Secret of Lies

by Barbara Forte Abate

  “I’ve got to stop reacting like this. It’s ridiculous,” I scolded my foolish self.

  “What’s that?” my mother said, coming into the room quiet as a whisper.

  “Nothing. Just mumbling to myself.” I tilted my head, throwing a glance over my shoulder. “What’s all that for?” I said when she placed a neatly folded pile of bedding on one of the red vinyl kitchen chairs.

  “Tell Ash these are for him if he changes his mind and decides to sleep in the house.”

  “He’s sleeping here?”

  “In the barn–or so he says.”

  “Oh. How come?”

  “Apparently a wild animal’s been getting into the feed bin at night and making a mess so he’s volunteered for what he calls vermin patrol.”

  “What? How come nobody ever tells me any of this stuff?”

  “Stevie, you’ve made it very clear you’re not interested in the farm.”

  “That’s not true,” I insisted, though of course it was.

  Ash appeared at the back door. “Anyone interested in going for ice cream?”

  “Ice cream?” I repeated dumbly, as though he’d suggested something as ludicrous as cow shit on a cookie.

  “Yes, ice cream. You know–that cold creamy confection they scoop into a cup or on top of a crunchy cone.”

  “I know what ice cream is, thank you.” I found myself returning his smile.

  “None for me,” my mother said. “But you two go ahead.”

  “I don’t really–”

  “Go ahead, Stevie, I’ve never known you to refuse sweets,” Mom interrupted before I could fully decline.

  “Come on, we’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

  “Alright,” I reluctantly agreed, taking a moment to neatly fold the dishtowel before laying it on the counter alongside the sink, something I never did–my normal habit being to carelessly toss it over the back of a kitchen chair.

  “I’ll be out in a minute. I just need to get my purse.”

  “No, come on,” he insisted, holding the door open. “I’m treating.”

  “Oh, well, no, I don’t think–”

  “Fine, but you can pay me back later. We’ve gotta go. I don’t know how long Trixie’s stays open.”

  “Be back in a few minutes, Mom,” I said over my shoulder as I followed Ash out the door.

  The breeze stirred by the open car windows lifted my hair, flicking long strands against my cheeks and twining my neck annoyingly.

  “You don’t have an elastic band somewhere in here, do you?” I asked, a wildly tossing tendril catching in my mouth.

  “Check the glove compartment. There might be something in there you can use.”

  I twisted the knob, instantly recalling my previous trespass, when I’d sifted through this very compartment searching for clues and secrets of the man now sitting beside me. Reaching inside now, I promptly noticed that while most of the other items remained, the thick wad of brochures was gone.

  “Here, how about a shoelace?” he said, reaching across and pulling a string from the clutter.

  “Thanks. That’ll work.”

  There were six other cars parked at Trixie’s when we pulled into the parking lot, the tires crunching over loose gravel and raising a cloud of dust that plumed out behind the car like a smoke tail. It was a good crowd for this normally deserted stretch of highway.

  “What’ll you have?” Ash stood alongside my open window, patiently waiting as I mulled over my selection; all at once unsure of my preference despite the ten minute drive I’d had to consider it.

  “A small chocolate cone.”

  “Sprinkles?”

  “No. Plain.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ash–” I leaned out the car window, calling after him as he headed toward the line of people waiting to order. He turned, offering a quizzical eye.

  “Vanilla cone with sprinkles.”

  “Vanilla with sprinkles?”

  “Yes.”

  He waited a moment as though expecting me to re-consider before sauntering back toward the order window.

  I peered after him from the corner of my eye, then tipping my head to stare openly once convinced no one was all that interested or paying attention to my bold surveillance of Ash as he stood waiting for his turn at the counter–studying the long fluid line of his backside, wide shoulders, lean waist, the stretch of legs snugly fitted into worn blue jeans, unable even to shame myself away from thinking over how very nicely put together he was.

