by Cara Colter
He was as handsome as ever, seemingly self-assured as he moved up the aisle past desks that seemed impossibly small.
But when he sat down on one of the adult-size chairs she had placed in front of her desk for parents, she could see his face was thinner. He looked gaunt and haunted. The plains of his handsome face were whisker-roughened, and the light had gone out in the green of his eyes.
“Are you all right?” she asked, concerned.
“Let’s just keep it about Kyle,” he said with rebuff.
“You look like you’ve been ill,” she said quietly.
“Is it so hard for you to listen?” he asked.
“Is it so hard for you to realize you do not make the rules for the whole world?”
For a fraction of a second, a glimmer of a smile. Was he remembering, as she was, those long fall days of sparring with each other, how quickly the sparring could turn to laughter?
And then it was gone.
“Believe me, Beth, I know I don’t make the rules for the world. No one knows that better than me.”
Of course no one knew it better than him. He had buried his younger sister. And his parents. And his brothers-in-arms.
At least he’d called her Beth, leaving the door into his terrifyingly lonely world open just a crack?
That was the thing. She was not giving up on him.
“Kyle seems to be doing fairly well,” she said carefully.
“Yeah. He does his homework. His report card was good.”
“I wasn’t talking about his homework or his report card.”
“We’re muddling through, Beth.”
She nodded. “Peter wants him to come stay at their house for the Thanksgiving weekend. My Mom and Dad would like you both to come for Thanksgiving dinner.”
“I’ll ask Kyle if he wants to go. I’m sure he will. I think your mom and your nephew, Peter, are what’s pulling him through this. Would you thank them for me?”
“Meaning you won’t be coming for Thanksgiving dinner?”
He shook his head. “I might book a quick trip to Hawaii since Kyle will be gone.”
“For four days?” she asked, incredulous.
He shrugged, his facial expressions saying he clearly didn’t owe her any explanations.
“You’re grieving all of it, aren’t you Ben? Not just Carly? All the things that you told me you postponed.”
“Don’t,” he said dangerously.
“Don’t tell me don’t,” she snapped back at him. “Remember when you first came into this classroom? We were losing Kyle, and you wouldn’t let it happen. You went back for him. Who’s coming for you, Ben, if not me?”
“Don’t you have any pride?” he snapped. “Don’t waste yourself chasing after a man who doesn’t want what you have to give.”
The old Beth would have been felled by that arrow, but the new one stepped deftly aside, looked past the arrow to the archer.
Coming for Ben had nothing to do with her own pride, her self-esteem. In fact, it had nothing at all to do with her. She sensed his need and his desperation, and love as she now knew it demanded that she hang in there, hold on.
“No man left behind,” she said quietly, and she felt a warrior’s resolve as she said it. She was not leaving him in this prison he had made for himself. She wasn’t.
He stood up so fast the chair fell over. His fists were clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“I don’t want it,” he said. “Do you get it? I don’t want to care about anyone but myself.”
“Because it hurts?” she probed softly.
“No! Because I’m self-centered and I plan to stay that way. Don’t make me into something I’m not. You already invented a man once. Don’t be so stupid again.”
Again she watched the arrows flying at her, felt herself step out of their path, focused on him, the archer, the pain and defiance in his face.
“I’m coming for you,” she said. “And you can’t stop me.”
He stared at her.
“I don’t know if I’m coming back from Hawaii,” he said.
She was sure it was a bluff, but as she contemplated saying that it didn’t matter if he went to the ends of the earth, she was still coming for him, she heard the strangled gasp behind him.
When had Kyle come into the room? He stood, staring at his uncle, and then he turned on his heel and ran.
For a moment Ben’s shoulders sagged and he looked nothing but defeated. “That’s the kind of man I am,” he said harshly. “I always seem to hurt people. That’s why I don’t want you coming after me, Beth.”
And he turned and walked away.
The Top-Secret Diary of Kyle O. Anderson
My uncle Ben is going to Hawaii and staying there. I heard him tell Beth. I call her Beth when it’s personal and Miss Maple in school. It felt weird at first but it doesn’t now.
I knew something was going on with my uncle even before he said that about Hawaii. He’s so quiet now. Once I saw him looking through a big book, and when he saw me, he put it away.
But I waited until he went out and went and got it. It was a photo album full of pictures of him and my mom when they were little and my grandma and grandpa when they were alive. I would have liked to look at those pictures with him, and maybe hear some of the stories of the days they were taken, but there was something in his face when he looked at them that made me afraid to ask.
For a while I thought Beth and me and him were going to be a family, but now I see it is stupid to hope for things like that. Little-kid dreams.
For a while I could pretend her family was my family. Her mom likes me to call her Bubs, just like all the grandchildren, and I call her dad Grandpa Ike. Everybody does.
Bubs sent me a card after my mom died. It is the first time I ever got mail just for me, with my name on it. She wrote in it how sorry she was. I still have it, but I think I will rip it up and throw it away.
Because as much as I like them, they aren’t my family.
Uncle Ben is. I wonder if he is going to try and leave me with them. If he goes to Hawaii and stays there like I heard him tell Beth. I didn’t hear him saying nothing about me going with him.
