Then Sara Jane said it was way too soon for anyone to visit the baby-she was only three days old and there were germs she might catch. But Tommy said, "Oh, let her see her. Have a seat there, Miss." He called me 'Miss' and I figured he didn't remember who I was.

I sat down on the sofa and Sara Jane disappeared in another room and came out holding the tiniest little baby I've ever seen, wrapped up in a pink blanket. She put her in my arms, and I learned something about myself right then. I want to be a mother. I want to have a baby of my own.

Ellie Miller is adorable beyond words. First she was asleep and looked like an angel with her pretty face and a little bit of peach fuzz on her head. Sara Jane had given her to me wrapped up so I couldn't see her arms, but I was determined. If I was going to spend all my sleeping hours dreaming about this baby, I wanted to get it right. So I tugged the blanket away with Sara Jane standing above me, breathing like a steam engine. Ellie has little hands where her arms should be. Tiny, precious little hands. I know this baby was put together wrong, but somehow I couldn't see it just then. She seemed beautiful to me, like maybe it's all the rest of us who are not formed right. I had a hard time giving her back to Sara Jane, who still had said next to nothing to me. I thought of what it would be like for her when she started taking little Ellie out, when people would stare and talk behind her back, and my heart nearly broke for her. For Sara Jane! When I was about to leave I said to her, "People can be mean, Sara Jane. Just you don't listen to them. Ellie is beautiful and you and I both know it." She still said nothing to me. She probably fainted once I left, not sure what to make of Kate Swift talking kindly to her.

Kyle was mad when I got home. He says you just don't do that sort of thing-barge into someone's house when there's a brand new baby-even if it's a healthy baby that everybody's excited about showing off. I told him there's never been a time in my life when I've cared about what was proper or improper and I wasn't about to start caring now.

October 5, 1947 I visited Ellie again today. Why am I so drawn to her? I still dream about her. The doctor told Sara Jane that Ellie will be "backward." Slow to talk and walk, he means, and slow to learn things. She'll probably never be able to read and write and that, in my opinion, is the cruelest blow.

"But she can still imagine," I said to Sara Jane.

"What does that mean?" Sara Jane all but barked at me. She still doesn't care much for me.

I tried to explain how being able to dream things up is the most important thing in the world, more important than having arms or being able to add two plus two. I thought I was sounding poetic, but Sara Jane looked at me like she used to in grammar school-like I was too weird to be believed.

October 25, 1947 Kyle is home for the weekend and it is too rainy to dig and too rainy to bicycle over to see Ellie, so I begged him to take me over to Sara Jane's in the car and he finally agreed. I think he had some curiosity himself about the baby.

Sara Jane got all flustered at finding Kyle Swift on her doorstep and it made me giggle inside to see it. I went directly over to the bassinet where Ellie was sleeping and took her out to sit with on the sofa. Meanwhile, Sara Jane and Kyle sat down and tried to think of things to say to each other and I saw right away that Sara Jane still loves him. I recognize the feeling in her clearly-it's the only thing she and I have in common. I watched her watching him. She was thinking how different her life would be now if she'd been true to him, waited for him. She was thinking she could have married him, instead of ending up with a baker who stuffs her with cake and keeps her so fat she can barely get up out of a chair. She was thinking how if she'd stayed with Kyle she might have a child now that was whole, a child no other children would snicker at on the street. She looked at Kyle with such longing. When he moved, when he stood up to come sit next to me and have a look at Ellie, I could see her remembering what it was like to make love to him and I could see more than anything the regret in her eyes.

And what do I see in Kyle's eyes for her? It's not pity, and that surprises me. It's more like compassion. I can see he still cares about her, not as a girlfriend, but as a human being. Despite how she hurt him, despite how, at twenty, she's let herself fall apart, he still cares, which pretty much sums up the kind of person my brother is.

While Kyle and Sara Jane chit-chatted, I had my own little talk with Ellie. I can prop her up on my lap and she looks at me, though her eyes wander off after a minute or two. I played with her, with her tiny perfect hands, but what I longed to do was cuddle her. I wanted to hold her close to my breast. I'm so envious of Sara Jane for being able to nurse her. I got misty-eyed, sitting there, thinking of how I'll most likely never have a baby of my own. I can't imagine getting close enough to a man to allow that to happen. I thought I've been hiding this longing well, joking when Susanna and Daddy talk about me ever getting married or having a family. But Kyle knows. I should have guessed he would. He seems to know the world inside my head. After we left Sara Jane's and were driving back to Lynch Hollow in the pouring rain, he said, "You want a child of your own."

