Secret Lives (52 page)

“I don't give a damn what her counselor says.
I'm sick of other people running my life. Where is she?”

Sharon hesitated. “She's next door at Mary's.
But Ben, listen to me. We have to do this carefully. She's been
told for the past year and a half that you did bad things to her
and had to stay away from her for her own protection. They have to
clear the way for you a little.”

Bliss was next door, a few yards from where
he sat. He stood up. “I want to see her now.”

Sharon rose and put her hand on his. “All
right. But calm down first, Ben. Please.” She squeezed his hand.
“You'll scare her. Everyone's told her now that it was Sam. He
called her himself this morning after he was released on his own
recognizance. But she's still confused.”

Ben clenched his teeth together, determined
to stay calm. “Please get her, Sharon, or I'll go over there
myself.”

Sharon was gone for a long time. Ben sat
numbly on the sofa at first, then walked into the kitchen and
leaned over the sink because he thought he was going to be
sick.

Sam.

No, he wouldn't think about Sam right now. He
was going to see Bliss. One trauma at a time. Would she be afraid
of him? He couldn't stand that thought. He splashed cold water on
his face and returned to the living room just as Sharon and Bliss
walked in the door.

Bliss was taller, her arms and legs long and
far too thin. She held Sharon's hand and looked at him, uncertain
and unsmiling, and his heart cracked in two. He walked over to her
and knelt down to take her in his arms while Sharon let go of her
hand and stepped into the kitchen. He could hear Sharon crying
while he held his daughter, who was so stiff and delicate that she
felt brittle beneath his arms. He leaned back to look at her. Her
big gray eyes were clear. “Don't cry,” she said.

“I can't help it. I'm so happy to see you.
I've missed you very, very much.”

Bliss looked anxiously toward the kitchen.
“Mama?”

“I'm right here, Bliss.” Sharon appeared in
the doorway, gamely smiling, clutching a tissue.

Bliss looked back at Ben. “Where did your
beard go?”

She had never seen him without his beard. He
must seem even more of a stranger to her. “I shaved it off. Do you
think I look better or worse?”

“Worse,” she said, and he thought he detected
the hint of a smile.

He sat back on his heels. “Do you understand
what's going on?”

Bliss nodded. Her bangs were too long and
caught on her pale eyelashes when she blinked. “Sam said you never
did bad things to me. He make-believed he was you.”

“That's right,” Ben said, although he still
did not believe it himself. “And then I had to go away because the
police thought I hurt you and they wanted to protect you. But now
they know I didn't do it and I can see you anytime I want.” He
looked up at Sharon and she nodded.

“Do you want to see my new Barbie?” Bliss
asked.

Barbie dolls? Bliss? He would have to get to
know this strange little girl all over again. “Yes, I would.” He
stood up and started toward her room, but she held back.

“Mama has to come too,” she said, and as
Sharon joined them in the hallway he wondered how long it would be
before Bliss felt comfortable with him alone. He would be patient.
He would regain her trust bit by bit. And she would put on weight
and lose that gaunt, frightened look. She would start to smile
again. But it tore him up inside to know that she would be haunted
by the demons of this last year for the rest of her life.

Sam himself opened the door and Ben
immediately saw the effects of a night in jail on his brother's
features. His hair was uncombed, the lines in his face deep and
dark, his eyes red. He looked older, beaten down. The transition
was frightening and seeing it allayed some of Ben's anger.

Sam stood back to let him in.

“Where's Jen?” Ben asked.

“Gone to her parents.”

Sam walked into the kitchen and Ben followed.
“I didn't know if you'd come over or not,” Sam said. He took two
beers from the refrigerator, set one on the breakfast bar for Ben,
and popped the other open for himself. He took a long drink and Ben
marveled at his own reaction to this man. Driving over here, he'd
pictured himself bursting through the door in a rage, pummeling his
brother into the carpet. But now he felt calm. He had a sense of
being outside himself, watching this scene unfold.

“How could you do it?” he asked.

Sam sat on one of the barstools and looked
Ben in the eye. He let out a long sigh. “Do you mean, how could I
fondle Bliss or how could I let you take the rap for it?”