You know what? He doesn’t want to care about anybody or anything.
Probably including me. So I don’t want to care about anybody or anything, either. I wonder how old you have to be to join the marines? Probably not eleven.
But maybe I could join the circus.
I always was scared he wouldn’t keep me. Now I know he’s not going to. But I don’t feel as scared as I thought I would. I feel mad.
I’m going to take Kermit and find a new place to live. I heard Australia is nice at this time of year. I bet I could stow away on a boat. Or work off my passage on a steamer.
I’m not waiting to get a postcard from Hawaii, that says, “Nice knowing you kid, have a nice life.”
“Kyle?”
The house had that empty feel of when Kyle wasn’t in it. Ben wondered if he had forgotten something Kyle had to do after school. Or maybe he was going to a friend’s house and had forgotten to say so.
For some reason he went into Kyle’s room. And frowned. The closet door was open and most of the clothes were gone. The dresser drawer also hung open, but there was nothing in it.
He looked at the fish tank where Kermit lived.
No frog.
And then he saw a note on Kyle’s desk.
“Gone to Australia,” it said. “Have fun in Hawaii. Bye.” It was signed Kyle O. Anderson. The O stood for Oliver. He had been named by an orphan after an orphan. And now he was an orphan, feeling terribly alone in the world, Ben failing him at every turn.
Somehow in those words were all the pain and disappointment he had caused his nephew.
He felt the weight of his total failure. Well, what eleven-year-old didn’t run away from home? When Kyle came back, hungry and tired and cold, he would tell him he hadn’t really meant it about staying in Hawaii.
But he cou
ldn’t tell him the whole truth. That he’d said that just to back off Beth Maple. He didn’t want her coming into the darkness to find him, even as a part of him that was weak wondered what her light could do to the darkness.
He had not been able to prepare himself for how hard it had been to see her again, her love for him, so undeserved, shining out of her eyes.
Ben shook away the compellingness of that vision and went to leave Kyle’s room. But something caught his eye. Underneath the shelf that housed the empty Kermit quarters, there was a book lying on the floor.
He stooped and picked it up. It was a cheap hardbound diary with a lock on it. But it wasn’t locked. In fact, it looked like it might have fallen, unnoticed, to this place.
Ben opened it to the first page, uncomfortably aware of what a breach of trust it was to read a diary. On the other hand, it might help him find Kyle.
“The Top-Secret Diary of Kyle O. Anderson,” he read out loud, and felt a hint of a smile. That was Kyle. Secretive. The secrecy hiding his deep sensitivity.
Ben wasn’t good with sensitivity. Another reason to let Beth go. And what about Kyle? Did he deserve something better than what his uncle could give him?
Though Ben could not even imagine giving up Kyle, not for anything. Though it was evident, after reading a few pages of that diary, that he had never managed to impress that message on his nephew.
How had he failed to make it clear to Kyle, right from the beginning, that this would be his home now? That no matter what happened, he wasn’t sending him away or giving him up?
Ben had assumed Kyle knew. That stupid cowboy sheets and the surrender of his television and stereo said it all. He’d assumed. Just the way he’d assumed his sister knew he loved her. Had he ever spoken those words to his nephew? No. Here his nephew had been going to bed so scared he would not have a place to belong that his stomach hurt, and Ben had done nothing to reassure him.
No, taken away the one thing that reassured him. The growing feeling of family that they had been enjoying with Beth.
“You know what?” Ben said out loud to himself. “You have a gift for letting people down.”
But the more urgent problem was where had Kyle gone? Had he cooled off before he decided to go looking for Australia? He was smarter than most eleven-year-olds, did he know getting to Australia wasn’t going to be that easy?
Ben longed for Beth. For someone to turn to. But he decided to go it alone first.
Hours later, having combed every inch of Cranberry Corner, after having talked to all the bus drivers, and gone by the train station, and hiked around Migg’s Pond in the dark, there was no Kyle and no sign of Kyle.
What now? Did he call the police?
He had to talk to her. Not because she would know where Kyle was, though she might have some good ideas.
He had to talk to her because she was the one. The one who had crept by his defenses to his heart.
The one he needed to turn to with his strength failing him, when all his strength could not find that boy.
He had fallen in love with Beth Maple.
With any luck she never had to know.
Her voice was sleepy on the other end of the phone, and it warmed some part in him that was too cold. That was so damned cold.
“Beth.” He said her name and he heard the way he said it. Like a benediction.
“Ben.” She said his name, and he heard the way she said it, with no defenses, open to him, unafraid of the arrows.
“I’m sorry to wake you.” He was aware of just how much he was sorry for.
“It’s okay. What’s wrong? Is it two in the morning?”
As soon as he heard her voice, everything that was muddled in him became clear. He knew where Kyle was. He knew Kyle, confused and feeling abandoned and unloved would return there.
To that place that love had grown and flourished. To a place where there had been magic in the air.
“Can you see the tree house from your bedroom window?”
“Yes.”
“Would you go look at it?”
“Why?” she breathed.
Was she hoping he was inviting her, back to that magic time when they had built something together, something more than wood and concrete?