I was startled by the matter-of-fact way he said it, without even taking his eyes off the road to look at me. I said, "I'll never have one of my own."

"Matt would be right pleased to provide you with one," he said.

"I haven't seen it rain this hard in years," I said, and that was that.

September 10, 1948 I have amazing news, but first I have to update this journal a bit. I can't believe it's been almost a year since I've written in it! I used to keep it under my pillow, write in it day and night. Today I had trouble even finding this notebook.

Ellie Miller is now a year old. She is a very quiet child and still doesn't walk, but she has a smile that lights up your heart. I have only seen her a few times this year, when I go to the bakery with Susanna. I stopped visiting her because Susanna had heard from Priscilla Cates that my visits made Sara Jane nervous. Sara Jane can't relax around me, Priscilla said. I have no interest in upsetting Sara Jane, so I stopped coming to see Ellie and in a way I think that's good. Every time I saw her I wanted a baby and the feeling was turning into a painful one. So I've spent this year putting all my energy into writing and archaeology.

Our digs have grown around us. Kyle has been home from school all summer and we have two pits dug in front of the cavern. We've unearthed arrowheads and pottery that date back three thousand years and we have gotten very organized in cataloging them. Much of the day, I am torn between the careful, painstaking work of chipping away at the earth, dusting the years off the old pieces, and writing my stories. I switch from one activity to the other easily and I feel sorry for Kyle with just one interest to consume him. But he seems quite content as well. He has found his calling.

I've thought a great deal about Rosie, the little skeleton in the maze room. We have never gone back to look at her again and we have no way of knowing when she lived and died. But thinking about her gave me the idea of writing a story about a child who lived in the times we're studying from the digs. The story turned out very well. In July, Matt had to go to a meeting in New York, and he took my story with him to read on the train. Here is the great news: when he returned, he presented me with a check for one hundred dollars! He'd sold my story to a publisher, Waverly Books, and next year it will appear as an actual book, illustrated by someone at the publishing house. And they want more! Matt, who had this plan up his sleeve for several months, said they are ecstatic about my work. But they want the stories to be longer and more detailed, so that is what I'm working on now and what absorbs my thoughts much of the time.

July 10, 1949 Kyle graduated last month and he's already talking about going back to school because he wants to get a doctoral degree. I guess I have been hoping he would just settle himself down here now that he's done with school, but I have to face up to the fact that he's never going to settle here. Our digs have a hold on him, but he has too much wanderlust to stay for long. He promises to come home on weekends while he's going to school, so I am not too distressed.

I sold five more books this year and occasionally I write an article for the Coolbrook Chronicle, Matt's paper. No one thought a paper would ever make a go of it in Coolbrook since it's so small, but everyone reads the Chronicle now.

Yesterday, Matt was in the cave with me, reading while I typed and he finally looked up and said, "You and I might as well get married. We're together most of the time anyway.

I took the cotton out of my ears and said, "What did you say?" even though I'd heard him very well.

He said we wouldn't have to make love if I didn't want to, that he'd be content just being with me.

"What about all your fancy dinner parties and meetings and such? I could never go with you, you know." I wanted him to see how ridiculous his idea was.

"I don't care. You could stay here. I'd go by myself. I'd just like to be able to sleep with you at night."

When he said that I felt a funny little rise in me, like I'd like that too. I don't want to marry him and I don't want to make love to him-it would confuse things between us too much-but I like the idea of sleeping next to him the night through. I could slip him into my bedroom after Daddy and Susanna were asleep and just feel the warmth of him all night long. I think he probably could sleep with me without touching me. He's never tried since that time in Georgetown, although a few times he's kissed me on the cheek. I think Matt's still a virgin.

July 12, 1949 I told Kyle what Matt said about wanting to sleep with me and Kyle said I should do it if I want to but I shouldn't expect him not to touch me. I said I thought Matt was a virgin and Kyle laughed. "Get your head out of the sand, Kate," he said. He told me that Matt has two sides to him. There's the soft, gentle side he shows to me and to most of the girls he goes out with. And then there's his "animal side" Kyle called it, and this he shows to a few select girls. There is one in Luray, Kyle said, another in Strasburg.

I was shocked. "Matt?" I said. "Matt Riley?"

Kyle said, "It's you he really wants. He gets all steamed up around you and he has to have someplace he can let it out."

I can't look at Matt quite the same way now. He sits in here-as a matter of fact, he's here right now-reading, with those big innocent brown eyes that are not so innocent after all. I will not be sleeping with him anytime soon, but I'm glad to know this about him. I used to feel guilty, like I was depriving him of something. Now I find he's been getting that something all along.