  And when he finally returned to the car bearing two towering ice cream cones, I was flustered enough from my bold inspection that I quickly lowered my eyes, unwilling to cast so much as a fleeting glance in his direction now. “Thank you,” I said, accepting the cone.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Um hum, fine. It’s just a little hot sitting here is all.” A drip of melting ice cream trickled down one side of the cone and trailed over the back of my hand.

  “This really hits the spot.” His cone was rapidly disappearing.

  I didn’t reply, the certainty arriving with the assured cataclysm of a landslide, that it was a huge mistake to even be here with him–side-by-side within the too-close-for-distraction confines of his car. The deceptively innocent movements of his tongue trimming away the peak of his ice cream with long winding sweeps, lending to the sense of an innocent situation turned increasingly dangerous.

  “You’re gonna have a mess if you don’t eat that,” Ash said, breaking into my multiplying reflections of panic. His casual warning immediately alerting me to the rapidly melting ice cream spilling over my fingers clutching the cone; a long sticky line trailing down my forearm to the bent angle of my elbow.

  “Here.”

  I reached for the proffered handful of neatly folded paper napkins, aware as I took them, of his fingertips briefly touching my hand. I pulled back quickly as if scorched, and although he shot me a questioning look, he said nothing.

  I bit into the drooping white peak, wanting only to be rid of the hateful thing.

  “Do you mind if I turn on the radio?” Ash said, starting the car and backing up slowly.

  “No, go ahead.”

  Ash popped the last of his cone into his mouth and reached for the radio dial. And as he skimmed across the stations searching for a place to land, my own thoughts remained locked into plotting over how to rid myself of the cursed ice cream. The wafer cone had by now turned soggy, my fingers sinking indentations into its spongy softness; the mere thought of eating it now altogether revolting. And even as I silently contrived over how I might discard it unobserved, the awful thing further retaliated, continuing to melt over my fingers in a sticky sweet river.

  “Do you want me to slow down so you can throw that out the window?” Ash said without taking his eyes from the road, slowing the car just long enough for me to toss the cone into the tangled brush alongside the road.

  “This heat really takes away my appetite,” I said weakly, feeling I owed some sort of explanation for sitting there like an idiot while ice cream melted all over myself.

  “Hot weather has that effect on some people,” he said, glancing at me as he spoke, the hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “You have ice cream on your cheek.”

  I swiped a crumpled napkin over my face.

  “Still there.”

  I wiped again, but the amused look on his face assured the offending spot continued to elude me.

  “Look here.”

  I turned my head towards him obediently and with the briefest touch against my skin, he wiped away the speck.

  And I could still feel his fingers on my face even after they’d gone.

  There was nary the suggestion of a breeze coming through my bedroom window, the air heavy and stiff like something left too long beneath a shut lid. I’d lain awake for hours, legs loosely covered by a damp knot of twisted sheets, my eyes turned to the dark ceiling, searching the shadows, but finding nothing to induce the luxury of sle
ep.

  Had Ash already gone to the barn for the night–and if so, had he fallen asleep yet?

  Every creak and drone whining out beyond the window was magnified three-fold within the realm of my senses and I listened intently to the rhapsody of familiar night sounds, straining to detect his whereabouts from any stirrings notably foreign.

  At last confident he had safely retired for the night, I reached for the pair of shorts I’d discarded in the lap of my chair hours earlier, pulling them on under my nightgown before creeping into the hallway. I paused outside my mother’s bedroom door for a long moment–waited, listened–then hearing nothing, tiptoed noiselessly through the sleeping house. The screen door yawned open with its familiar dull squeak and I held the frame in my hand, carefully easing it closed behind me.

  A pale slice of moon slanted down over the yard, the indigo sky rolled out behind it, heavily sprinkled with handfuls of brilliant stars–so near the treetops they looked close enough to pluck into my palm. The dark square of the barn stood silent, barely discernible against the murky background of trees; the absence of soft light striped under the door or cast out through the windows an assurance that Ash was sleeping–one eye undoubtedly cocked in wait of a nighttime raid from the wild intruder.

