The Art of Keeping Secrets Part 8

She had to do something, find something. Just walking around vowing to keep it together, faking a smile and feigning bravado were causing her to falter. She entered the kitchen and slammed her palm down on the counter. Helplessness unraveled her heart, and she felt consumed by a need for control. On a piece of white notepaper with the cutesy quote "My heart will always be in a cottage by the sea," written in script on the bottom of the pad, she began to list the facts she knew.

Fact One : Knox flew out on a Tuesday afternoon to go hunting in CoLorado at a ranch in Durango where he'd been ten times before colorado at a ranch in Durango where he'd been ten times before (or at Least he said he'd been there ten times).

Fact Two: He stopped in Newboro-refueled, fiLed a flight plan to Durango since he intended to fly by instrument into the evening.

Annabelle's heart paused and the name Newboro entered the s.p.a.ce before the next beat.

Newboro.

A tingling began at her temples and moved downward to her stomach, then feet. Fragmented ideas fluttered across her mind. Her heart beat as though it couldn't decide whether to stop or quicken, changing its rhythm with each thought.

She ran to her bedroom, pulled the suitcase out from under the bed and began packing, the tingling sensation still running through her body. She would go to Newboro. This was insane, yet her body was acting independent of her thoughts and feelings, as though she were running for an answer she wasn't sure her mind and heart wanted to know, yet she had to go.

SEVEN.

SOFIE MILSTEAD.

Being separated from Bedford was usually hard for Sofie, but this time she welcomed the reprieve. She'd been in bed sick for two days, heat and ice spreading alternately through her body. Bedford was off in Raleigh for a lecture series that would last only three days. She hadn't told him how she was feeling; she didn't want him to worry. She longed to be alone with this illness, which caused her to dream in multicolored images of dolphins talking, of land and sea melding together.

Sofie pulled her hair behind her head and thought she needed to take a shower, get something to eat. She wasn't sure how she'd gotten sick-either the rainstorm, or the news about the historian, or both had left her vulnerable to a virus. She and Bedford didn't talk much when he wasn't with her in Newboro. She only stayed in his place when he was in town.

She rose from bed and walked to the far corner of her condo. Sofie and her mother had lived here together for more than eight years, and her mother's last canvas lay on an easel in the back of the room, covered with beige muslin. The oil paints in their tubes were dry and cracked.

In an urge she hadn't felt in months, Sophie lifted the muslin off the canvas and stared at the unfinished piece. It had a breathtaking allure. She found herself touching the corners as she exhaled. She sat on the metal stool in front of the easel and picked up a dried brush, attempted to break apart the paint that held the bristles together in a two-year-old memory of when it was last used. Her mother must have taken off in a hurry to leave behind an uncleaned brush.

Her mother's art lessons had infused Sofie with an ability to paint, but not the desire. If, and only if, she added to this painting, picked up a new brush and began to complete the starfish . . . "No," she spoke out loud, put the muslin back over the canvas. If she ruined the art, if she destroyed what her mother had started, she'd never be able to fix it or go back and do it again. You only had one chance to do things right-her mother's advice ingrained in her as permanently as her eye color.

This unfinished painting represented so much that was lost, and deep down Sofie knew that nothing really mattered-people died, they left, they loved and weren't loved back. All of it was spit in the wind, all of it meaningless, and it was ridiculous to try to make sense of senseless chaos. Even her work with the dolphins didn't amount to anything. No matter how she tried to quantify, list, chart, graph or prove her theories, the truth was that none of it meant much in the larger scheme of things. Her life and her work were just specks in a swirling world, and this was just an unfinished painting. Just one.

There was a single cure for her when her thoughts became trapped in these hopeless thoughts: her dolphins. She grabbed a Windbreaker off the hook by the door.

She headed to the research center, where she always went to calm her inner turmoil. If she stood on the rocky outcropping at the very edge of the harbor, she could see nothing but water, nothing before her to the right or to the left. It was all she could think to do when she reached this hollow, hopeless place.

The water was calm, in harsh contrast to her churning mind. Fever raged in her veins, in her muscles and behind her eyes where a headache throbbed. She sat on the rock, leaned forward and despite her dizziness, she basked in this vista of sea and sky.

She willed the dolphins to appear. Finally, the still water rippled, and they rose above the surface, blew air from their blowholes; two jumped and flipped as though for her enjoyment. The other two swam sideways, glancing at her. It was Delphin's family with his pregnant mate. Sofie smiled and longed to jump in and swim with them.

