Secret of Lies

by Barbara Forte Abate

I know you’ll want to look for me but there is really no point. This is the end of it and I am already gone.

  I read it through again, slowly, carefully, and nowhere did she say how sorry she was for anything she’d done.

  I was still there in the chair when Ash came in from the field. Bending to kiss the top of my head, then kneeling down beside me once he’d read whatever expression was there on my face.

  “Stevie? What happened? What’s wrong?”

  I handed him the letter and waited while he read.

  “So this is it. It’s over,” he said, once he’d finished; folded the paper and laid it on the table with the finality of a consummated epilogue.

  “Yes,” I nodded; wanting to believe it was, even while knowing that it couldn’t be. Not yet. Not so simply. It wasn’t enough to accept that she was forever gone from my life; her words leaving me with little doubt that I would not see or hear from her again. Because it didn’t feel finished. Not when her words had so effectively breathed every ugly and terrible scene back to life like a resurrected demon.

  The sky that day was so blue–a perfect flawless stretch devoid of even a single passing cloud to mar its clarity. The sweet scent of freshly laundered sheets hung in the air; a gentle breeze billowing the broad expanse of cloth strung out on the clothesline into great convex sails. And when I gazed out toward the cornfield, my eyes caught an occasional glimpse of Ash moving in and out of view, at that distance recognizable only by the bright checks of his familiar red and white shirt; an idyllic scene altogether uncomplicated and honest in its simplicity. Except that now, what once seemed perfect now felt impossible–the happiness I’d found anything but durable. Maybe not even real. Smyrna had taken too much and left too many vacancies.

  I watched Ash until he’d once again slipped out of sight. And I felt the world shifting ever so slightly under my feet.

  “How about seeing a movie tonight?” Ash said, as we sat together on the porch watching the pink reflected light of the setting sun.

  “Oh ... I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I thought you were going to work on my car.”

  “It can wait–unless you’re planning to go somewhere. Besides, I have the gut feeling the only thing that’ll help that car now would be a merciful bullet through its heart.”

  “Ash!” I felt my eyes widen in terror. “Don’t even joke.”

  “Unfortunately, I wasn’t.” He strode to where I sat rocking idly in the swing, reaching out a hand to draw me to my feet. “Come on, let’s go. It’s cooling off really nice tonight. We can go to the drive-in.”

  “What’s playing?”

  “I have no idea,” he grinned. “But it doesn’t really matter, does it? We have to make up for all the dates we didn’t go on before we were married.”

  “Alright.” I found myself smiling over his insistence. “But tomorrow you fix my car.”

  “Sweetheart,” he teased, kissing me solidly on the mouth. “After an evening out with me you’ll forget you even own a car.”

  “I don’t doubt it, Mr Waterman,” I laughed, kissing him back.

  Smyrna was everywhere, the silent battle she’d waged with her letters growing constant despite their having ceased, her uncoiled deceit pitting me against everything contained within the walls surrounding my world–even myself, especially myself–as I struggled to forget all she’d revealed. Her loopy scrawl continued to scribble out angry missives inside my head, reminding me of what I’d done. Reminding me of what I’d failed to do. Her crazy drunken visage laughing madly at my insistence that my life with Ash was as honest as it was true–telling me I was a fool. Telling me it was all part of the deception I’d piled up around me–an all too fragile verity thinly veiled behind a tissue paper curtain.

  I’d let it happen. I’d seen things, heard things, but done nothing. Shouldn’t I have been the one to save my sister, instead of leading her to the edge with my silence? Lifting my hands and shoving her over the edge when I just as easily might’ve grasped her back instead.

  I didn’t give notice when I quit my job at the newspaper, merely left a message that I wouldn’t be back. I simply couldn’t bear to read anyone’s letters anymore.

  As Ash had predicted, my father’s aged car was not to be resurrected.

  “What do you think about getting a truck instead of another car?” he asked shortly after the deceased vehicle had been sold to a junk car dealer. “We’d save plenty by not having to hire someone to haul things back and forth for us.”

