"Everything." Ben felt the anger rising and worked to keep it down. "And skip the euphemisms, okay? You didn't fondle Bliss, you molested her. Jesus, Sam." He shook his head. "I feel as though I don't know you at all."

"There's a lot about me nobody knows." Sam set his beer on the counter. "I love Bliss," he said. "I was jealous of you-it was so easy for you and Sharon. One day you decide to try to have a baby and the next day Sharon's pregnant. And Bliss was so beautiful. I never hurt her, Ben, you've got to believe that. I mean, I was always very gentle with her."

Ben slammed his own beer down on the counter. "How can you say that? You're a psychiatrist, for Christ's sake. You know the toll this is taking on her."

Sam shook his head. "I was gentle. And I never meant for you to get the blame. The first night I was with her, she was so sleepy and out of it, she assumed I was you and I just played along with it. I didn't let her get a look at me. Then when the shit hit the fan, I thought for sure you'd get off and it would all blow over. When it didn't, I just gave in. Learned to live with the guilt, I suppose. I'm sorry, Ben. There's no way I can tell you how sorry I am." He looked at his brother. "You don't know what it's like to be this way. I can't control it. I'd be at your house and picture Bliss asleep in her bed and I just couldn't help myself."

Ben stared at the stranger in front of him. "Have there been others?"

Sam looked down at the bar. "A few over the years." He sighed, rubbed his eyes. "It's probably best they lock me up."

"I don't understand when you did it."

"When we'd be at your house and I could figure out a way...like one night when we were all in the pool and Bliss was already in bed and I said I wasn't feeling well and went into the guest room to lie down. Only I never went to the guest room."

Ben remembered that particular night. Poor Bliss. He'd been laughing in the pool with Sharon and Jen and she'd been completely vulnerable in her bedroom. And then the scene formed in his mind. The image he'd been avoiding slipped in so fast he couldn't stop it. He saw Sam behind his daughter, saw him undressing her, touching her, and he began to shake with rage. He stood up and grabbed Sam by the collar, yanking him off the stool and pressing him up against the bar.

"I hate you for this," he said. He pulled back his fist and let it fly. Sam's head snapped to the side and blood pooled at the corner of his lip. He shut his eyes, waiting for the next blow, waiting as though he knew he deserved it, as though he welcomed it. He looked wretched, pitiful. And ruined.

Ben let go of him and went into the kitchen. He wrapped a few cubes of ice in a dish towel and leaned across the bar to press it into Sam's hand. Then he walked to the door, but before he left he turned to take one last look at his brother. Sam was leaning against the wall, eyes closed, holding the dish towel to the side of his face. Two round red drops of blood sat like rubies on his collar.

"Maybe someday I can forgive you for what you've done to me," Ben said. "But I'll never forgive you for what you've done to my daughter."

He spent the next morning at the university, negotiating his reinstatement for the spring semester. He thought of calling Alex Parrish, but he was still too angry with his old friend. Let Alex learn about it through the grapevine and wallow in guilt for a few days. Let Alex be the one to call him.

He spent the afternoon with Bliss and Sharon before heading back to Virginia. Once on the road, though, it was not Bliss who filled his thoughts but Eden. Insane. He'd been given back his daughter, his job, his life. Yet he wasn't satisfied. He'd lost Eden in all of this. He'd call her to thank her, but he wouldn't see her. In that statement to the press she'd said she was looking forward to returning to California. "I want to put this past summer behind me," she'd said. Fine. He would do the same.

When he reached the Shenandoah Valley, he turned onto the back roads running through the string of small towns. The first little village was Gloverton, just four blocks long. When he reached its west end, he spotted the marquee on the tiny movie theater. Heart of Winter. He pulled over to the side of the road and stared at the sign, feeling as though he'd driven into the Twilight Zone. Heart of Winter had long been out of the major theaters. This sign was only here to torment him.

He got out of his truck and checked the time of the movie. Seven o'clock. He had an hour to kill. He ate a hamburger and fries at a little cafe and walked the length of Gloverton, four blocks east and four west. Then he settled down in one of the theater's hard vinyl seats and waited.

