Annabelle stood on the porch and dropped her forehead onto the closed screen door. “Oh, Knox. No, please, no.” She wasn’t sure what she was begging for, but she understood, the same way she had understood she was pregnant before the test showed positive, that something new had just been born with this discovery brought to her on a quiet afternoon.
She stepped back, knocked her hip against the Emily Post book, lifted it and tossed it onto the chair. What was the proper etiquette here? What would Emily Post say now? Maybe in that book of perfect behavior, there were answers to cheating husbands, but what did one do when the culprits were found together long after the fact—dead and gone? Irrational laughter at the situation—that she made a profession of giving advice and now had none for herself—began low in her belly and died before it reached her mouth. She dropped into the chair.
Nothing, at that moment and for a long time afterward, seemed as important as finding out who this woman was and why she was with Knox Murphy when he died.
TWO
ANNABELLE MURPHY
Annabelle paced the porch. A list, she needed to make a list of the things to do next, and then next, and then next. If she was going to keep this life intact, keep her world from spinning completely and utterly out of orbit, she needed to pull her mind together. There were so many people to tell about the discovery of the plane and . . . the woman. The need for action in the face of numbing grief was a nightmare returned. She’d once made numerous calls about Knox and his death: to her mother, his parents in Florida, Aunt Barbara, the cousins . . . and now she would have to do it again. Thank God her father, who had passed away years ago, had never had to hear about Knox’s death.
The overwhelming need to hide returned to Annabelle as it had two years ago. Back then, she’d drawn on the strength of her family, on her love for Knox and his for her. What did she have to draw on now?
Names came to mind, one by one.
Keeley.
She was inside doing a school science project with Laura—Annabelle would have to wait until Laura left to talk to Keeley.
Jake.
Annabelle grabbed her cell phone from the side table, and punched in her son’s phone number. The double beep let her know he was on the other line.
Shawn.
He answered on the first ring. “Hey, Belle.”
She didn’t answer, coughed on a suppressed sob.
“You all right?” His voice came quickly over the line.
“No,” she said.
“You sick?” he asked.
“No . . .”
“I’ll be there in a minute. . . .”
“No, that’s not why I called. . . .”
He’d already hung up. Shawn’s office was around the corner, and she knew he’d be on her doorstep, as he’d been for every crisis since Knox had died, in less than ten minutes. She dropped into a chair and waited.
His car pulled up in front of the house. Shawn took the porch stairs two at a time and sat down next to Annabelle. He reached over, tucked her hair behind her ear, a movement of such familiarity and kindness that tears rose in her eyes. He’d known her since she was four years old. They had fought over toys in the sandbox, then over whose turn it was to drive, then over boys he thought were wrong for her.
“What is it, Belle?”
“It’s Knox,” she mumbled, and then looked at him. “If there was ever anytime in my life when I’d needed you to tell me the truth, it would be right now.”
“I’ve never lied to you, Belle.”
“Just be completely honest,” she said.
“Damn, what is it?”
“Was Knox cheating on me?” She leaned back so she could see his face.
He furrowed his brow. “Hell, no. What are you talking about? What’s gotten into your head?”
Annabelle dropped her face into her hands. “They found him, Shawn. They found his plane.”
“Oh, Belle. Oh . . .”
“I’m not done,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
She peeked at him through her fingers. “He was with a woman.”
He lifted her chin, stared at her, put his hands on either side of her cheeks. “No, he was going hunting alone.”
Annabelle shook her head to free his hands. “No, Wade came today—they found his plane and there was a woman on it. They don’t know who she was, and both bodies were burned so badly they can’t identify anything at all.”
“Who found the plane?”
“Some hiking expedition got lost in a freak snowstorm. Isn’t that kind of . . . weird? Someone else had to get lost for him to be found?”
Shawn nodded. “It does sound ironic.”
“Well, whatever it is, they found him, his plane, all burned. And a woman.”
