The Art of Keeping Secrets by Patti Callahan Henry Read Free Book Online Page B

wounded marine life.
    He’d stayed with Sofie for the past two years. He hadn’t moved on except for the few weeks he traveled to various universities for his lecture series, which allowed him more freedom than full-time teaching would have. This month he would be in Raleigh.
    Bedford loved her; he told her so every morning and every night when she lay in his king-sized bed under the white down comforter. She felt guilty sometimes, knowing that she kept so many things from him—her family history and her love of mystery—intangibles that could not be measured on charts and proven with experiments.
    He was proud of Sofie’s research, of the work she was doing for dolphin conservation, which he thought would bring her both academic distinction and publication in scientific magazines. She basked in his admiration.
    The rest of the day flew by as she transferred numbers onto databases and graphs. Although Bedford would also proof her work, she felt the need to get everything as perfect as possible before his red pen hit the paper. She’d made a deal with herself—if she finished this section, she could work on her private research.
    She wanted to prove that dolphins communicated with one another, named each other. It would be a landmark paper. But more, Sofie felt instinctively that her theory was true. Providing empirical evidence would elevate the mammals to a higher place in the animal kingdom, and thus, she hoped, help protect them.
    Then she wanted to write a children’s chapter book in which a child learned how special every dolphin was, since each had a name. If there really were a way to combine “truth” and “story,” Sofie thought, life would make some sort of sense, shift into a definable paradigm. But she would tell no one of her work or why it mattered so much to her. She had made a bargain with God— I’ll only have one real dream and not ask for anything more. She wasn’t quite sure if God was in on the bargain or not, and she was being a bit dishonest since she also wanted to prove that dolphins not only named each other, but also had names for the humans they loved.
    When she looked up at the clock, the day was gone and she hadn’t been able to switch to her own work. She pushed her hair out of her eyes, stood and was stretching when Bedford walked into the room.
    She smiled at him. “Hey.”
    “You look tired, baby.” He walked toward her, touched her face and kissed her lips.
    “I am. Can we just go back to your place and grill some shrimp?”
    “I don’t have any food at home.”
    She grabbed her rain slicker off the chair. “We could stop by the market.”
    “I thought we could sit and really talk if we weren’t rushing around the kitchen cooking.”
    “Oh,” she said, as usual unable to find an argument against his irrefutable logic.
    He held out his hand. “Let’s go.”
    She took his hand, felt the warmth of him and leaned into him.
     
Philip, the maître d’, welcomed Bedford and Sofie, led them to their favorite table at the far end of the restaurant and left them alone.
    “Okay, what is it, Bedford?”
    “I know you don’t like to talk about your mother, but I thought you should see this.”
    “What is it?”
    Bedford reached down, pulled a newspaper from his briefcase and held it out to her. “Read page one of the arts section.”
    Sofie took the Raleigh newspaper and read the article while her feet and hands went numb, while her heart slowed to an erratic pace as if she’d dived too far down following a dolphin.
    The article told of an art historian, Michael Harley, who was traveling along coastal Carolina communities looking for Ariadne—the painter whose art was characterized by broad brushstrokes and translucent paint; who employed innovative methods to integrate background and foreground images on metal, wood and other surfaces. Her work had been dispersed throughout the country by tourists who had bought pieces while on vacation in the Carolinas, yet no one