  I nodded, glancing up briefly from the magazine open in my lap. “I guess that makes sense,” I said, waiting a moment, then, “Ash, I want us to leave here.”

  I watched the side of his face, waiting for his reply. Finally, he spoke, and I sensed the careful choosing of his words. “Of course this place belongs to you, Stevie, so it’s your decision.”

  “No, it’s as much yours as it is mine.”

  “Okay, then if you’re asking what I think I have to say it’s unwise to sell this farm. At least not yet. The market’s not good and you’d lose too much if you sold now.”

  But I’ll lose much more if I stay. I’d intended to handle my suggestion with careful diplomacy, but I’d been holding it too long, the weight of it growing like a curse every day that I carried it around waiting to be said.

  “We should hold off until we’ve had a chance to build up our finances a little more and the real estate market starts to stabilize.”

  “But I just … I really need to get away from here. This place is–”

  “I know. I feel it too sometimes. I know you’ve gone through a lot lately, but the timing is important. How about if we go somewhere this fall once the harvest is over?”

  I nodded, trying a smile. He couldn’t see. He didn’t understand. And it was just too hard to keep trying to explain. He didn’t know how to make me stop running from myself anymore then I did.

  It was little more than a week later, a used Ford pick-up now parked in the driveway, when Ash handed me the keys to his car. “For your driving convenience, my lovely bride,” he smiled. “An old, but reliable vehicle.”

  I mirrored his smile with my own, then quickly cutting away my gaze in an effort to screen the shameful guilt swelling up behind my eyes. Knowing as I did then that only a handful of days were yet to pass before I would need to go.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  The sky is grey now–smoky black clouds swirled together. Check out time is at noon. An hour away. Where do I go from here? Any sense of purpose that I might’ve had earlier has long since deserted. I feel hollow. Directionless. And as I toss my belongings back into the suitcase, I begin to cry.

  I walk across the motel parking lot, squinting my eyes against the grit blowing toward me on the wind. The storm has knocked over garbage cans and brought down tree limbs. I say a brief prayer that the car will start.

  The streets are nearly vacant as the car slowly crawls along the main street of the nameless little town. At the drugstore on the corner I buy an outdated road map and a can of Dr. Pepper. And it’s not until I return to the car that I remember I’ve never liked Dr. Pepper. It is Ash’s favorite.

  With the map spread out across the seat, I inexplicably find myself feeling somewhat centered and in control again. My finger traces the necessary route as I roughly calculate the miles in my head, and I determine that if I don’t miss-navigate it will take two days to reach Long Island–the rocky strip of land where all the arteries intersecting my life have come together and subsequently ended.

  The smell of salt douses my senses long before I see the wildly breaking sea. I am thankful that the narrow roads are deserted, the summer people having already packed-up and gone for the season.

  It is only after I’ve made several wrong turns and numerous referrals to the road map that I at last find it. The narrow stretch of deep-cratered driveway leading to Aunt Smyrna’s house is overgrown with a dense tangle of briars and long neglected shrubs and I edge the car forward cautiously, strai
ning my eyes for the first glimpse of what was once her house.

  But there is nothing there–only a hole, once a foundation–that, too, consumed by a thick carpet of vegetation. My heart ceases its beating. The monstrous place is gone, and yet I can still feel its presence.

  Gulls wail, wings flapping heavily as they pass overhead. Descending the slope to the beach, I have the curious sensation I am no longer present under my skin–I have simply ceased to exist.

  Heat presses down from a faraway sun positioned directly overhead, yet despite its brilliance, there is a feeling of coldness lying over everything here. I try to picture myself as I’d once been–pulling hard on my memories of that long ago season–but I cannot see anything of the girl I was. She has drifted far enough from view that she has vanished completely.

  Why have I come here? What is it I’ve expected to find? Two playful young girls frolicking on the sand with a shy young man? My aunt and uncle sipping cocktails on the porch in a portrait resurrected from happier times?