The opening music was powerful. He hadn't noticed it before, but now he felt moved by it to the point of pain. Then the movie began and he wondered why he was torturing himself, watching Eden with Michael Carey. She was different on the screen; her voice, her expressions were not her own. This was Eden Riley the actress. He knew the real woman. Did Carey? With increasing agitation he watched the relationship grow between the two actors, and he left before the hotel room scene. He'd gotten back in his truck and was out on the road before he realized how fast his heart was beating, as though he'd escaped from a great danger just in time. It would have done him no good at all to watch that scene, to see her blouse fall open for the camera, to see Carey plunge his hands beneath her skirt, to see her toss her head back with a shower of blond hair. He didn't need to see it to remember it.

46 Every morning she rose from sleep with the certainty that Ben was beside her. Her hand rested on his stomach, just below his navel, his penis stiff and ready above her fingers. Or she had the taste of him in her mouth, or his scent on her pillow. Only when her eyes were fully open and the sun had swept the shadows from the room would she admit to herself that her hand rested only on the firm surface of her mattress, that the taste in her mouth was nothing more than the stale taste of a poor night's sleep.

If it were not for Cassie chattering to herself in the next room while waiting for Eden to get up, she would roll over and go back to sleep so she could see Ben again, talk to him, touch him. She thought of calling him but couldn't face the hurt and anger in his voice. She thought of telling him her suspicions about Sam. But what if she was wrong?

In a few days she would no longer have the temptation of knowing he was nearby. The Santa Monica house was waiting for her. She would be fine once she got there. She'd throw herself into the film, force herself to read the script for Treasure House. And she'd let Michael's new sober, tender side fill the emptiness Ben had left her.

She spent her waking hours either with Cassie or at work on the screenplay. She was determined to have the first draft completed by the time she left on Monday, and it was going extremely well now that she was free to change her mother's history. She was good at fiction, at making up characters to suit the story, and the work kept her from thinking about Ben, about California.

On Friday afternoon she wrote the scene of her own conception, with Kate finally yielding to the gently persuasive, sweetly sensual Matthew Riley. It was a beautiful scene that nearly wrote itself. Eden felt no guilt over the lie she was telling on the screen. She had come to believe it herself.

She was nearly dizzy with fatigue by the time she went downstairs Friday evening. She had promised Cassie she'd play a game with her, but except for Kyle and herself the house was empty.

"I sent Cassie and Lou to the store for ice cream," Kyle said. He was sitting on the sofa, a clipboard on his lap and a pencil in his hand. "I wanted a moment alone with you."

Here it comes, Eden thought. Kyle wouldn't let her go back to California without first trying to settle their differences. She leaned against the wall instead of sitting down, waiting.

"Ben called me from Annapolis a while ago," Kyle said. "He's been cleared. His brother confessed to everything."

Tears quickly filled her eyes and she blinked them back. "That's wonderful," she said.

"He said he was grateful to you for going up to see Sharon."

She shook her head. "It doesn't seem like much compared to the grief I caused him."

"He's also gotten his job back for the spring and he talked them into providing funding and a supply of graduate students for the Lynch Hollow site-if he can produce one of the skeletons from the cavern."

She frowned, amazed that Ben had dared to suggest opening the cavern to Kyle.

"I'm going to let him do it. I won't go in myself, but if he wants to..." Kyle shrugged. "He's right. It's the one thing that will save the site. The only thing. I've arranged to have a work crew out there tomorrow afternoon to move the boulders."

"How will he know where to look?"

"I'm making him a map from memory." Kyle lifted the clipboard in the air. "The main cavern shouldn't be a problem. It's that maze room that can turn you around."

The cave would be open. She could step inside it if she liked. She shuddered, and Kyle didn't miss it.

"Do you want to go in?" he asked.

"No," she said quickly. "No, I couldn't." She took a few steps toward the stairs. "Will you let me know when Cassie gets home?"