“They’re sure?”
“Shawn . . . I think they’d be sure of another body.”
“I can’t imagine who it could possibly be.”
Annabelle leaned closer to see his face, and she glimpsed the same confusion and hurt she herself felt.
“I believe you,” she said. “But that leaves me with questions. Who the hell was she? Why was she there?”
“For now . . . just for now, let’s not say anything. Let’s try and figure this out.”
“But I have to ask our friends. I just do. What if one of them knows?”
“If you don’t know, and I don’t know—they definitely don’t.”
“Shawn, on any other day, at any other time, I would agree with you. But when Wade Gunther walked up on my porch this afternoon and informed me that my husband was found dead with another woman—all of my assumptions were shattered. All of them. Someone knows who she was. And it’s not me. And it’s not you. Who says it’s not one of them?”
“You say ‘one of them’ like they’re strangers. We’ve known those people our entire lives. They wouldn’t, they couldn’t hide something like this.”
“I have no idea what anyone is capable of anymore.”
“We never do,” he said, sat back in his chair.
Keeley opened the front door, poked her head out. “I thought I heard your voice,” she said to Shawn. She stood in the doorway and leaned against the frame. Her dark curls fell past her shoulders in a poignant reminder of the way her dad’s dark hair had fallen across his forehead. Annabelle’s stomach rolled, threatened to rise, then settled again, but left her with numb hands, tingling arms.
“Hey, Keeley,” Shawn said as he stood and hugged her.
Annabelle wiped at her face as if to remove remnants of emotion her daughter might see and take into herself. Keeley stood in front of Annabelle and Shawn. “I called Jake to make sure he was okay. . . . I saw Sheriff Gunther here and I thought maybe something was wrong . . . with Jake,” she said.
Annabelle looked up at her daughter. “Oh, that was you on the other line. . . .”
“What?” Keeley’s eyebrows dropped into a V of confusion.
“I tried to call him . . . ,” Annabelle said. She stood and grabbed her cell phone, touched Shawn’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to make you leave work. I’ll call you later. . . .”
He threw his keys in the air, and Keeley stuck her palm above his and grabbed them. Her laughter momentarily lifted Annabelle’s heart.
Keeley dangled the keys from her fingers. “I now have the convertible’s keys.”
Shawn laughed. “Still not letting you drive it, Keeley. You’ve got six more months to prove you can drive that Volvo without a single dent, a single ticket. . . . Then you’ll get your chance.”
“Come on, Mr. Shawn. One time?”
“Nope.” He tousled her hair. “What kind of friend would I be if I went back on my word?” Shawn glanced at Annabelle. “Call me later. . . .”
Annabelle nodded, touched Keeley’s arm. “Where’s Laura? Are y’all done with your science project?”
“She left about a half hour ago—when you were talking to Sheriff Gunther.”
Shawn had reached his ca
r; Annabelle waved goodbye and then turned to her daughter. “Sit down, Keeley.”
They both sat down. “Sheriff Gunther was here to tell me some news. They’ve found Dad’s plane.”
“They found Dad?”
“They found his body, Keeley.”
Keeley’s eyes filled immediately; tears overflowed onto her cheeks. Annabelle saw that this news killed any nearly impossible wish in Keeley that her dad was still alive. “So, he’s really dead.” Keeley wiped furiously at the tears. “Dead.”
“Oh, Keeley.” Annabelle held out her arms. “There’s more. I don’t want you to hear it on the news, or from other people, but there was another person on the plane with Dad.”
Keeley threw her hands in front of herself like a shield. “Who was it?”
Annabelle cringed, closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair as the world seemed to rotate in the opposite direction. She dully thought that it was weird to finally feel the movements of the earth, which she had always taken for granted.
Keeley’s words came sharp and clear through the dizziness. “Who was with him?” she asked again.
Annabelle didn’t want to open her eyes—to this question, to more grief—yet she did open them because this was her daughter, whom she loved.
