The Art of Keeping Secrets Read online

  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 space, 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?

  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 space 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.

  Sh
e 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 gods and goddesses, 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 scrapbook, 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, w
anting 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 glass 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 cum 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.