The Secrets She Keeps

by Jolie Moore

  “I don’t know if this particular guy is worth it, but I’d love to see you happy with someone.”

  “May not happen for me. Maybe I had my one chance.” Because of the disaster that was Lucas, I couldn’t see a future with anyone right now. After a very long hiatus, maybe I’d consider it.

  “Don’t say that, Nari.”

  “I met ‘the one’ early. If he’d died fifty years later, no one would expect me to pair up. I had my run early, that’s all.” I knew I sounded defeated, pathetic probably. But I couldn’t help myself. Why did Daisy or even Lucas think I was whole enough to try this again?

  “I think you’d make a wonderful wife to someone new, and a great mom.” He held up his hands in supplication. “My opinion after knowing you a dozen years, is all.”

  I eyed the food although it didn’t hold much appeal. The waitress poured some nearly clear tea into my cup. I braved the jolt of recognition and looked at him more closely. I saw it now. He had that look of someone smug, self-satisfied, in love. The look of someone so happy they want to pair up everyone around them. “You seeing someone?” I asked as if I didn’t already know the answer.

  There was a long pause. “Actually, yes. I think Pam and I are serious.”

  “I’m so glad,” I gushed. The gushing was a bit of a put on, but I was glad, really glad. The Clarkes deserved some happiness. Maybe a marriage, grandchildren would put smiles on their faces. New life and all that.

  Simon had no problem finishing the sandwiches and half of the scones. It was some time before he spoke again. “I’m actually thinking of asking her to marry me.”

  “That’s so great,” I said, trying to make my feelings match my voice.

  “I want you to come to the wedding. Nari.”

  “I’d be happy to come,” I said. Yeah, well. Whatever. Happy wasn’t exactly what I’d be. But I would fly east and smile like my life depended on it. That or find a continuing education conference that “happened” to be the same week. But I’d figure that part out later. “So how’d you meet, Pam, was it?”

  I sat back in the padded floral chair and let Simon’s chatter wash over me. He seemed very much in love with the woman he was describing. I tried not to be jealous that one person could meet another and fall in love. That it seemed so easy and normal for him, for them. But so complicated for me.

  “So I came to ask you a huge favor,” Simon said, his face both earnest and serious.

  I couldn’t think of a single thing I could do for him. Unless she needed a physical and a specialist referral. “Anything,” I said. That was true. Even if he didn’t know it, he’d once been my brother-in-law, was still family.

  “I don’t have any idea how to ask for this.” Simon uncharacteristically stumbled over his words.

  “Just ask.” I hated beating around the bush. I imagined the worst, that he would ask me to be a surrogate for his soon-to-be wife. But even I knew it wasn’t likely there was something so far-fetched in his mind.

  “I would like to give Pamela my grandmother Maude’s ring.”

  I don’t think I blacked out. I really don’t. But when I put my hand on the china cup to steady my unsteady fingers, the tea was cold, and Simon’s face was full of concern.

  “Nari?”

  “You want to take away the one remaining link I have to Andrew?”

  “That’s not the way I see it—”

  “And give it to another woman?”

  “Nari, our grandmother wanted it to stay in the family.”

  “What happened to Van Cleef and Arpels?” The question had no class. I didn’t care.

  “I know this is hard—”

  “Didn’t you just say that I was family? I’m not going to run out and hock the ring, or anything like that. It’s safely put away.”

  “The tradition is for it to be passed on to the next generation of Clarkes. It’s not like you got married. That would be a different matter altogether.”

  And the lies piled up. Secret marriage. Secret baby. This was worthy of the crappy soaps people used to watch during college and med school. Of course, as far as Simon knew, the buck stopped with me.

  There would be no next generation. But even if I ever saw my daughter again, would I give Minnie the ring? I didn’t even know who she was. Who she’d turned out to be. If she wanted to know her birth mother.

  I cleared my head. My mind was going down a forbidden road. I needed to give Simon what he’d came for. That ring came with a promise of forever after. That promise had been revoked by the drunk driver that killed Andrew. “Do you want to get it now?”

  “I thought we’d finish tea. Maybe you could show me a bit of the city.”

  He wasn’t a tourist. But he wasn’t a native either, so I could probably show him something new. This wasn’t his first or last trip to the City of Angels. “Did you have business in town?” I’m sure his colleagues would be eager to take him out for a night on the town, especially if it meant prolonging their jobs.

  Simon's signing for the tea, and making work of the tip calculation was the worst deflection I’d ever seen.

  “I thought we could spend some time together,” he said, too cheerfully for my taste.

  “You came here only for the ring, right?”

  Long silence. “It’s just that Mom and Dad and I thought it was time to bring it home.”

