Secret Lives (41 page)

“I'm going to call Nina and tell her to
forget about the screenplay,” she said. “I can't write it. You
don't make a biographical film and leave out a fact like this,
something that shaped her life. But I can't put it in either.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, balancing his
own sandwich on his thigh. “I don't think you should do anything
impulsive.”

“I can't write this, Ben.”

“Don't call Nina yet. Wait a few days so you
can talk to her with a clear head.” The phone rang as he spoke and
he leaned toward the apple crate to answer it. “She's right here.”
He held the receiver out to her. “It's Kyle.”

She shook her head. Ben hesitated a moment,
then lifted the receiver back to his ear. “She's not ready to talk
to you yet, Kyle.” Ben kept his eyes on her as he listened. “I just
don't know,” he said into the phone. “Yes, all right. I will.” He
hung up the phone and set it back on the crate. “He really wants to
talk with you.”

She handed him her empty mug and lowered
herself beneath the sheet. “And I just want to sleep.”

Ben dragged her to the Dairy Queen for dinner
that night. They sat at a sticky table, surrounded on all sides by
Coolbrook's teenagers. Eden had been sullen and surly for much of
the day, and now as she listened to the adolescent flirting and
posturing from the other tables her irritation mounted.

When Ben had finished eating and she still
hadn't touched the crab cake sandwich on her Styrofoam plate, he
said, “I want to tell you something. Please don't take this the
wrong way. I'm not saying you shouldn't feel hurt or betrayed or
angry. But I want you to recognize that you've lost nothing here.
You still have Kyle and Lou. You can have as little or as much of
them as you choose. You still have me, for whatever I'm worth.
You've got your life and your career. And your daughter.”

There were fine lines around his gray eyes,
muscles in his jaw that tensed as he spoke. Her eyes filled as she
thought of what he'd endured this last year, what he endured every
day as he pictured his daughter hurting and unhappy, knowing he
could do nothing to help her. “I'm sorry.” She squeezed his hand.
“I am so sorry.”

It was dusk when they pulled into the
clearing in front of Ben's cabin, and she groaned when she saw
Kyle's Jeep parked at the edge of the woods, Kyle himself sitting
on Ben's front porch.

“He's holding your next notebook,” Ben
said.

“I don't want to talk to him.”

“Come on.” Ben walked around the truck and
opened the door for her.

Kyle stood as they neared the porch, and Ben
steered Eden toward the bench. “You two have a seat out here,” he
said. “I'll be inside.”

Eden sat at the end of the bench, as far as
she could get from Kyle. “I don't have anything to say to you,” she
said.

Kyle took his seat again. “I'm sorry, Eden. I
never wanted you to be hurt by this.”

She looked at him and could almost see him
recoil under her glare. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

Kyle sighed. “I don't know. Lou and I talked
about it many times. I expected when we took you in that I would
tell you…but it never seemed like the right time. And later…I kept
putting it off. I always hoped that one day the moment would be
right. Then when you called about the movie, needing to do the
research and all, I knew this was it. I thought of keeping the
journals from you, but I knew that wouldn't be fair. And that's not
what your mother wanted.”

Eden sat forward. “Did you ever stop to think
that I should have had this information for the sake of my
children? What if something had been wrong with Cassie? You let me
take that kind of risk with your niece.”

“My granddaughter.”

“Don't call her that! She's nothing more than
your grandniece as far as I'm concerned. Or your cousin twice
removed or whatever the hell it would be.”

Kyle looked down at his hands. “After you
wrote that you got married, I went to see a genetic specialist in
New York. I told him the whole story because I was worried about
what it could mean for your children. He told me the probability of
anything being wrong with your children was minuscule. He said the
probability of anything being wrong with you had been minuscule as
well. It's not much of a concern with first cousins.”

“You should have told me.”

“You're right and I'm sorry.” He stood up. “I
brought the next notebook for you.”

“The thought of reading any more of it makes
me sick. I've decided I'm not going to make this film. I've been
trying to write honestly and sympathetically about her life. If I'm
honest now, I'll incriminate all of us.”