October 29, 1949 Kyle has been home every weekend since school started. He is driven. He's interested Dr. Latterly-who he calls "Stan" now-in his "backyard dig." He got Dr. Latterly to come down here to visit Lynch Hollow and a more comical scene I'd never witnessed. It was a Saturday two weeks ago, and Kyle and the professor came to the cave. This man did not know what to make of a woman typing with cotton in her ears and a gentleman (Matt) reclined, reading, and smoking a pipe on the settee. Kyle and Matt and I treated it all as normal. Dr. Latterly was a little shaken, I think, but he was impressed with what Kyle and I have done here, so now he's gearing his work with Kyle to our specific needs.

Easter Sunday, 1950 Matt brought the woman he is seeing to Easter dinner. He has been dating quite a few lately, and making no secret of it to me. Trying to get me jealous, I suppose, and it's not working. Matt is viewed as one of the most alluring young men around, as is Kyle, although Kyle is not here enough to take advantage of that status. Kyle says he's not even dating much at school, which I find hard to believe, but he is very caught up in his professional pursuits these days, so I guess it's possible.

Matt's lady friend, Delores, is thoroughly in love with him. I was fascinated, watching her watch him. She tried to anticipate his every desire. It was revolting. I know Matt doesn't return her love and adoration. I wonder if she knows about the hussy he sees in Luray? A few months ago I told him I knew about his sordid little side interests. He was at first mad at Kyle for telling me and then pleased, I think, that he could speak more openly with me about the women in his life. Our friendship is the best it's ever been. I know he would like more from me, and I know it is his caring about me that prevents him from getting serious with anyone else, but I've told him we will never be more than friends. I believe he's finally come to accept that.

November 10, 1951 Yesterday my tenth book was published and Kyle and Matt and I drank champagne in the cavern until we were punchy. I felt warm and satisfied and I started talking, saying way too much. I said what a lucky person I was to have four loves in my life when many women must settle for one, or less.

Kyle and Matt set down their glasses to listen to me and I began ticking off my four loves. "My writing," I said. "The digs. My brother." Kyle held his glass up to me in a salute. "And my cavern."

Well, I was quite satisfied with my little speech and we finished the bottle and it wasn't until the buzz of the champagne started to wear thin and we could feel the chill settle into the air of the cave that I realized Matt had not spoken. There was hurt in his eyes and I nearly vomited when I realized why: I had left him out. How could I have been so mean? It would not have hurt me to say I had five loves and included him. I do love him as my dear friend, but the truth is that it never occurred to me to name him, and it was certainly too late to add him on as an afterthought.

"It's cold in here," he said finally, standing up. "I'm going home."

"Not yet," said Kyle. I could tell from his face that he also knew what was bothering Matt. "We can all sit in the house for a while."

I should have said something then. Oh yes, Matt, come sit in the house with us. But instead I got down on the ice cold floor and began picking up the scattered pages from the story I was working on.

"I have an early day tomorrow," Matt said from behind me. I heard his footsteps on the floor of the cave and then silence as he entered the forest.

I couldn't move from my place on the floor. I stared at the pages resting there, thinking of how hurtful I could be without even trying. Then Kyle knelt next to me. "Come on, Katie," he said. "Let's go in the house."

"I didn't mean to hurt him," I said. I think I was crying. Kyle smoothed my hair behind my ear. "I know. He'll be all right."

"I should have thought before I spoke."

"Shh." Kyle sat on the ground behind me and hugged me into his arms. He told me he'd talk to Matt for me tomorrow, tell him how bad I felt, how it was an oversight, nothing more. He kept talking like that, his breath sweet with champagne, but after a while I stopped listening. My back was against his chest, his cheek soft on my hair. Cold as it was, I could have sat like that all night.

So today Matt informed me that he is now engaged to Delores Winthrop. He told me this by note, because he is so much like me, best able to express himself on paper. He wrote, Dearest Kate, I have been foolishly hiding from the truth. For so long I have kidded myself into thinking that you love me, or at least had the potential to love me. It is something I wished for so desperately, you cannot know. I admire you so-your beauty, your spirit and ambition. I could easily put up with your "unusual" ways. I am charmed by them.

I can't be angry with you because you have never tried to deceive me about your feelings. The idea of you loving me has been my own fabrication and you can't be held responsible for what occurs in my tormented imagination. Last night as you described your four loves and I was not among them, I knew I must finally abandon my hope of having my love returned. Therefore I have proposed marriage to Delores. She is clearly my second choice, although I trust you will never tell her that.