She shivered inside her Windbreaker, suddenly chilled underneath her pajamas. She leaned farther out, watched them with the acute eye of the researcher. She sensed they knew she was sick-they were sympathetic. She had no way to verify her belief so it would be accepted by the scientific community, but still she felt it to be true. Could love be quantified and put on a chart? Could desire be graphed? Could grief be summarized with bullet points?

She rose and stared down at her dolphins, held her hand over the water to acknowledge their presence. She knew without a doubt that these animals had a name for her.

Sofie's mother had told her many times the story of her real name and why it had had to change. She longed for her mother now to come and tell her the story again. She wanted to curl up on the couch and hear about her mother's love, and how they'd been rescued.

When she returned home, she unplugged the phone and placed the teakettle on the stove. Today, she would remember the story as though she were telling it to herself, as though her mother sat on this couch with the muslin off the canvas, with the sweet smell of paint remover settling in the corners, Bocelli on the stereo, the windows open so she could hear the splash of water against the dock and of boats against the waves: this was how her mother had loved to live.

Sofie clicked PLAY on the CD player, opened a far window and curled beneath her quilt with a cup of hot tea. Her mother was always one to tell stories, use them as another would use salve or medication to heal a sick child. She told fairy tales, myths of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, stories of running and being saved. Sofie couldn't pinpoint the exact moment when she realized that one in particular-about the man who had saved them-was a true story.

Sometime during her childhood, among the telling and retelling, Sofie began to recognize a change in her mother's voice when she told the story of their rescue. But with her tea in hand, Sofie fell asleep without recalling the entire tale-remembering only the feeling of safety and love.

While she slept, the fever ebbed like an outgoing tide, and Sofie woke to a knock on her front door. Something important had drifted through her in sleep, and yet she couldn't find it when she awoke.

She jumped for the door-maybe Bedford, worried about her, had come home.

But a stranger stood on the threshold dressed in a suit and tie, and holding a briefcase. His eyes squinted at her, giving him an intense and tired appearance, like a weary traveler.

Sofie pulled the blanket tighter around herself, aware now that she was in her pajamas. "May I help you?" she asked, closed the door another inch.

"Yes, I'm looking for a woman named Sofie Milstead."

"I can't help you." Sofie pushed the door.

"Will you let me finish, please? This will only take a minute." The man removed a card from his pocket, handed it to her. "I am Michael Harley. I'm an art historian. I was told that Sofie Milstead lives here and that she's the daughter of the woman who used to own the Newboro Art Studio."

Sofie's fever was gone now, as if her mother had soothed it away with her presence at her side all afternoon. Strength filled her as she told the truth. "I'm Sofie. There is nothing I can tell you about the art studio. It was my mother's and . . . she is gone."

"Please." He put his foot in the doorway. "Can you tell me if you know anything about the artists whose work she bought? Did she keep records or addresses?"

"No, I sold the studio, including the records, to a new owner-Rose Cason. I have nothing to do with any of it."

He took in a long breath. "I already talked to Rose-she gave me your name and address. I don't think you understand how important this is to me. I have been searching for a particular artist for years. I own five of her pieces. Her name is Ariadne. I'm writing an article about her." He spoke so fast he ran out of breath. "All roads have led me to you."

If Sofie let herself, she might feel sorry for this man and his desperate quest, which she was stopping in its tracks.

"Have you seen her art?" he asked.

Sofie stood stock-still, not wanting any movement to suggest a yes or no.

"Have you?" He stepped back now, offering her the opportunity to shut the door, but something in her wanted to hear what he had to say next. "It is sublime. She . . . or he . . . was a master at background." He shook his head. "If you don't know who she is or where she is, I've reached the end of the line."

Sofie could repeat the words her mother had taught her, the words she could recite in perfect order, but so far the false story wasn't needed. She leaned against the doorframe, stared at this anxious man. "I'm sorry," she said, tucked his card into her pocket and shut the door.

When the metal door at the end of the hallway resounded with its familiar slam against the doorframe, Sofie returned to the canvas, removed the cover and stared at the words below the half-formed image. Her mother had painted around the words, which weren't in any order. There were repeated phrases about secrets, longing and loss. Sofie made a list of the words in a sketchbook, put the muslin back over the painting. Her mother had taught her one thing well: the man they ran from must never, ever find them, must never know Sofie existed. Sofie had meant it when she'd told Michael Harley she was sorry that she couldn't help him find Ariadne, but fear was a stronger emotion than sympathy.

Sofie wished the world would slow down so she could take measured and deliberate steps to find her footing once again. She sat back on the coach as the TV droned on, the local news full of tragedies from Charleston to Raleigh and down to Newboro. The local anchorwoman talked about lost dogs, minor arrests and a new condo development on the river being fought by conservation groups.

