if she entered, they'd know she'd heard. She tiptoed back to the dining room, set the dirty dishes on the table. Christine, Mae and Frank looked up at her. She walked to her purse and picked it up. "I gotta go, okay? Christine, thanks for having me. It was a great night. I'll get my serving dish tomorrow."

"You're walking home?"

Annabelle nodded at the ever-responsible Frank. "Yes, it's only two blocks. I'll be fine."

Outside, the moist air hit her with an awakening jolt. Just as it would always be Maria for Shawn, it would always be Knox for her. They'd been married for eighteen years, dated for six before that. If she did the math, he'd been gone for less than ten percent of her entire time with him, and she'd never been with anyone else. There was only one time when her and Shawn's friendship had crossed the line into the realm of other possibilities.

She'd had a final exam the next morning, and the house she rented with three other girls was in the full throes of a party. She'd gone to Shawn's house to study-it was the semester Knox was away doing an internship with a state senator.

She and Shawn had driven the hour back to Marsh Cove. His parents had been out of town. They studied in the large library until her eyes started to close; he quizzed her on some remote French treaty in a time and place she didn't much care about. And she'd told him so.

He came to sit with her on the couch, wrapped his arm around her-which wasn't unusual. He continued to study while she dozed on his shoulder, as if his knowledge would filter over to her. She'd awakened to him staring at her, pushing her bangs off her forehead and then holding his hand to her face.

It had seemed the most natural thing to kiss him. Even later, when she wanted to regret that one kiss, she never felt the guilt she supposed she should-after all, Shawn was Knox's best friend too. The remorse never came and another kiss never happened.

But in that brief moment, something blossomed inside her that she hadn't thought possible-an attraction to someone besides Knox Murphy, with his ragged curls, his brown eyes, his deep laughter. This feeling was not something she wanted or needed and so she shoved it away.

They awoke the next morning on the couch, crooked and cramped, drove to school with only seconds to spare before the history final, and both aced the exam to make the dean's list.

Nothing was ever said about the kiss again. Was it just another secret she hadn't realized she'd been keeping?

Once, in a quiet moment long after her and Knox's rushed wedding, she'd caught Shawn's eye and he'd smiled. And in that small s.p.a.ce, right below her breastbone, she'd remembered that long-ago kiss. Then she'd reminded herself of the pain and misery she'd felt without Knox, when she'd been unable to find him during Hurricane Hugo.

And for almost two decades, she hadn't thought about that kiss once.

With all the broken pieces of her life scattered or misplaced, she felt incapable of desiring anyone but Knox. The deepening knowledge that she would forever wonder who was with her husband on the night of his death destroyed anything of want or longing inside her.

How, she thought as she climbed the stairs to her front porch, was she to ever love again? Trust again? Believe in herself and what was true in her life?

The weight of her questions collapsed on her as she sat down in the wicker rocking chair, stared at the pewter-colored blending of water and sky: there was no horizon to disappear into tonight-only darkness.

Footsteps echoed on the sidewalk. A figure walked with swinging arms, stopped at her stairs and hesitated to come to the porch: Shawn. He didn't see her in the rocking chair. She watched him under the streetlight and felt like a voyeur, yet couldn't bring herself to call his name.

He stood there for long minutes, turned to leave, then moved back until he finally continued down the street and rounded the corner back to Cooper and Christine's. Relief and loneliness spread through her as she rose and entered her empty house.

She wanted to scream out at Knox, What were you doing?