I am nearly twenty-six and need to settle down. I truly hope, Kate, that you find someone who can unleash the loving woman I know is within you. I am sorry to have failed in that task.

All my love, Matt I wept as I read his note, but I know this is best for him. I will miss his company so much. I am certain he will never bring Delores to visit the cave with him. I could see her looking down her nose at the suggestion, but she will make a fine wife for him.

There will come a day when Kyle will also want to marry. I hope she will be someone I can tolerate, not a silly girl like Sara Jane or a holier-than-thou sort like Julia from Georgetown. I'm not going to be jealous. She may share his home and his bed but she can never steal from me the life-long closeness I've had with him.

December 12, 1951 Kyle is to be Matt's best man and Delores's sister Vanessa will be her maid of honor. Matt is being swept quickly into their plans and every evening he comes to tell us more. He seems to have no control over what's happening to him. The wedding is planned for January 5th. I am less enthusiastic now about his getting married because I can see he's not happy about it. He looks like a man being sucked into quicksand. I want to speak-or perhaps write-to him about this. I want to tell him not to allow himself to be trapped in this way, but I know it is hardly my place and it would be very unfair of me.

December 23, 1951 Matt broke off his engagement to Delores. He came to the cavern last night and spoke very frankly with Kyle and me.

"I don't love her as I'm capable of loving a woman," he said. "She's put me off as a lover, saving herself for marriage as if she's some great prize. I can respect that, I suppose. I'd even be appreciative of it if I were truly interested in her, but I'm not even excited by the prospect of sleeping with her."

Kyle and I sat very still while he spoke because we'd never heard Matt speak with such candor.

"I'm dreading our wedding night because I'll be making love to Delores, but thinking of you, Kate." His face took on such color that he probably didn't even notice it in mine.

"I haven't been able to concentrate on this wedding or work or anything because I'm so obsessed with thoughts of you. If I married Delores I would lose you for good. I can't bear to have that happen. I'd rather have the little bit I have of you than nothing at all."

A long silence stretched between the three of us. I wanted Kyle to break it but knew he was looking at me and I had no choice but to speak.

"You have me on a pedestal, Matt," I said. "I'm never going to be a wife, to you or anyone else. I don't think you should marry Delores if you're so unhappy about it. But don't avoid marrying her on my account." All the while I was speaking my heart was galloping. I am selfish straight to the core. I was glad of his decision. I want Matt here in the cave, but on my terms. That's what he said a long time ago. "Everything has to be on your terms, Kate." He was right.

27 She made chicken salad for their picnic supper, taking her time, savoring the simple domesticity of the task. She set the salad in the basket along with a bottle of wine, a couple of peaches, crusty rolls from the Millers' bakery, and two brownies Lou had baked that morning. Her actions were slow and deliberate, and she knew she was putting off seeing Ben, putting off hearing whatever it was he needed to tell her. Finally she could procrastinate no longer. She put on a blue sundress-Michael Carey's favorite-and set out for the site.

She'd spent the afternoon working on the screenplay and it had gone very well. She could see Michael clearly as Matt, especially now that she knew her father had a little of the rake in him. She would have to ask Kyle to tell her more about Matt's pursuits in Luray and Strasburg, how he had quenched his thirst for Kate in the arms of other women.

She was perspiring by the time she reached the site. Ben knelt in the third pit, in much the same position as the first time she'd seen him. She stood still for a moment in the burning sunlight, watching the muscles in his back contract beneath his blue T-shirt as he brushed the ground. There was a stirring in her body, a warmth that had nothing to do with the sun.

She called to him as she walked toward the pit and he waved and climbed up the ladder. The front of his T-shirt was soaked with sweat and he wiped his arm across his forehead. "How about up on the bridge?" He nodded toward the footbridge that crossed Ferry Creek. "Maybe there's a breeze up there."

They walked to the center of the bridge and sat with their legs dangling over the edge. The water below was black and silent as it cut through the forest to the hazy green mountains beyond. Eden clung to the suspension wires as the shivering of the bridge, and her vertigo, subsided.

"I used to play up here when I was a kid," she said as she unloaded the basket. The bridge had seemed as long as the river then. She remembered running across it, alone as always, stopping in the middle to pump her legs and make it sway. "You know how kids love to get dizzy." She handed him the bottle of wine and a corkscrew.

He stared at the distant hills, holding the bottle in his hand as though he had no idea why she'd given it to him, and she realized he had said nothing to her since leaving the pit.

She touched his shoulder. His shirt was damp beneath her fingers and his body felt rigid, unfamiliar. She drew her hand away. "Ben? Could you open the wine?"