  I skipped across grass lightly misted with dew, skirting the cornfield to reach the familiar path leading through the woods to the swimming hole.

  Eleanor and I had always thought of it as our special place; a paradise carved and magically placed along the fringes of our otherwise ordinary farm. If anyone other than the two of us knew of its existence it was never mentioned, though by every indication it had always been there–set into the woody hillside an eternity ago by the Creator’s hand–a slender waterfall tumbling over a flight of squat boulders to collect in a deep natural basin below. And while I’d purposely neglected coming here over the past several summers, fearful of the aching pull of memories lying in wait like an enemy, lately, I’d once more found myself eager to steal away from the farm, drawn by the promised peace and comfort of solitude in this place that the rest of the world had yet to spoil with discovery.

  As I drew nearer to the pool–the sound of water rushing over rocks growing louder and deeper as I skipped along the path cutting through the trees–my heartbeat lifted in tempo with the assurance that my private haven was only a few steps away.

  Only now, when I stepped into the clearing, it was to find that the terrible thing I’d feared on every occasion previous had ultimately come to pass.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  If I hadn’t been caught so thoroughly unawares I would’ve darted back into the protective cover of woods. Instead, I remained where I was, rooted to the ground by the awful verity that this cherished place was no longer my own.

  “Stevie?”

  “What’re you doing here?”

  “Swimming.”

  “Obviously.”

  I watched with disbelieving eyes as Ash emerged from the pool, moonlight reflecting in the water dripping from his bare chest, my heart surging upwards into my throat with the immediate conviction that he, too, preferred swimming minus the hindering inconvenience of clothing. I felt my knees trembling under me like un-set gelatin; my insides crushed beneath a dropping anvil of certain panic.

  “This is a surprise. I never would’ve expected to see you here–not at this time of night.”

  “More or less what I was thinking,” I said, recovering something of my composure as he stepped from the cover of water and onto the rocks, revealing the outline of wet shorts pressed against his legs.

  “The water’s beautiful tonight.”

  “Great, enjoy it then,” I replied coolly. “Goodnight.”

  “Aren’t you going in?”

  “No. I don’t think so.” He unnerved me, this man. Had a way of turning me discomfited and snappish in the space of a sigh.

  I whirled around anxious to be away from him, but he reached out and caught my arm, his hand a cool vise against the simmering heat rolling over my skin in waves.

  “Didn’t you come here to swim?”

  “Apparently I’ve changed my mind,” I snapped, yanking my arm in an attempt to escape his determined hold. “Let go of me, please.”

  “No,” he answered softly.

  I swung my head around, sighting him within the circle of my hard glare. “Let go.”

  He released me.

  “What are you even doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be protecting our property or something? Isn’t that your job?”

  He stared at me for a moment–then all at once laughing.

  “What is it you find so funny?”

  “You. You’re completely unreadable. I honestly don’t know what to make of you. You confuse the hell out of me.”

  “I confuse you?”

  “I’ve never seen anyone run from everything the way you do. Like you’re flat out determined to be unhappy and miserable. You’re throwing everything away, Stevie, and with both hands.”

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I think maybe I do.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Okay, then why, if you came here to swim, aren’t you swimming?”

  “Because ...”

  “Because I’m here.”

  “No,” I insisted, refusing to admit he’d tread atop my sentiments so easily and with such accuracy. “I forgot my bathing suit.”

  He grinned, all too obviously enjoying my discomfort. “It’s dark, you don’t need one.”

  “Are you kidding?” I bristled at the suggestion, whether teasing or not. “You can’t honestly believe for one minute that I’d take my clothes off with you here.”