  Am I truly surprised to find that there is nothing here? Nothing other than the black piles of decaying seaweed scattered along the shore–regurgitation from the sea, as Eleanor used to call it. All that remains is a profound sense of emptiness, and with it, the understanding I no longer belong to this place which only serves to remind me of everything that is gone.

  And though I strive to hate Smyrna for keeping my own misdirected sense of culpability so vividly and painfully alive, in the end I cannot. Her deeds feeling more akin to the reckless mistakes of a damaged mind than they do the deliberations of reason.

  Standing here now, I can see the faded fibers and vacant core of my past, and finally, after a span of forever, I understand that I no longer need carry it.

  Because somewhere along the way I’ve let Eleanor go–followed the natural process and let her slip into the precious safety of memory. She is still with me, as she will always be, but soft and gently faded now, like an old photograph that’s been closed in a book–recognizable when rediscovered, but distinctly changed from the crisp and shiny image it had originally been. A cherished remembrance that belongs to another time and place.

  And while it was my own sense of blame that held Eleanor so closely to me then, it is guilt that keeps her with me now. Guilt that my own life carries on, while hers is finished. Awful, purposeless guilt insisting I could have stopped it all from happening–protected my family from themselves–when in truth I never possessed such powers at all.

  And for the first time since the unfolding of that terrible night, I question the possibility that I have burdened my soul unjustly. So long punishing myself for surviving, when I might have offered myself forgiveness instead. All along I have seen only the missing light, rather than that which remains.

  The wind blowing in off the water grows stronger as dusk lingers. I wrap my arms across my chest and grasp my shoulders with stiffening fingers, yet it is a wholly ineffectual barrier for fending off the icy chill that has so thoroughly penetrated to my insides.

  Once again, the car attempts a sputtering cough to life; several moments before finally succeeding in cranking over into a rough idle. The dampness here seems to have affected the engine and it is with the greatest relief that I eventually reach the highway. In another half-hour the sun will disappear behind the trees and the night descend.

  My mind feels curiously empty–a distinct void where essential mechanics have ceased to function. No feelings or sensations of any kind circulating in my thoughts other than a dull sense of regret that I am even here at all.

  I know the full flood of anguish will come soon enough, a smothering tide bearing the terrible weight of truth that I have surrendered Ash in exchange for this awful vacuity. Traded away my life, my happiness, for an endless expanse of nothingness.

  And it is at this moment that Ash’s car sputters and dies for the last time.

  It will not start. I have managed to coast to the shoulder of the highway and I wait before turning the key for the umpteenth time. It is nearly dark when I get out and slam the door behind me.

  “Stupid idiot! DAMNED STUPID IDIOT. THIS IS JUST PERFECT. SO DAMNED PERFECT,” I shout, kicking at the gravel and punching the car hard enough to stun my knuckles.

  “WHY? WHY HAVE I DONE THIS?” My voice throws the question hard against the twilight and it feels unexpectedly gratifying. As though I have purged my soul of a dozen demons with a single mouthful of words.

  “YOU STUPID FOOL–CHASING AFTER THINGS THAT NO LONGER EXIST. STUPID IDIOT FOOL.”

  A car approaches, slowing as it draws near. Yet, enraptured as I am in my cleansing tirade I don’t make note of it until it speeds away, taillights fleeing into the distance. The occupants apparently having concluded it is not merely a broken down vehicle they’ve happened upon, but rather a dangerously demented lunatic.

  Gravel bites painfully into my skin as I fall to my knees, a surge of laughter riding out on cresting waves coming one after another. I hold tightly to my sides as the hilarity rolls forth, great peals of mirth eventually flowing away into an ocean of tears.

  Two days and several gratuitous rides later, I walk along the hard packed earth of the driveway leading to the house, feeling myself grow cold with panicked fear as each step marks the dust, bringing me that much closer to seeing Ash.