He licked his dusty lips and turned to look at her. "Let's talk first and eat after, okay?"

She didn't want to talk. She didn't want to know what was draining the life from his face. And it was too hot out here. She pressed one of the napkins to her face, her throat. "I'm famished," she said. "I'd just as soon eat-"

"Eden." He shook his head at her and she knew she was making it more difficult for him.

She lowered the napkin to her lap. "Is it that serious?" she asked.

"It's extremely serious."

She put the bowl of chicken salad back into the basket and closed the lid. "All right."

He looked out at the stream again. "I don't know how to say this to you. I wish I knew a way to pretty it up." He set the bottle of wine down on the bridge and drew in a long breath. "The reason I'm divorced, the reason I lost my job, and the reason I can't see Bliss is that I was convicted of molesting her."

She frowned at him. "You molested your daughter?"

"No." He glared at her, then dropped his eyes. "I don't mean to yell, I just ... No. I didn't do it. I was convicted, but I'm innocent."

Her body shrank away from him, ever so slightly, but he didn't miss it. She saw him working at control, the muscles in his jaw tensing, releasing.

"I didn't do it, Eden."

"Why would anyone think you did?"

He sighed and wrapped his hands around the edge of the bridge. His knuckles were white, the skin stretched taut above them. "There was evidence...It was enough to convince them that I had...Damn." He turned his head away from her, ran a shaky hand through his hair. "This isn't going to work. I don't know what to tell you to make you believe me. Everything I say is going to make it look worse."

She wanted to stay calm, to still the gallop of her heartbeat. She rested her hand on his arm. "Just tell me the truth, Ben. Who do you mean by 'them'? Was there a trial? With a jury?"

"Yes."

She pressed her fingers to her lips as the night before disintegrated in her memory. Had she actually slept with him? "Twelve people heard evidence and decided beyond a reasonable doubt that you were guilty?"

He turned to her. "I swear to you, Eden, I'm the last person on earth who would hurt Bliss."

"But you must have done something to make them think you did it."

He looked toward the hills again, and when he spoke he sounded very tired. "I didn't do anything. Doesn't matter though. Whenever someone finds out about it, they turn their back on me. I was hoping that wouldn't happen with you."

She remembered his joyful run to the drugstore for condoms, the thunderous lovemaking in the woods. He was a man who rescued lobsters from restaurants, who protected spiders in his bathroom. He couldn't possibly have molested his own child.

"I don't know what to think, Ben," she said quietly. "'There's nothing you could tell me you'd done that would disgust me quite as much. I think I'd be less horrified if you told me you'd been convicted of killing someone."

He gritted his teeth. "I didn't do it."

"Whether you did or not, I wish you'd told me about this sooner."

"You didn't want to know."

She thought of last night again. She'd felt listened to. Safe. Loved. Or had she just been used by a man no one else would have? If he'd told her sooner she never would have slept with him. I fucked Eden Riley. The muscles in her arms contracted; her hands curled into fists. "I had no idea it was anything like this," she said, her voice rising.

"You're right," he said wearily. "I should have told you sooner. I could have saved both of us a lot of grief."

She looked down at the water. "Last night was so nice," she said. "I felt...hopeful. I felt..." She bit her lower lip to stop its trembling, then turned to face him. "If you'd only been accused, Ben, I might feel differently. But a conviction." She thought of the little blond girl in the photograph and tears sprang to her eyes. "What did they say you did to her?"

He didn't answer. Instead he turned around so quickly she had to grab the guy wires to keep her balance. He packed the wine into the basket and pushed it closer to her. "Go," he said, his eyes a cold, hard gray. "Please just go."

Kyle and Lou were eating chicken salad sandwiches at the kitchen table when Eden returned to the house. She set the picnic basket on the counter and took a seat at the table.

"I wish you'd told me about Ben," she said to Kyle. "It's not as though he was caught shoplifting a candy bar."

Kyle put down his sandwich. "I tried to warn you off him, honey, but I didn't think it was my place to tell you the whole story. And frankly, I never expected the two of you to be interested in each other."

"You don't believe him?" Lou asked.

"I don't know what to believe. Of course he's going to deny it-who wouldn't? But he was convicted, Lou."

Kyle shook his head. "I think he was wrong not to tell you right off the bat, but I understand his thinking. Everyone who knows about him has taken off in the other direction as fast as they could run. I had a couple of graduate students working with me before he came, and when they found out it was Ben Alexander I'd hired to help out they quit on the spot. Everybody thinks like you do, Eden, that if he was convicted he must be guilty. But I'm as sure as I can be that he's not."