Secret Lives (54 page)

“Ferry Creek's rising fast,” he said. “It's
nearly to the pits. If it keeps rising at this rate, it could be
just a couple hours from the cavern. I have to go into the cave and
tell Ben that if he can't find one of the skeletons within the next
hour to forget it. It's not worth the risk.”

Kyle was winded and red-faced. Perspiration
dampened the gray hair at his temples. He couldn't possibly go into
the cavern.

“I'll tell him,” Eden said.

Kyle frowned at her. “You can't go into a
cave.”

“Well, you can't either.”

“You'll pass out.”

“You'll fall and break your neck.”

“All right, all right,” Lou said. “I'll
go.”

Kyle laughed and looked at Eden. “Are you
sure?”

“Yes.”

“You just need to get to the tunnel entrance
and call to him. Your voice should carry, though you might have to
go in a ways.”

Her heart started thumping. “How long is the
tunnel?”

“Thirty yards or so.” He looked at her
doubtfully. “Remember, honey, it's not going to be like it was when
you were little. There won't be any light other than what you take
in with you.”

She went to her room to get a sweater and
when she returned to the kitchen Kyle handed her a green helmet
with a headlamp attached to the front. She put it on. It was a
little loose. “How do I look?” she asked.

“That helmet's proof that you'd look good in
anything,” Kyle said as he handed her a flashlight. “I'll walk over
with you. If I think the creek's getting too close I'll call you
out.”

He told her about the maze room as they
walked out to the road. “I tried to tell Ben where to look,” he
said, “but my memory's not that clear on it, and that part of the
cave is a spelunker's nightmare.”

“My God,” she said when they'd reached the
field. Ben's truck was parked up on the road, and that was
fortunate because Ferry Creek had devoured much of the field. The
turbulent green water clawed at the rim of the first pit. “It can't
possibly get higher than this,” she said.

“You don't remember, huh? It can and it
might.”

As they neared the cavern entrance the
enormity of what she'd agreed to do struck her. She looked into the
black wound in the side of the hill and steadied herself against
the entryway.

“You don't have to do this, honey,” Kyle
said.

“I want to. I'm all right.”

She turned on her flashlight and headlamp and
stepped inside. Almost immediately the floor tipped beneath her
feet, and her heart rocketed. She had forgotten this descent. God,
how the water would pour in here. She turned to look back at the
entrance, but already the walls of the cave hid Ferry Creek from
her view.

She stepped forward, the beams of her
headlamp and flashlight illuminating the long, narrow wonderland of
stalactites and stalagmites in front of her. The floor began to
level out slowly until she no longer felt as though she might fall
with each step. The cavern smelled musty after being closed up all
these years. Her lights were bright, but the glow they cast was
foreign. The cave had taken much of its personality from
Katherine's lighting, from the lanterns and candles she'd strewn
around its walls and ledges.

After a few more steps the narrow cave
suddenly opened into the great room, and she had to clutch a
stalagmite to keep her balance. She felt the jolt of the familiar.
She knew where she was. All around her the tites and mites formed
walls of orange curtains and fountains of frothy rock.

She continued walking, looking up into the
great vaulted ceiling where she could see the spiky stalactites
captured in her headlamp. Her toe caught on something and she
nearly tripped. She looked down and caught her breath. The
typewriter. She knelt next to it. It was on its side, rusted nearly
beyond recognition. She touched the keys and her fingers came away
covered with orange dust. The lid was thin and crusty and gave way
beneath her fingertips.

She stood up again and looked around her.
This was the level area where the furniture had been. Kate's desk
had been to her right, and Eden could see the ledge where she'd
hidden her journal and, deep in the crevice, her wistful stories of
herself and Kyle, the stories he'd found and burned although Lou
had called them Kate's best work.

