Every Single Secret(27)

Right now, though, I had other things to do. I needed to see what Annalise Beard had for me. Fingers shaking, I opened her email.

Daphne,

A part of me is relieved you got in touch with me. Not that I’m happy Heath is suffering, I’m just glad someone cares enough about him to make sure he gets help. Heath Beck is a troubled person, Daphne, but you know this or you wouldn’t have written me. And maybe I should’ve reached out to you a long time ago. I’m sorry if I did the wrong thing.

Heath and I were dating when you guys met, but I think you must be aware of that by now. Things weren’t going well with us. He’d been having nightmares. They were sporadic at first, but became more constant toward the end. He sleepwalked, tore all the blinds off my bedroom windows. Once he even smashed an antique mirror that I’d inherited from my great-grandmother. I don’t know what the dreams were about—he would never say—but after a while I didn’t care. I just felt afraid, and not only for my furniture.

As far as his past, Heath told me his parents were strange people who lived this alternative, off the grid, hippie lifestyle somewhere in east Georgia. He said they were physically abusive to him, isolated him from the outside world, and he hadn’t seen them since he ran away at sixteen.

He refused to see a doctor, although once he did float the idea of us attending a couples’ retreat he’d heard about. By then, though, he’d started not coming home, sometimes for days. And then one of my friends said they saw him out with another woman. You, as it turned out. It was just as well. I was done with him, ready to forget the things that had happened between us. And maybe I was wrong—or just not patient enough—but I didn’t really feel like our problems were a relationship issue. I believed something was wrong—is wrong—with him.

I hope you can help him work things out, but I don’t know. He’s a locked door, Daphne. And he doesn’t like it if you knock too hard. Maybe he’s found someone more understanding in you. Anyway, if you don’t mind, I’d rather you didn’t bring up my name to him. I’d rather just forget I ever knew him.

Annalise

I stared down at the email, letting her words sink in. That wasn’t quite the story Heath had presented. He’d told me he and Annalise had drifted apart and basically ended things before we met. He’d said they simply hadn’t been a match, and I’d accepted the explanation. And, yeah, even if Annalise saw it differently, that wasn’t so unusual. There were two sides to every breakup story.

But . . .

A couples’ retreat? That was more than a little coincidental. Was it Baskens that he’d wanted to bring Annalise to? If so, he knew about the place at least a year ago and had lied to me about hearing about it from the guy in his office. It also meant I wasn’t the first woman he’d tried to get up here, or the first one he’d felt seriously enough about to consider therapy with. What was that stupid phrase? Sloppy seconds.

Another thing: he had told me he was raised by a single mother, with a procession of bullying boyfriends, who died when he was sixteen. And he told Annalise he was raised by a mother and father in some isolated country cabin and ran away at sixteen. Two different stories—so clearly he had lied to at least one of us, maybe both. There was a chance he was still keeping the real truth of his childhood to himself.

Something struck the roof of the car, and I jumped. I looked out the window, but there was no one there, at least no one that I could see. And then something hit again, this time on the hood. What the hell—

Outside the windshield I saw a small object bounce onto the hood of the car and roll off onto the ground. An acorn. I collapsed against the seat, heart thundering. The goddamn thing sounded like a missile. I drew in a deep breath and blew it out. I cracked the door and sucked in breath after breath of cool air. I just needed a minute to settle down. This was what I’d wanted—to know the truth about Heath, so we could deal with it. And now I knew.

The next move was mine.

So what was that going to be? Should I march up to Heath and announce that after almost a year of trusting him, after almost a year of believing everything he’d told me about his past, I’d suddenly decided to reach out to his ex-girlfriend? Oh and hey, FYI, a few of your stories don’t line up, and also, is your smashing her house up the only reason she didn’t feel safe around you?

There was no way that discussion was going to end well.

I closed my eyes and saw the child-psychologist’s office—worn carpet and dingy walls hung with framed diplomas and certificates. I felt the edge of the slick, uncomfortable sofa under my thighs. Smelled the stale smoke lacing the air. A woman with whiskery, cigarette-pleated lips and bloodshot eyes that regarded me frostily over wire-rimmed reading glasses. She asked me questions, her voice rough and laced with phlegm:

Tell me what Mr. Al did to you, Daphne. Tell me, and you can go home.

For some reason, that doctor kept asking all the wrong questions. Heading down a bunny trail, like Mrs. Bobbie used to say. I could have told her what really happened, who was the real evil person at the ranch, but then I would get myself in trouble. The police would take me away—from Omega and the other girls. From my home.

So, instead, I tried to explain how good Mr. Al was. I’d heard about men like that, but he didn’t touch us in that bad way, and he never put a hand on me. He was really nice. He hung out at the clubhouse with us, built doghouses, and took us to the library. He laughed and acted silly with us.