Read Online Secret Lives by Diane Chamberlain - Free Book Online Page A

presented in the past. I want to
normalize her. I want people to see this film and be able to relate
to her, not think, oh, here's that weird Katherine Swift
again.”
    “How old was she when she started the
journal?”
    “Thirteen.”
    “What does a thirteen-year-old have to write
about?”
    “Plenty. She was feisty and impulsive. And
lonely. The other kids didn't like her. She got into a lot of
trouble. She got her first period and her mother—my grandmother—was
so crazy she cut off all Katherine's hair. So she ran away. That
was when she found the cavern.”
    Ben looked in the direction of the cave. “Do
you remember what it was like inside?” He almost whispered the
question, as though he understood that the cave was a subject to be
treated with reverence.
    Eden stared across the field to the wooded
embankment. She could just make out the dark patch through the
trees where the boulders marked the entrance to the cave.
    “I was four when they sealed it up,” she
said. “My memory's very cloudy.”
    “Close your eyes.”
    “What?”
    Ben set down his sandwich. “My brother's a
shrink. Whenever I can't remember something he tells me to close my
eyes, and gradually the picture comes into my head.”
    Eden obediently closed her eyes and leaned
back against the cool metal side of the pickup. At first she could
concentrate only on the sound of Ferry Creek rushing below them.
But then she heard it, the clack, clack, clack of the typewriter
keys, muffled by the cotton her mother had put in her ears. She
felt cool air on her arms. The cave was dimly lit by lanterns
hanging from the walls and by candles set here and there on the
floors and rocky ledges. The room was filled with shadows. Eden was
playing with her friends, the stalagmites. She'd forgotten about
them, the cold, grotesquely shaped formations that in her
four-year-old imagination took on human form.
    Her mother sat on a wooden chair, an enormous
black monster of a typewriter on the table in front of her. Sheets
of paper were scattered on the cave floor around her chair. Her
face was blurry. Eden could see only her hands, the skin silky and
smooth, the fingers slender, the nails trimmed short. Her hands
never paused. Clack, clack, clack…
    Eden opened her eyes. Ben was watching her,
gnawing his lip.
    “I was afraid you got stuck back there,” he
said.
    “I remembered the stalactites and
stalagmites. Tites and mites, my mother called them. They fill the
cavern. They were my playmates. I'd play with them while she typed,
and when she was finished for the day she'd cuddle me on her lap
and read to me.” Her voice had softened, thickened, betraying her.
She'd forgotten what it felt like to be held that way, with no
strings attached to the love.
    Ben leaned forward to touch her knee. “This
film's not going to be easy for you to make,” he said.
    She shouldn't have said so much, been so
open. With every word she'd made herself more vulnerable. “I don't
think it will be that difficult.” She stood up and jumped out of
the truck, relieved to have the heat of his fingers off her knee.
“I'd better get going. Thanks for the sandwich.”
    “Could you show me how to do that?” he
asked.
    “What?”
    “Turn off your feelings that quickly.” His
eyes were narrowed.
    “I don't know what you mean.”
    “I think you do. One minute you're sad, next
minute everything's right with the world.”
    She sighed, giving in. “To be honest, I'm
usually better at it.” She put her hands on her hips and looked
toward the cave. “My defenses are down out here. Usually I can
pretend everything's fine until I actually start to believe it
myself.”
    “Whew. I'll teach you to dig if you'll teach
me how to do that. How about over dinner tonight? Just something
casual. just, you know, platonic.” He grinned. “I mean, I know
about you and Michael Carey.”
    She groaned. “Michael and I are just friends.
And why do you want to have dinner with me if you already