“Everything.” Ben felt the anger rising and
worked to keep it down. “And skip the euphemisms, okay? You didn't
fondle Bliss, you molested her. Jesus, Sam.” He shook his head. “I
feel as though I don't know you at all.”

“There's a lot about me nobody knows.” Sam
set his beer on the counter. “I love Bliss,” he said. “I was
jealous of you—it was so easy for you and Sharon. One day you
decide to try to have a baby and the next day Sharon's pregnant.
And Bliss was so beautiful. I never hurt her, Ben, you've got to
believe that. I mean, I was always very gentle with her.”

Ben slammed his own beer down on the counter.
“How can you say that? You're a psychiatrist, for Christ's sake.
You know the toll this is taking on her.”

Sam shook his head. “I was gentle. And I
never meant for you to get the blame. The first night I was with
her, she was so sleepy and out of it, she assumed I was you and I
just played along with it. I didn't let her get a look at me. Then
when the shit hit the fan, I thought for sure you'd get off and it
would all blow over. When it didn't, I just gave in. Learned to
live with the guilt, I suppose. I'm sorry, Ben. There's no way I
can tell you how sorry I am.” He looked at his brother. “You don't
know what it's like to be this way. I can't control it. I'd be at
your house and picture Bliss asleep in her bed and I just couldn't
help myself.”

Ben stared at the stranger in front of him.
“Have there been others?”

Sam looked down at the bar. “A few over the
years.” He sighed, rubbed his eyes. “It's probably best they lock
me up.”

“I don't understand when you did it.”

“When we'd be at your house and I could
figure out a way…like one night when we were all in the pool and
Bliss was already in bed and I said I wasn't feeling well and went
into the guest room to lie down. Only I never went to the guest
room.”

Ben remembered that particular night. Poor
Bliss. He'd been laughing in the pool with Sharon and Jen and she'd
been completely vulnerable in her bedroom. And then the scene
formed in his mind. The image he'd been avoiding slipped in so fast
he couldn't stop it. He saw Sam behind his daughter, saw him
undressing her, touching her, and he began to shake with rage. He
stood up and grabbed Sam by the collar, yanking him off the stool
and pressing him up against the bar.

“I hate you for this,” he said. He pulled
back his fist and let it fly. Sam's head snapped to the side and
blood pooled at the corner of his lip. He shut his eyes, waiting
for the next blow, waiting as though he knew he deserved it, as
though he welcomed it. He looked wretched, pitiful. And ruined.

Ben let go of him and went into the kitchen.
He wrapped a few cubes of ice in a dish towel and leaned across the
bar to press it into Sam's hand. Then he walked to the door, but
before he left he turned to take one last look at his brother. Sam
was leaning against the wall, eyes closed, holding the dish towel
to the side of his face. Two round red drops of blood sat like
rubies on his collar.

“Maybe someday I can forgive you for what
you've done to me,” Ben said. “But I'll never forgive you for what
you've done to my daughter.”

He spent the next morning at the university,
negotiating his reinstatement for the spring semester. He thought
of calling Alex Parrish, but he was still too angry with his old
friend. Let Alex learn about it through the grapevine and wallow in
guilt for a few days. Let Alex be the one to call him.

He spent the afternoon with Bliss and Sharon
before heading back to Virginia. Once on the road, though, it was
not Bliss who filled his thoughts but Eden. Insane. He'd been given
back his daughter, his job, his life. Yet he wasn't satisfied. He'd
lost Eden in all of this. He'd call her to thank her, but he
wouldn't see her. In that statement to the press she'd said she was
looking forward to returning to California. “I want to put this
past summer behind me,” she'd said. Fine. He would do the same.

When he reached the Shenandoah Valley, he
turned onto the back roads running through the string of small
towns. The first little village was Gloverton, just four blocks
long. When he reached its west end, he spotted the marquee on the
tiny movie theater. Heart of Winter. He pulled over to the side of
the road and stared at the sign, feeling as though he'd driven into
the Twilight Zone. Heart of Winter had long been out of the major
theaters. This sign was only here to torment him.