“You don’t know, do you?” Keeley said.
The fierce words sliced through Annabelle’s pain and disorientation. She dropped her hands on Keeley’s shoulders. “No, I don’t know who was with him.”
Keeley collapsed into her mother’s arms, and together they sat silent and still, both afraid to enter this new world in which Keeley’s father and Annabelle’s husband might not have been the man they thought he was.
“Oh, Keeley, I love you. I’m so sorry we have to go through this . . . ,” Annabelle whispered.
Keeley released her mother, sat back and lifted her chin. “Do we have to have another funeral?”
“God, no.” Annabelle wouldn’t let go of Keeley’s hand. She gripped it tighter.
“Okay . . . I can’t talk about this with you. . . .” Keeley pried her hand free. She bit her lower lip, stood, then turned and entered the house without another word.
Annabelle stared at the closed door. Where had her sweet little girl gone? The one who made signs that said, You’re the best mom ever and slipped them under the bedroom door. The girl who called from a sleepover at a friend’s house and asked to come home because she missed her mom too much.
That Keeley seemed to have died along with Knox, and for one moment that loss seemed more monstrous than all the others combined. A dull fatigue that Annabelle recognized as her response to grief overcame her—a sadness that melded into confusion and anger in a mangled mess that would follow her all day and into the night. She didn’t want to talk to a single person—she ached for rest. Yet she had so many phone calls to make, so much to do.
The sun burst from behind a cloud, shone directly on Annabelle’s face. She lifted a hand, shielded her eyes and felt as though someone had just thrown a thousand-pound weight over her body. Questions began to take shape and hammer her with each unknown. Why would he have lied about going hunting? Had he always lied about where he was going? What about those deer heads he brought home—had he bought them off some real hunters? She strode across the porch, back and forth, as though she were trying to take bites out of it with her footsteps. Had he taken her every time? Had she always been on these trips, or had he just met her? Why would he have done that?
Her cell phone rang; she jumped, answered it when she saw Jake’s number flash on the screen. “Hey, buddy,” she said, forcing normalcy into her shaking voice.
“You okay, Mom?”
“Why?” Annabelle asked, rubbed her forehead.
“Keeley just called. . . . She told me, Mom. She told me about Dad and the plane and the woman inside.”
“Yes,” Annabelle said to her son with a swift and desperate need to see his face. “I tried to call you a minute ago. . . .”
“How did they find him?”
“A hiking expedition,” she said.
“Oh . . .”
Annabelle sat in silence with her son on the line and marveled how Jake or Knox could leave—to college or death—but her love for them never left; it remained planted in her heart.
“Mom?”
“I’m here,” she said. “I’m fine. It’s crazy for him—them—to be found like this . . . but I’m fine.”
“This doesn’t change anything, Mom.”
Annabelle felt the tears come now. Who was Jake kidding? Knox was the cornerstone upon which all else in her life had been built. Didn’t Jake see that once that stone was removed, everything else cracked and shifted? Of course this woman’s presence on the plane changed everything.
If Annabelle was wrong about Knox and who he was, his integrity and love, then what else was she wrong about? If her assumptions about his commitment, his ethics and where his heart had lain were wrong, maybe the sun did rotate around the earth; maybe the earth was flat and one could fall off the horizon.
Who this woman was mattered as much as anything had ever mattered. Her presence shattered Annabelle’s faith in a life and love already lived.
She took a deep breath—she would not pass her darkness onto the light and beauty that was her son.
“Jake, I’m sorry you heard it from Keeley before me. As soon as I know more, I’ll call you.”
“Can you tell me the details?”
Annabelle rattled off all she could remember of what Wade Gunther had told her.
“Do you need me to come home?”
Annabelle wanted to scream yes, tell her son to come permeate the house with the assurance of their beautiful life, but she knew she could not ask that of him. It was she who needed to replace the doubt inside her children with faith and love.