Eden turned and looked back the way she'd
come, but the darkness had swallowed any light from the entrance.
She wasn't sure she could go on. She was gulping air, breathing so
deeply that the cool air seared her lungs. Kyle is out there, she
reminded herself. He's sitting just outside the cave, waiting for
you, and Ben is in here somewhere. All around her she felt the
benevolent ghosts of the past. Her mother. Matthew Riley. Kyle. She
pictured them sitting on the settee and the rocker, reading by
yellow lantern light as though they were in someone's living room.
She imagined how Kyle's Spanish music would have echoed in here,
how it would have filled this room as Lou danced among the
rocks.

She walked on, finally reaching the back of
the cave, where she saw the still, black water of the reflecting
pool. The pool was carved into the rock at the height of her waist,
the ceiling just a yard or so above it so that the thousands of
tiny stalactites were reflected in the water. In front of her,
jammed against the wall that formed the pool, was the old
furniture. The frame of the settee was nearly intact, the
upholstery completely rotted—or eaten—away from it. It was tipped
on its back, its rusted springs exposed. Her mother's desk lay on
its side, the wood dry and cracked. A chair lay in splinters
nearby.

She knew that the tunnel was to her right.
She found it quickly and stood at the entrance. The ceiling was
low, nearly to her head. Ben would have had to stoop to get through
it. She cupped her hands around her mouth and called, “Ben!” She
cocked her head to listen but heard nothing in response. Thirty
yards, Kyle had said. She'd need to get a little closer.

She ducked her head and started walking
through the tunnel. After she had gone several yards the walls
began to close in around her. The ceiling was lower. She couldn't
stand up straight without hitting her head, or unfold her arms
without scraping them on the walls. She stopped and tried to calm
her breathing.

“Ben!”

There was still no response and she felt she
had no choice now but to go on. She would rather find herself at
the end of this tunnel with Ben than back in the blackness of the
cave with the entire length of the great room to walk before she
reached daylight. She concentrated on setting one foot in front of
the other. The ceiling dropped lower still, the floor rose, and she
was nearly crouching. She turned a corner and a huge rocky
protrusion blocked most of the passage in front of her. She felt
paralyzed, afraid to try to squeeze past the craggy rock and afraid
to turn back. She dropped to her knees, unable to hold her stooped
position any longer.

“Ben! Ben!”

“Eden?” His voice sounded far away, but she
could hear him clearly. “What the hell are you doing in there?”

“I have a message from Kyle. But I'm stuck.
It's so narrow.

“It gets wider,” he called. “Keep
coming.”

She tried to stand again and remembered to
hunch over just in time to prevent herself from hitting her head on
the ceiling. She slipped past the protruding rock and let out her
breath.

“Eden? Are you still there?”

“Yes.” She walked on, stooped and
shivery-kneed, and soon saw a pale yellow light against the rocks
up ahead. She turned another corner and was nearly blinded by Ben's
headlamp.

“Just another few yards,” he said as he
backed out of the tunnel ahead of her. She followed him into the
maze room. She wanted to fall into his arms with relief, but he
just touched her shoulder, lightly, briefly, while she leaned
against the wall and gasped for breath.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes, but Ferry Creek is nearly to the pits.
Kyle says you have less than an hour left. He says to forget the
skeleton if you can't find it soon, and get out of here.”

Ben nodded. “It's slow going in here. Look at
this place.” He waved the beam of his flashlight around the room.
It was indeed a maze, a never-ending dense forest of stone columns.
“I haven't been able to go in too far because I've stayed tied to
the entrance so I can find my way out again.” She saw the rope tied
from a column near the entrance to his belt. “But since you're
here, I can leave my flashlight to mark the exit and we can both
look.”

She nodded and started snaking her way
through the maze as silence fell between them. She wanted to speak
to him. She needed to. She could start with something safe.

“It was a strange feeling to walk through the
cavern after all these years,” she said.

For a moment he said nothing. She heard him
moving through the other side of the maze room, saw the shadows
shift around her as the beam of his headlamp bounced around the
walls. “Let's just work, Eden,” he said finally. “We don't have
time to shoot the breeze.”

Her cheeks burned. A dozen responses came to
mind but she said none of them. She would let him have his
silence.