"Sure. And Eden?"

She turned to look at him.

"That was a nice thing you did for Ben," he said.

She nodded. "I only wish I could have done it before I lost him."

Upstairs she sat in front of the word processor and composed a statement for the press. This one took no time at all. It flowed from her fingertips, despite the fact that it would incriminate her rather than Ben.

"No way," Nina said when Eden read it to her over the phone. "Your first statement was very well received, Eden. Let's just let it lie."

"I can't, Nina. He's innocent."

"So let him make his own statement."

"Nina, either you take this to the press or I will."

Nina sighed. "All right. Read it to me one more time."

The rain had settled into a steady gray drizzle by the next morning, but the downpour of the past few days was taking its toll.

"The Shenandoah broke its banks last night," Kyle said at breakfast. "Even Ferry Creek's about to spill over."

Cassie looked up at Eden. "What broke, Mom?"

"The river broke its banks," Eden said. "The water's gone up on the land." She found herself avoiding the word "flood." That word had always gotten stuck in her throat.

"You're not eating, Ky," Lou said.

"I'm not hungry this morning." Kyle tapped his toast on the side of his plate. Every once in a while he'd glance out the window. She understood his apprehension, maybe even shared it. Today the cavern would be opened, a gaping reminder of the past on his land. "Once that cave is open, Ben will have to work fast in case the creek gets high enough to be a threat."

"What time is the work crew coming?" Eden asked.

"One. Ben will meet with them. I'm staying here."

She worked on the screenplay most of the morning, taking a break to drive out to Coolbrook Park with Cassie to watch the swollen Shenandoah whip through the forest. The water was frothy and white. It swept entire trees downstream, tossing them into the air like toothpicks. The other spectators standing nearby talked excitedly about the possibility of a flood. Some of them stood around the tall slender marker at the corner of the parking lot, pointing to the yellow line a foot or so above their heads. There was a date below the line and Eden didn't bother to get close enough to see it. She knew what it said. The last time the water had reached that mark had been on May 29, 1959. She had been Cassie's age. She had very nearly drowned.

She dropped Cassie off at Maggie DeMarco's for the afternoon and returned to Lynch Hollow and the screenplay, but as she sat in front of her word processor her concentration sagged and she found herself staring out the window as Kyle had that morning.

Finally she put on her waterproof duck shoes, took Lou's enormous green umbrella from the hall closet, and left the house. Kyle had told her that the trail down to the cavern and the site had been washed out by the rain, so she walked down the driveway and out to the road.

When she reached the field she was a fair distance from the site, and she saw three men standing in the trees by the cave. She walked forward a few steps until she was close enough to see that one of the men was Ben. She decided to watch from here. This was close enough.

The men emerged from the woods and one of them picked up a sheet of paper from the ground near the second pit. They huddled around it, gesturing toward the cave as they spoke. And then Ben caught sight of her. He looked in her direction for a few seconds and then back to the paper. Did he think she had come to see him? Well, hadn't she? She had known he'd be here.

After a moment the two workmen picked up a chain from the ground and headed back into the woods while Ben walked across the field toward her. She felt her heart kick up, her hand tighten around the stem of the umbrella. His hair looked a few shades darker from the rain and his shirt was soaked. She wanted to cry, wanted to throw her arms around him and tell him how happy she was for him, how sad for herself. But she stood still, clutching the umbrella, uncertain of what expression to put on her face, what mask to wear.

"Hi," he said when he was next to her. He put his hands in his pockets and turned to look back to the woods.

"Do you want to share?" She held the umbrella toward him and he slipped under it. Their arms touched, their shoulders. She could smell his after-shave.

"Do you believe Kyle is letting this happen?" Ben nodded toward the cavern. "They're having some trouble figuring out how to move the boulders. Crowbars are useless. We're going to try to wrap chains around them and then hook them up to my truck. If that doesn't work, we'll have to get a backhoe in here. When Kyle sealed that cave he was counting on it being sealed forever."