“Jake, please don’t leave school. As soon as I know more, I’ll call. I love you.”
“You, too, Mom. I love you, too.”
Annabelle hung up feeling as if her body had been emptied out, hollowed, all that remained of her faith scooped out and handed to her son.
The Marsh Cove Gazette offices offered a chaos Annabelle loved. The bustle, the deadlines, the hollering and the ringing phones allowed little time for contemplation and grief. She entered the back room, knocked on Mrs. Thurgood’s office door.
“Come in.” Her voice was rough from the cigarettes she pretended to have quit at the start of each new year.
“Hello, ma’am.” Annabelle entered her office, dropped papers on the desk. “Here is this week’s advice column.”
Mrs. Thurgood’s gray hair stuck out in odd directions, as though she’d come to work on a boat instead of in the black Cadillac she drove all over town. “All you had to do was put it in the in-box or e-mail it. Why are you bothering me?”
Annabelle smiled at Mrs. Thurgood. “There’s a news story coming in . . . and I wanted to ask you a personal favor.”
“The story about your husband’s plane?”
Annabelle tried to smile, but was unsuccessful. “Yes, that one. I was sure Wade had told y’all by now. I’m hoping that you’ll wait at least a day before printing it to let me notify friends . . . and family.”
Mrs. Thurgood raised one eyebrow. “So they found a woman in the plane? And no one knows who it is? How can I hold a news story like that, Belle?”
She held up her hand. “This is not a story. It’s my life.” She had the panicked feeling that this news had opened a door she had never even seen. “And maybe you can help me. You seem to know everything there is to know about this town anyway.”
“Everyone loved Knox. He was involved in the community, did pro bono work for the underprivileged, helped fix up downtown—everyone will want to know about the recovery of his plane. That’s my job, to get the news to the people.”
“But . . . they also found a woman.” Annabelle was already tired of saying it.
“Don’t you know that releasing information is the onl
y way to gain information?”
“I don’t want this to be a story at all, much less a national one. It’s embarrassing.”
“You don’t know that . . . yet. There are a million different reasons—”
“What is it you always tell me?” Annabelle leaned forward, tapped the desk. “The simplest explanation is usually the right one.”
“And I thought you didn’t listen to me.” Mrs. Thurgood laughed at her own joke, then patted down her wild hair as though she’d just seen herself in the mirror. “Seriously, Annabelle, did you notice you used the word ‘usually’ in that sentence? Just usually. Not always. Let’s not go jumping to conclusions, okay?”
“Conclusions?” The word tasted foreign and bitter in Annabelle’s mouth, like a food she’d never tried before. “I had so many of them. Conclusions and assumptions—lots of both of those. Until now, that is.”
Mrs. Thurgood closed her eyes. “We all travel with them, and frequently they are like poorly packed luggage—falling apart and needing to be redone as we journey through life. You aren’t any different than any other woman. We take our conclusions and our assumptions and set them aside until we pick up new ones, and then we set them aside until we realize we shouldn’t ever carry either.”
“Then,” Annabelle said on an exhaled breath, “what do we carry?”
“Faith,” Mrs. Thurgood said.
“In what?”
“That, my dear, is for you to decide. But you should have faith that we will find out who was on that plane. Okay?”
“What if . . . ?” A question traveled from a long way off and crash-landed directly on Annabelle’s heart, right in the center of her body, where she had always trusted Knox.
“What if . . . what?” Mrs. Thurgood asked.
“What if none of it is true?”
“None of what?” Mrs. Thurgood came out from behind her desk, which she rarely did because it meant grabbing her cane.
“Everything I’ve ever believed about my life.” Annabelle bent forward with the words, which must have been forming since Wade left her porch. “What if everything I’ve ever believed about my marriage, my life, was a lie? What if all I trusted and relied on wasn’t true?” Her hands shook when they landed on the desk to steady herself.
The Art of Keeping Secrets Page 3