“Well, I'll just leave it here for you, in
case.” Kyle set the notebook on the bench, and for a moment Eden
was held fast by his eyes, eyes that in their shape, their color,
the hurt they contained, were identical to her own. “I've always
been proud to be your father, Eden.” He stepped off the porch, and
she watched him walk to his Jeep. There was the slightest limp in
his gait, and it took him more than a few moments to get settled in
behind the wheel. He had to start the Jeep twice before it turned
over. She watched him make a tight turn in the clearing and pull
out onto the road. And she felt a pang of worry, a feeling quick
and hot that made her gasp, as if someone had squeezed her heart in
his fist. Kyle was upset, it was growing dark, he was not as alert,
as sharp as he'd once been. She knew what it was like driving down
that steep, winding road to Lynch Hollow, the way gravity sucked at
your car. It would be so easy for him to miss one of those hairpin
turns, so easy for the Jeep to fly over the edge.

She sat in the darkness, ignoring the
mosquitoes, until thirty minutes had passed and she felt sure in
her heart he had made it home safely.

–
36–

Eden took over the mornings in his cabin and
that was fine with Ben. He'd wake to the sound of her in his
kitchen, cutting fresh fruit, making coffee or, on one aromatic
occasion, cinnamon rolls that came out doughy but delicious from
his antiquated oven. He would set the pillow behind his back so he
could sit up and watch her work. She'd be in her underwear, or
sometimes in his. Her hair would be down, slipping over her
shoulders and catching the sunlight from the little kitchen window,
and on a couple of mornings, when the light hit her just right, he
could see the blue of her eyes.

They made love every night, a feat he'd no
longer thought himself capable of. The first night or two it had
been a tender, needy lovemaking that ended with Eden in tears. They
grew more playful as the days passed. She bought a
chocolate-colored teddy to tease him with and read him provocative
passages from some of her favorite books, and he thought, with
great satisfaction, about what Michael Carey had missed.

There was no bickering between them. He was
an easy person to live with, and she was surprisingly simple in her
needs and demands. She seemed to have forgotten that she was an
actress, a woman with a house on the ocean, with a face anyone
would recognize on the street. She shopped for groceries, washed
clothes by hand and hung them up to dry on the line he'd strung
between two trees. She didn't complain about the minuscule bathroom
or his lack of air-conditioning. She made tiny curtains for the
dollhouse, little rag rugs. He'd watch her concentration, the
slight squint in her eyes as she held the needle, the way she
rested the tip of her tongue daintily between her lips. Everything
about her charmed him, especially her contentment at living within
his four close walls.

She no longer worked on the screenplay, but
she had not yet made the call to Nina. He didn't badger her; she
had to work this out on her own. The notebook Kyle had left with
her a week earlier sat unopened on the coffee table. Sometimes in
the evenings he'd catch her staring at it. They'd be sitting on the
sofa, reading or playing backgammon, and she'd look over at it.
Just once, on a night when she was losing badly and her
concentration was off, he said, “Why don't you read it?” and she
shook her head quickly and returned to the game.

Neither of them spoke about the fact that she
was no longer working at the site. He tried to persuade her to see
Kyle. He didn't like being caught between the two of them. Kyle
called a few times, leaving messages for her that Michael or Nina
had called, but she refused to speak to him and she never returned
those calls to the West Coast.

Kyle was coming to the digs again, more than
he had at any other time that summer. The only awkward moment had
been that first morning after Eden moved into the cabin. Kyle
arrived at the side of the pit where Ben was working around nine in
the morning. Ben could see the high color in Kyle's cheeks as he
slowly lowered himself down the ladder.

“Eden's not coming this morning?” Kyle asked.
He looked around at the unimpressive pit walls rather than meet
Ben's eyes, and Ben felt sorry for him. He wondered what he could
say to put his old friend at ease.

“No. She wanted to do some shopping. And
she's not up to seeing you yet. Give her some time, Kyle.”

“I was hoping she would understand somehow. I
guess it's a hard thing to understand.” Kyle picked up the graph
from the side of the pit. “So, what do we have here?”