He could not let her believe that. “Kyle’s missing. I think he may be there.”
He could hear her moving, wondered what she was wearing, wondered what kind of man wondered something like that at a time like this.
A man unworthy, obviously.
“It’s too dark,” she whispered. “Do you want me to turn on the porch light?”
“No. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
He parked his truck a block away so as not to spook Kyle. He walked through the darkness of inky night feeling the magic of the night, remembering. Surrendering.
She was in the yard, waiting for him, and they went up the stairs to the tree house together.
Kyle had heard them coming, and was squished back in a corner, no place to escape. “Leave me alone,” he said.
Ben could clearly see that Kyle had not been prepared for the coldness of the night. His nephew was shaking.
“I’m not leaving you alone,” Ben said. “Not ever.”
“Yeah, sure.” His sneer was forced, a child’s fear right underneath it. “What about when you go to Hawaii?”
“If I went to Hawaii, permanently, you would be coming with me. You are my family.”
Something relaxed fractionally in Kyle’s face. “I don’t want to go to Hawaii. I have friends here.”
Ben contemplated that. Friends here. How a few months had changed things. And unlike him, Kyle was not damaged enough by life, even though he had every right to be, that he would run away from the gift of friendship instead of toward it.
“Okay,” Ben said quietly.
“So, you’re not going to Hawaii?”
“I’m not leaving you.” Say it. Tell him you love him. But he couldn’t. Were there ever words that had been spoken that were more misused than those ones? Used to manipulate? Used too casually?
Ben’s mother blowing him a kiss, mouthing the words. He could not speak them, superstitious about their use.
“Come on,” Beth said. “Let’s go inside. I’m freezing. I need some hot chocolate.” She held out an arm, and Kyle crept under it, a baby duck under her wing. He ignored Ben.
It was evident at her kitchen table that Kyle was done. His head nodded over the hot drink, his eyes kept closing, then jerking back open. But then they closed, and his head came to rest on the table, a boy utterly and completely exhausted.
“Don’t wake him. Put him in the guest room,” Beth said, and Ben went over and picked up his nephew.
Who was eleven years old but who felt as frail as a baby in his arms. He took him down the hall the Beth’s guest room, she drew back sheets, pristine white, and he hesitated, but she was not worried about her sheets.
Always the children came first for her. Once, he had been able to picture her vividly in a wedding gown.
Now, just as vividly, he could see her like this, leaning over their children, tucking them in.
He rubbed his eyes, trying to clear the vision and the weariness that allowed such vulnerable thoughts.
“I should go,” he said.
“No. We need to talk.”
“Ah, the words every man dreads hearing.”But somehow he didn’t dread them. He needed to clear the air with her, once and for all.
“Please don’t look at me like that,” he said.
“Like?”
“Like you see a knight in shining armor, instead of a man of flesh and blood and bone. I am the furthest thing from that. Look at me tonight.”
“What about you tonight? Your nephew was missing and you would not rest until you found him. You allowed your heart to tell you where he was.”
He snorted at that. “My heart? Don’t kid yourself.”
“You’re the one kidding yourself. I’ve always seen your heart. That
’s what I fell in love with from the very beginning.”
“Don’t go there.”
“I don’t have any choice. I feel what I feel.”
“Beth,” it was a cry of pure anguish, but he could not stop the words from coming. “I will let you down, just like I let down my sister. Just like I let down Kyle tonight. All she ever wanted was for me to tell her I loved her. That’s all Kyle needed to hear tonight. I can’t say those words. I choke on them.”
“Say those words?” she said, astounded, and then she laughed softly. “Oh, you foolish, foolish man. Why would you ever have to? I see the love in the way you are with Kyle. Your sister had to be able to see that. I saw it the whole time you were building the tree house. Words only represent the thing. They aren’t the thing. Oh, Ben, I have always seen the love pouring out of you. Always.”
And then she came to him, something fierce in her face. She took his cheeks between her hands, looked at him hard, sighed with satisfaction and welcome.
“I have always seen you,” she said. “And I always will.”
And then she kissed him.
And passion did not put a barrier up, because there was too much in place already for it to blur what was real.
Her passion for him took the last barrier down. It told him that she had come back for him. She had not given up until he had found his way home. To her.
The wall around his heart came down like an earthen dam after forty days and forty nights of rain. It collapsed and everything he had been holding back rushed out.
The murky, muddy water of grief, held back, churned out.
And then right behind that the cool, clean water of love. Pure love flowed out of him. And finally, finally, he said the words.
And understood that they represented not a curse but a blessing. That they represented not a prison but freedom.
The Top-Secret Diary of Kyle O. Anderson
I’m still not sure about that heaven stuff, but sometimes lately I feel my mom around me more strongly than I did when she was alive. I guess it’s because I’m growing up myself that I can see all the stuff that happened to her when she was just a kid changed her. It’s like a blanket got thrown over who she really was. But now the blanket is gone, and I can feel her around me, who she always should have been. I feel her when I least expect it. Like this morning we had frost, and even the weeds were covered in silver and dripped diamond droplets, like chandeliers in a mansion, and I felt her right then, something around me big and pure and sweet.