She angled her body back and forth to walk
between the columns and within a very short time found herself in a
more open area. She knew even before she examined the floor that
she'd found Rosie's resting place, and sure enough, the skeleton
lay no more than a yard from her feet. She called to Ben and knelt
down to look at the skeleton. It was small. A child. Not much
bigger than Cassie.

Ben stood above her and shook his head. “I've
been scouring this place for over an hour and you walk right to it.
Spooky.” He lifted his camera and took a few pictures, then laid a
sheet on the ground as close to the skeleton as he could. The
skeleton was embedded in an inch or so of earth. Ben pulled a brush
from his jeans pocket and cleared the loose dust away. Then he dug
carefully at the dirt with his pocketknife, and as always, Eden
felt electrified watching his hands. They were strong hands, well
shaped and efficient. He touched these bones as though they offered
him clues to their existence, as though he felt something with his
fingertips that she could never hope to feel.

She helped him lift the skeleton onto the
sheet. He wrapped it up and slipped a black plastic bag over it,
all without saying a word. Eden was afraid to say anything herself
for fear of being reprimanded again.

It took them a few minutes to work their way
back to the exit. He went into the tunnel first, pulling the
skeleton behind him as delicately as he could. She followed,
stooping awkwardly, lifting the bag as they turned corners and
stepped over rocky patches in the earth. The stooping was taking
its toll, and her shoulders ached along with the muscles in her
thighs and the small of her back. But she felt no apprehension this
time. There was no longer any unknown here. And she was with
Ben.

Once they were in the great room, Ben lifted
the bag into his arms and carried it like a child. She walked on
ahead, lighting their way.

“Your mother was a strange duck for thinking
this was a hospitable place,” Ben said.

“Imagine how inhospitable her own home felt
to her that she preferred being here,” Eden replied.

Kyle was waiting for them under Lou's big
green umbrella just outside the cave entrance. “I'm glad to see the
two of you,” he said.

“Holy shit,” Ben said as he watched the water
of Ferry Creek pour into the pits. It had nearly filled them to the
top. “If I'd known the water was this high, I don't think I would
have been all that relaxed in there.” He started toward the truck.
“I'll take this back to the cabin, Kyle, and up to the university
on Monday.”

“Can you use some help?” Eden offered. She
needed to talk to him. You're running away from the man you
love.

“No,” Ben said without turning around. “I'll
be fine.”

She walked up to the road while Kyle helped
Ben put the skeleton in the truck. They set it on the front seat,
out of the rain. She didn't watch. Ben wanted nothing more from
her. They were finished and he was willing to let it go. Anxious to
let it go and get on with his life. And what did she want? Not
this. Not this achingly cold good-bye. Yet she had lost him all on
her own. There was no one else to blame. She had mistrusted him;
she had maligned him. How could she expect anything from him
now?

Kyle started walking toward her and she
lifted her face fully to the rain to erase any trace of emotion.
They were up on the road when she heard Ben start the ignition in
the truck. He would have to drive past them. She would lift her
hand and wave. It would be simple.

“You want to be with him,” Kyle said as they
started walking.

“He doesn't want to be with me.”

“Bull,” Kyle said.

Ben drove past with a couple of taps on his
horn and she raised her hand without looking up from the road. She
and Kyle walked back to the house in silence, but once they were
inside, surrounded by the smell of apples and cinnamon, he turned
to her.

“I'll pick up Cassie at Maggie DeMarco's,” he
said. “You go on up to Ben's.” He took her car keys from the rack
by the door and pressed them into her hand, then opened a drawer in
the hutch and handed her a darkened notebook. “The last one,” he
said.

–
47–

By the time she reached the cabin, the rain
had stopped. The gray clouds split open above her head, revealing a
deep blue-violet sky as evening settled over the Valley.

Ben opened the door before she'd had a chance
to knock. He had showered and changed into a pair of faded jeans
and a blue chambray shirt she had never seen on him before.

“May I come in?” Her voice sounded timid to
her ears. There was nothing welcoming in his face.