  He hadn’t stopped smiling. “The thought never entered my mind. I was just suggesting you act your age rather than like someone’s spinster aunt.” His voice softened then, and the grin all at once disappeared. “Why are you so closed-up inside? So angry?”

  “You make me that way.” The sound of my own voice startled me, thick with the taste of anger, but feeling something altogether different.

  “No, I don’t. You do it to yourself, Stephanie. I just haven’t figured out why.”

  “Happiness is overrated. It can hurt just as much as sorrow.”

  “Then you’ve never been the right kind of happy.”

  His face was inches from mine, unreadable in the darkness. “I think you fight the hardest against what you want the most.”

  “And I think I dislike you immensely,” I whispered hoarsely, struggling to find my voice.

  “No you don’t,” he said, pulling me against him, enfolding me in an unbreakable embrace.

  Helpless against the wall of his chest, my lungs struggling for breath, I threw my head back–catching the briefest glimmer of light reflected in his eyes as his face moved closer.

  His kiss was deep, absorbing, as though he meant to pull the cache of pain and uncertainty from my very soul. I strove to push him away, intent on denying him a response, but his hold refused to come undone.

  I wasn’t aware of when it was that I ceased to struggle against him. Maybe as his kisses softened, gently pulling at my lips–his fingers rubbing along my spine and tangling in my hair. I lifted trembling arms to circle his shoulders, holding on, right then forgetting whatever it was that continually caused me to oppose him.

  “Do you dislike me now, Stevie?”

  I felt his question warm against my face.

  “Do you?”

  “Maybe.”

  Tightly wound within a delicate web of euphoria, I offered no resistance when Ash lifted me in his arms and carried me the few short steps to the water's edge.

  “Alright then, now you can go for your swim.”

  “Wh–no! Don’t you dare!” I managed an ineffective threat just before my body hit the water–the deep coolness closing over me in a quivering veil.

  Breaking the surface like a popped cork, I pushed a tangled clump of wet hair from my face.

&nbs
p; “It’s all yours. I’ll get back to my job.”

  I opened my mouth ready to fling a scorching retort, but nothing, not a single word crept past my lips.

  Chapter Thirty

  All at once I was someone I vowed I would never allow myself to be–blind, lost, wandering like a hollow-bodied apparition through the veil of an impenetrable haze. Every passing moment mounting an internal struggle against my inability to fixate on whatever it was I wanted, expected, or ultimately needed; ineffectual attempts to ignore away the persistent pangs gnawing deep within the secret core of my being, falling away, as wasted as they were useless.

  I rededicated myself to avoiding Ash. Not especially difficult since there was only one hour–from the time I returned home from the newspaper until he left for the day at five o’clock–when I need linger purposefully inside the house, discreetly tucked away from sight.

  I insisted to myself that nothing had changed, even while knowing everything most definitely had. I could see it in my mother’s eyes following me perplexed, saying little but watching everything as my crushing misery tightened its hold, stretching out to claim another day–another week. There was no denying that my life had never felt more superficial than it did then, every fiber of truth lying unvoiced, unheard, and purposely unfelt, the clinging apparitions of the past at last dimmed enough in my memory to allow for something of the present, but nevertheless unable to take it.

  Tucked away in my office cubbyhole pouring over the details of other people’s problems for the newspaper column felt nearly riotous in its absurdity, considering the pen behind Aunt Phoebe’s wise council was wielded by a woman dangerously teetering on the very fragile edge of her own life. Nearly as ludicrous was the fact that the high tide of emotion crashing about inside like a sea storm had raged over into my writing; my personal agonies serving to heighten the effects of Aunt Phoebe’s wisdom and sensitivity, unexpectedly rewarding me with the highest accolades of my journalism career thus far.

  And in the midst of it all, another of the peculiar letters arrived, markedly similar to several others which had come addressed to Aunt Phoebe over the past few months. As it had been with those previous missives, the single folded page held only one incomprehensible line carelessly written in the same loopy handwriting: but accidental murder is no sin