He got out of his truck and checked the time
of the movie. Seven o'clock. He had an hour to kill. He ate a
hamburger and fries at a little cafe and walked the length of
Gloverton, four blocks east and four west. Then he settled down in
one of the theater's hard vinyl seats and waited.

The opening music was powerful. He hadn't
noticed it before, but now he felt moved by it to the point of
pain. Then the movie began and he wondered why he was torturing
himself, watching Eden with Michael Carey. She was different on the
screen; her voice, her expressions were not her own. This was Eden
Riley the actress. He knew the real woman. Did Carey? With
increasing agitation he watched the relationship grow between the
two actors, and he left before the hotel room scene. He'd gotten
back in his truck and was out on the road before he realized how
fast his heart was beating, as though he'd escaped from a great
danger just in time. It would have done him no good at all to watch
that scene, to see her blouse fall open for the camera, to see
Carey plunge his hands beneath her skirt, to see her toss her head
back with a shower of blond hair. He didn't need to see it to
remember it.

–
46–

Every morning she rose from sleep with the
certainty that Ben was beside her. Her hand rested on his stomach,
just below his navel, his penis stiff and ready above her fingers.
Or she had the taste of him in her mouth, or his scent on her
pillow. Only when her eyes were fully open and the sun had swept
the shadows from the room would she admit to herself that her hand
rested only on the firm surface of her mattress, that the taste in
her mouth was nothing more than the stale taste of a poor night's
sleep.

If it were not for Cassie chattering to
herself in the next room while waiting for Eden to get up, she
would roll over and go back to sleep so she could see Ben again,
talk to him, touch him. She thought of calling him but couldn't
face the hurt and anger in his voice. She thought of telling him
her suspicions about Sam. But what if she was wrong?

In a few days she would no longer have the
temptation of knowing he was nearby. The Santa Monica house was
waiting for her. She would be fine once she got there. She'd throw
herself into the film, force herself to read the script for
Treasure House. And she'd let Michael's new sober, tender side fill
the emptiness Ben had left her.

She spent her waking hours either with Cassie
or at work on the screenplay. She was determined to have the first
draft completed by the time she left on Monday, and it was going
extremely well now that she was free to change her mother's
history. She was good at fiction, at making up characters to suit
the story, and the work kept her from thinking about Ben, about
California.

On Friday afternoon she wrote the scene of
her own conception, with Kate finally yielding to the gently
persuasive, sweetly sensual Matthew Riley. It was a beautiful scene
that nearly wrote itself. Eden felt no guilt over the lie she was
telling on the screen. She had come to believe it herself.

She was nearly dizzy with fatigue by the time
she went downstairs Friday evening. She had promised Cassie she'd
play a game with her, but except for Kyle and herself the house was
empty.

“I sent Cassie and Lou to the store for ice
cream,” Kyle said. He was sitting on the sofa, a clipboard on his
lap and a pencil in his hand. “I wanted a moment alone with
you.”

Here it comes, Eden thought. Kyle wouldn't
let her go back to California without first trying to settle their
differences. She leaned against the wall instead of sitting down,
waiting.

“Ben called me from Annapolis a while ago,”
Kyle said. “He's been cleared. His brother confessed to
everything.”

Tears quickly filled her eyes and she blinked
them back. “That's wonderful,” she said.

“He said he was grateful to you for going up
to see Sharon.”

She shook her head. “It doesn't seem like
much compared to the grief I caused him.”

“He's also gotten his job back for the spring
and he talked them into providing funding and a supply of graduate
students for the Lynch Hollow site—if he can produce one of the
skeletons from the cavern.”

She frowned, amazed that Ben had dared to
suggest opening the cavern to Kyle.

“I'm going to let him do it. I won't go in
myself, but if he wants to…” Kyle shrugged. “He's right. It's the
one thing that will save the site. The only thing. I've arranged to
have a work crew out there tomorrow afternoon to move the
boulders.”

“How will he know where to look?”

“I'm making him a map from memory.” Kyle
lifted the clipboard in the air. “The main cavern shouldn't be a
problem. It's that maze room that can turn you around.”