Knox Murphy.

Her eyes flew open. Was she going crazy or had she just heard his name? She glanced at the TV and saw his face-Knox's beautiful and kind face. She curled her knees up to her chin and leaned forward to listen. A hiking group had found the plane that had crashed two years ago. The bodies of Knox Murphy and an unknown woman had been recovered. The FAA wanted to know if anyone, anywhere, had any information about the woman on the plane.

"Mother. What am I supposed to do now?" Sofie cried aloud.

Of course there was no answer.

EIGHT.

ANNABELLE MURPHY.

Darkness, doubt and the dull realization that she was doing something completely crazy followed Annabelle on the eight-hour drive to Newboro, North Carolina. She had called her mother, Grace, who still lived in the family home that had been rebuilt after Hurricane Hugo, to come to stay with Keeley. She'd left a message on Jake's cell phone about where she was going, and then she'd jumped in the car with two days' worth of clothes and toiletries.

Who did such a thing, drove through the night to an unknown destination without anywhere to stay and not knowing what she would do when she got there? Her college roommates had raced off to the beach on a whim, and she had always told them they were out of their minds. Now look at her, forty years old and driving to the beach in the middle of the night without a plan.

Her thoughts became tangled as she steered the car through the black night. She remembered snippets of her and Knox's life together in no particular order, as if she'd cut memories out of a sc.r.a.pbook, and the pages had been mixed up in the wind of this recent storm blowing through her life.

She recalled Knox taking her to the hospital when she was in labor with Keeley; Knox holding the back of Jake's bike until he couldn't keep up and he let go so Jake could ride on his own; Knox making love to her in their bedroom-silent so as not to wake sleeping children; Keeley running after her daddy's car when he went to work one morning, wanting him to stay home and play Twister with her.

Annabelle examined each memory as if looking for buried evidence, for some hint of Knox's secret life. She took the memories, held them up to the magnifying gla.s.s of her mind, to the light of scrutiny, and still found nothing to doubt in their lives, no moment that carried a trace of neglect or betrayal.

She went over the hunting trips he took to Montana and Colorado, how he'd plan them in advance and bring home photos of the mountains, the elk, the riotous rivers where he'd fly-fished. Had he left someone out of the photos?

He'd learned to fly planes when he was in college, taking courses through the local airport until he had his pilot's license for single-engine planes. She'd always begged him not to fly alone. One man, one engine, she'd say-not a good combination. And he'd always told her, with a wink, "I want to live more than you want me to live, believe me."

But when the plane went down it was not one man, one engine. It was one man, one woman, one engine-a vastly different equation.

Maybe she could find the answer if she went all the way back-back to when they were dating, to when he'd proposed. Was there anyone in between the two of them at that time?

In all the years they'd been together, there had only been one gap in time when she hadn't known where he'd been. The weeks before he proposed, she hadn't seen him at all. They'd broken up during a ferocious fight about whether he should take a job out of town or stay in Marsh Cove. Agreeing that they just couldn't see eye to eye on the most fundamental of all choices-where to live-they split up for only the second time in their six years of dating. She was twenty years old, he was twenty-two-she was in her senior year at the College of Charleston; Knox had graduated that past spring, summa c.u.m laude, and was researching law schools.

The breakup had been followed by a period of intense silence. Annabelle didn't hear from or speak to Knox for weeks, as though he'd faded into nothing, as though their years together had never happened. He quit his job at the yacht club, and was traveling to visit law schools and decide his future, which obviously did not include her.

Until his death, she had counted those weeks among the worst of her life. Sitting now in her car, on the way to Newboro, she saw those days clearly and vividly, as though they were a video playing on the windshield. That September, the start of cla.s.ses corresponded with a recurring nausea and a dull ache she attributed not only to the loss of their relationship, but to the loss of her dreams for the future.

She carried this grief the way other people bore illness: in her bones, her marrow, her very heartbeats reminding her of a changed life. Not once did she feel the thrill of new possibilities that her friends were telling her about. Belle, they'd say, you can start a whole new life now, dream bigger and newer. You've been dating him since ninth grade, for G.o.d's sake. Spread your wings. Meet someone new. Go out. Get drunk, have fun, make new friends.

She couldn't do what her friends suggested. She trudged to cla.s.ses. Before each day, she threw up in the small bathroom in the house she rented with Mae and two other girls who long since had faded from her memory-girls who partied all night, thought her preoccupation with a high school boyfriend absurd.