Ben showed him the pieces he'd found the day
before and their location on the graph, but Kyle wasn't following
him.

“I shouldn't have told her,” he said
finally.

“You had to.”

“She's so angry with me.”

“Yeah, she is right now.” He said it as
though Eden's anger would pass, but he wasn't so sure.

Kyle looked over at him. “You angry with me
too?”

“I'm not trying to keep her from you, Kyle. I
wish she would talk to you.”

Kyle reached into his shirt pocket. “Here's a
couple of tickets to Wolf Trap for Sunday night. Threepenny Opera.
I don't think Lou and I will be in the mood, so why don't you and
Eden go?”

Ben closed his fingers around the tickets. He
had a normal life. He could take a woman out, be around other
people. Maybe by now things had blown over enough that he could
start living again.

Eden was oddly quiet that Sunday morning. She
sat on the sofa, an unopened book in her lap, her eyes staring into
space.

Ben looked up from the dollhouse. “What are
you thinking about?” he asked.

She looked over at him. “I have to figure out
what to do.” He leaned away from the table. “About?” He wasn't
certain if she meant the screenplay or Kyle.

“Cassie's coming in another week,” she said.
“And I can't stay with you while she's here, which means I have to
either go back to Kyle and Lou's or move into a hotel. But if I'm
no longer working on the film, there's no real point to my being
here at all. I should really pull myself together and go home. I
need to find a new project to get involved in.”

His heart contracted with such force that he
thought it must show in his face. Her eyes were on him now,
watching him.

“Is that what you want?” he asked.

“No.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you,” she said. “I'm so happy when
I'm with you, Ben. I want you on whatever terms I can have
you.”

He was glad he was sitting at the table and
she was on the couch. He couldn't touch her, couldn't cloud his
mind with the feel of her under his fingertips.

“The price of being with me could be very
high,” he said.

“I don't care.”

“I don't know where my next job will be. And
I won't live off you.”

“There must be something archaeological you
can do in California. I have connections, Ben. I'm sure I could
help you find something. But first we have to get you cleared on
the molestation charge. My lawyer in—”

“Wait a minute.” He put down the little scrap
of wood he'd been working on. “Stop dreaming, Eden. You're not
going to get me cleared. You've got to face that, okay? Because it
has to be factored into your decision.”

She dropped her eyes quickly and he saw her
swallow hard. He pressed ahead, knowing he was pushing her now,
testing her. “I know this doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since
I can't see Bliss, but I don't like the idea of having the entire
continent between her and me. And I'm afraid of L.A. I'm afraid of
having strangers pop out of the woodwork to take my picture and
plaster it all over creation.”

She looked up at him. “Do you love me?” Her
eyes were dry but he heard the threat of tears in her voice.

“You know I do. Very much.”

“Then Cassie and I will go wherever you can
find another job. It doesn't matter where I live, really. I'll have
to travel a bit to work on the Children's Fund and when I get
around to making another movie. But I would try to keep traveling
to a minimum.”

He told her there was no need to make
decisions yet, that he didn't think either of them was thinking
clearly enough to do a good job of it. But she'd lit such hope in
him. They had played house in such an insulated and idyllic fashion
that for the first time in over a year he felt certain of a
future.

They talked about Cassie during the two-hour
drive to Wolf Trap. The approaching visit of Eden's little girl
made him anxious. He was afraid he would attach himself too
strongly to her—he missed having a child in his life. On the other
hand, he was afraid of feeling self-conscious around her. He was,
after all, a convicted child molester.

He had reached that gratifying point with
Eden where he could say all of this out loud to her. None of his
fears seemed too great for her to handle. She wanted him and Cassie
to be great friends, she said. He didn't need to worry about
touching her; she knew he was innocent. He needed to keep that in
mind himself.

The stage at Wolf Trap was set in the heart
of an open-air theater. He and Eden had lawn tickets for the bowl
of grass fanning out from the theater seats. They spread their
blanket on the lawn, and Eden unpacked their picnic basket while
Ben poured them each a glass of wine.