"Yes, I'm sure he was. Will those guys go in with you?"

"No."

It seemed unwise for Ben to go in alone, yet she was relieved. She didn't like to think of strangers inside her mother's cavern.

"Eden." Ben sank his hands lower in his pockets. "Thanks for what you did. You've turned everything around for me."

"I'm sorry I ever doubted you."

"Well, you had plenty of company, but it's over. All I care about now is finishing up my work here and moving back to Annapolis to start my life over. I want to make up to Bliss for the past year."

"How is she?"

"Mixed up." The muscles in his jaw tightened. "Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel as though I'm the only one who can heal her."

"I bet that's true."

Ben looked behind them. "I wonder how much higher the creek's going to rise."

"Cassie and I went to Coolbrook Park this morning. The river's really up and wild and people were talking about...flooding. Maybe you should wait till this blows over before you go in the cave." Her throat felt tight. They were speaking to each other as though they were acquaintances, nothing more. She wanted to say, I dream about you every night. I wake up wishing you were next to me. But his coolness, his distance did not invite her to share her private thoughts.

He shook his head. "If the water gets into that cave where the skeletons are, it could ruin them."

"Maybe they're already ruined from the last flood."

"No. Kyle said it never reached the maze room."

For a few minutes neither of them spoke. They stared at the woods, although there was nothing to see. The workmen were barely visible as they struggled to fit the chains over the boulders.

Finally Ben drew in his breath. "I'm sorry Sam touched Cassie, Eden. Really."

"She's okay. I'm sure he thought that was the only way he could get me to figure out what was going on without actually telling me."

"I know." There was another short silence before he spoke again. "So Monday's the big day, huh? Back to the land of alfalfa sprouts and glitter?"

"Yes."

"Where you can put this summer behind you."

She cringed. She'd said that in the first statement. She turned her head to look at him. "Ben, I'm sorry I ever-"

"Don't apologize. I understand the feeling completely. I can't wait to have this past year and a half behind me." He looked toward the cavern. "I'd better get the pickup over there and see what we can do."

Eden moved nearer to the cavern as the men attached the chains to the bumper of Ben's truck. Ben got in behind the wheel and slowly fed the truck gas. It moved a few feet along the side of the third pit before the chain slipped from the boulder. One of the men let out a string of expletives. After two more attempts the huge boulder tipped out of the opening, teetered precariously for a few seconds on its rounded stem, and began to roll, flattening several saplings in its path and stopping just short of the third pit.

A cheer went up from the men, and Eden stared at the narrow black opening in the hillside. How many times had she stepped into that blackness as a child? How could it look so unfamiliar? It struck her how extraordinarily peculiar her mother had been to have made this forbidding hole in the earth her second home, to have made it the playground for her child.

Ben knelt near the cave entrance, checking the wiring on his headlamp, and Eden turned and headed back to the road. She had seen all she cared to see of the cave and she did not want to watch Ben disappear inside it. She would go home and lose herself once more in the screenplay.

But the screenplay offered her no refuge that afternoon. She thought of picking Cassie up early, taking her somewhere for the rest of the day and letting her daughter keep her mind occupied. Cassie would be disappointed, though, if her afternoon with Maggie's kids was cut short.

She wandered down to the kitchen where Kyle was peeling apples and Lou was rolling out piecrust on the low, pullout counter. "Let me do that, Kyle," Eden said. Kyle offered no resistance as she took the peeler from his hand and sat down at the table.

"Thanks." He looked at his watch. "I want to go have a look at Ferry Creek. I thought you were hard at work on the screenplay."

"I need a break."

"How's it coming, dear?" Lou asked.

"Much better now that I've left it with Matthew Riley as my father. It's all falling into place."

A silence followed her words, and she knew she should have found a different way to tell them that things were going well.

"I'll be back in a while," Kyle said as he took the umbrella from the coatrack and stepped outside.

Eden began peeling a small red apple.

"Eden," Lou said. "Set down that apple for a minute."

Eden looked up at her aunt.