The nausea continued, and she visited the college chaplain, believing she needed some type of counseling. The chaplain was kind, bald and looked like Thomas Merton, whom she had studied in her freshman year religion cla.s.s. He spoke in soft tones, warm words of encouragement about broken hearts and life lessons, about not understanding the meaning of events until one had time to step back from them.

Many words were said, an hour's worth, but all Annabelle took home with her were two sentences: "Just because we don't know why things happen doesn't mean there aren't reasons." This phrase she'd echoed many times in her life to friends and family, so much so that they often repeated it back to her. The second line was "And you need to make sure there's not a medical reason why you're throwing up every morning."

Not once had she considered that possibility-that the nausea was caused by more than heartbreak.

On the way home from the chaplain's office, she stopped by the medical clinic and discovered that her white blood cell count, her red blood cell count and all other counts were normal. They wanted to try a pregnancy test.

She'd laughed. Actually laughed. How could she be pregnant by someone she wasn't with anymore? Until she counted backward and realized she'd missed a cycle.

She knew before they told her, before the nurse came into the examining room with the pinched mouth, the pamphlets on pregnancy options and the lecture on birth control. In a daze Annabelle stuffed the pamphlets into her backpack.

Pregnant.

With child.

Knox's baby.

Each thought shot hope through her-he would return to her now. Then immediately came the dread, the emptiness she'd felt for weeks now. Maybe he wouldn't return; maybe this news wouldn't bring him back.

The thoughts bounced through her as she signed out of the clinic, drove from Charleston to Marsh Cove without stopping by her rental house. During that hour she was lost to her senses and her emotions, which warred inside her mind and soul. This kind of thing only happened to those girls-not to her.

So many dreams ruined-so many hopes undone by this simple fact: she was pregnant with her ex-boyfriend's child. A nightmare from which she was not going to wake up, in which all her options were bad ones.

Twenty years old, a senior in college and pregnant.

She rolled down the windows of her beat-up Camaro and let the ocean air wash over her face. It was hurricane season, and rain from a tropical storm was forecast for the next two days.

Annabelle formulated a short-term plan: have her mother call the college and tell them she was deathly sick, tell her parents she'd come home with something akin to the bubonic plague and spend the next days in bed, sleeping and deciding what to do with her life, what to do with her and her baby's life.

The thought made nausea rise as she drove over the river. She watched the water rush toward the sea and she wished, for only the slightest second, that she could follow it far away.

When she pulled into town, she drove past Knox's family's home first, parked and stared at the long, rutted driveway, which led to the farmhouse and then farther back to the barn and stables. Live oaks lined the drive; a wrought-iron fence with a scrolled "M" was shut tight. She got out and walked to the gate, fingered the ironwork. She wanted to push the code to open the gate, run to Mrs. Murphy and tell her everything, beg her to go find her son and bring him back.

The smallest voice inside told her to go home. Whether it was ingrained etiquette, fear of what she'd discover about where Knox was and had been or just complete fatigue, she wasn't sure. She climbed back in her car and drove home through the familiar streets of Marsh Cove.

In college everyone had told her that there was more to life than these streets and lanes, more than these tidal creeks and wide rivers, more than this one small town. Of course she understood that-she just didn't care to go there. She loved learning about other places, reading about them, even visiting them. Her mild obsession with archaeology was an enigma to those who knew she never intended to leave this town, yet she hungered for information about other places and what they revealed beneath their layers of silt and rock.

As she neared Palmetto Street, an extended honk jerked her from her thoughts. She'd driven straight through a stop sign at Route 23 and barely missed being plowed down by a chicken truck. The truck swerved; chicken feathers flew from the caged coops and the driver shot her an obscene gesture, yanked the vehicle to a halt at the side of the road. Trembling, she pulled her car over.

Annabelle grimaced, mouthed, I'm sorry. The truck driver shouted expletives and pulled back into traffic. Annabelle sat frozen, afraid to take the steering wheel, to drive. To make a single move right then seemed impossible. The chicken cages jostled back and forth as the truck turned a corner. She felt a pang-as if from seeing a dead deer on the side of the road-and she wasn't sure whom the sorrow was for: the caged chickens or her frightened self.

Her feelings were so misplaced and disquieted she couldn't decide where to let them rest. She drove toward the only solace she could think of: home. Her brother, ten years older than she was, had moved to Texas years ago to run a software company. Her dad would be at work, and Annabelle would have her mother to herself.

She pulled into the driveway, parked her car and came through the back door into the kitchen. Grace Clark sat at the kitchen table, dividing mail into piles. "Oh, Belle, darling, what a nice surprise." She dropped the mail and went to Annabelle's side, hugged her.