  In the languishing twilight, the farmhouse is dark, the air curiously thick and oppressive around me. For what seems like decades I stand there rooted to the earth, grappling for the fortitude to face him.

  His appearance is sudden. A flesh and blood phantom. The expression on his face is one I have never seen before, at once marking him a stranger–distant, indecipherable. He stands on the porch not moving. Watching me.

  My throat clenches tight around my tongue. And although I will myself to speak, there are no words strong enough to force their way to the surface.

  His voice slashes sharply across the silence stretched out between us in a fathomless sea. “What an unexpected surprise this is. Is it possible you’ve forgotten something?”

  There is a bitterness in his eyes so deep I feel its penetration to my core. The coldness of it is staggering. Yet what else could I have expected?

  “No … I ...” I start to weep quietly–the only emotion operable against his open hostility.

  He merely stares at me unmoved then takes a single step forward. “I can be out of here tomorrow. And I suggest you hire someone to finish the harvest unless you intend to let the crop rot in the field.”

  He turns his back on me like an insult and heads toward the house.

  “Ash,” I call after him, knowing I must say something now, because there may be no other chance. “I made a mistake.”

  “So did I.” His voice is barely audible in its intensity and the hand he places on the doorknob is quivering slightly.

  “You don’t understand–”

  “You’re right, Stephanie, I don’t. Couldn’t you’ve just told me you wanted out? Didn’t I deserve something more than a withdrawal slip from the bank and a three sentence memo left on the kitchen table?” His hand still clutches the doorknob. “Do you hate me so much you couldn’t just tell me?”

  “I don’t hate you. I never hated you.” I want so much to reach out and touch him, to explain that I’d done it in that cold and thoughtless manner because as hard as I’d looked inside myself I couldn’t find any other way that would allow me to go–anything else I might’ve done. “This wasn’t about you, Ash … it was about me.”

  “This wasn’t about me?” he repeats, his tone incredulous as he turns back, crushing me beneath his unblinking stare. “You really believe that, don’t you? Of course, it’s about you. Hasn’t everything always been about you?”

  “That’s not what I–”

  “Do you know what you made me feel like?” His eyes are black, fathomless. “Like nothing. Like I don’t even exist.”

  The screen door smacks shut with harsh finality as he dissolves into the house.


  Chapter Thirty-seven

  For a long time I sit on the porch staring into the blank wall of night, thinking of everything I have lost, and for what? An empty beach and a faded album of long finished memories. Why have I been so insistent on carrying a full measure of guilt for crimes that are not wholly mine? Why has it taken me so long to understand–or at the very least, to accept?

  My skin prickles expectantly at the back of my neck as I listen for sounds of Ash stirring within his fortress inside the house. But there is nothing beyond the weight of silence. Even my breathing seems to have ceased, nothing discernible beyond the steadily chirping symphony of night creatures.

  And whether due to my numb state of exhaustion or the dull sense of stunned resignation that our life together will not be easily or certainly restored, I open the door and step inside.

  The rooms within are cloaked in darkness and I wonder if Ash has gone to bed with the hope daylight will find me vanished like a bad dream. But, no, I see him there sitting in my father’s chair beside the window as I pass into the living room. He is shrouded almost completely by the cover of dusk, his countenance just briefly touched by the last of evenings muted light as it slips through the dusty glass pane.

  His eyes are looking not at me, but to some place beyond. And for several long moments I stand watching his face–searching for some indication of what he is right now thinking, what he is feeling, some sign telling me in which direction to proceed.

  “I don’t know how to explain any of this …” I begin, uncertain how to go about trying to rationalize things I am only just beginning to understand myself. “But you have to believe I never meant to hurt you, Ash. When I said this wasn’t about you, I meant it wasn’t because of you.”

  He does not respond and my words creep forward.

  “I just couldn’t fit things together–everything that happened that summer–and finding out that all this time I’ve been protecting a lie. It felt like I was going crazy inside … and … I didn’t know what to do.”