  Her house wasn’t home for the Clarke family heirloom. It stung more than it should. “Let’s go now,” I said. Because if we talked about it one single minute further, I’d never be able to give it up.

  “I like what you’ve done with the windows,” Simon said when we got to my place.

  I hated that. I hated that he was trying to be nice. “Silk and Belgian linen,” I found myself answering as if interior decorating were important. “Do you want water?” Now I was auditioning for hostess of the year. “Wine, soju, tea?” I asked, ticking off the contents of my cabinets.

  Simon’s laugh felt forced. “I think I’ve had enough liquid. Can I use your bathroom?”

  I pointed the way to the powder room. The path to my bedroom was like a slow walk to the gallows. My reflection in the mirrored closet doors pained me, so I pushed one open quickly, watching my pinched face disappear. The cardboard box was where it always was. It would be in a navy velvet box under the albums and ticket stubs. I was lifting carefully when shouting pierced the fog of my brain.

  Laying the box gently on my duvet, I got back to the living room in a second.

  “What in the hell is going on?” My question was moot. Because I quickly figured out what in the hell was going on. Simon was standing in the living room looking at a very stunned Lucas—dripping wet, bath towel wrapped around his waist. The expression was mirrored on Simon’s face. Probably mine as well.

  Where was life’s rewind button? I’d happily go back thirty seconds, two days—twelve years.

  “I thought you’d left,” I said to Lucas. Because that’s what drunken lovers did. They tucked their tails and went home to sleep off their hangovers. They did not stick around and take showers.

  “I…needed to shower before I got in a cab,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d cross paths with—” He cocked his head toward Simon.

  Seriously? He thought I was that girl. Getting one guy in bed before getting the other one out. Mortification heated my cheeks. Maybe I’d done more than a thing or two to give him that impression. Fortunately, embarrassment didn’t tie my tongue. “This is Simon Clarke. Simon, meet Lucas Tucker. He’s the doctor in my office I mentioned this morning.” Perplexed replaced shocked. “Simon is Andrew’s brother.”

  Ever polite, Simon held out his hand. “Nice to meet you. I’ve heard great things. Hope you’re treating Nari well. She deserves happiness.”

  Holding the bath towel tight with one hand, he gripped Simon’s—hard.

  Men.

  “Same here. What brings you to L.A.?”

  “Came to see my almost sister-in-law,” Simon said. Well that big lie
of omission was out. I’d never told Lucas how big the secret was, or that it was a secret.

  “Did you bring your wife? Girlfriend?”

  When had Lucas gone all caveman? I let it pass. I’d take any distraction from him mentioning that he’d thought there was a marriage, while Simon clearly hadn’t been privy to the whole truth.

  “Pamela had family obligations this weekend,” Simon answered diplomatically.

  “How long have you been seeing Pamela?” Who in the hell cared about Pamela with a ring-retrieving man on one hand and a wet naked one on the other?

  “Do you want to get dressed?” I asked, reminding him he was naked and wet, in a living room. I hadn’t seen anyone naked and wet in a living room since college.

  “My clothes are in the dryer,” Lucas said, lifting his hand and pointing, nearly losing half the bath sheet. I was never happier that I hadn’t skimped on towels. Daisy had made fun of my spa-size linens when she’d lived here. She’d praise me now if she could see this.

  After losing one hell of an expensive duvet when Daisy had left it in the communal laundry a while back, I’d sprung for my own stacking unit. For a long moment, the rhythmic drumbeat was the only sound in the too crowded apartment.

  “Not to be rude, but don’t you have a washer-dryer?” My pointed question was for Lucas. “After last night—”

  “Maybe I should come back later,” Simon said with impeccable manners. Like he hadn’t walked in on the most fucked up domestic scene ever.

  “No, let me get it for you.” It was now or never. I knew that.

  “Get what?” Lucas butted his stubbed nose where it didn’t belong, again. It didn’t look like he was going to get clothes anytime soon. Maybe I had a bathrobe that would fit. “Get what, Nari?” Lucas’s pointed question took me away from the speculation on ways he should cover up.

  “Great grandmother Maude’s ring.”

  Lucas’ eyes pierced straight through to my heart. “Your engagement ring?”

  “It’s been in the Clarke family since the Mayflower or something like that. The first son to marry can give it to his wife. Then on the tenth anniversary, we’d have gotten our own, and given this one back, but—”

  “But—” Lucas looked like he wanted to say something. I pleaded with my eyes for him to exercise his right remain silent.

  “Nari told you what happened right?” Simon said, his eyes drilled on Lucas’. “They never got married.”

  “Do you think you should—”

  I interrupted. There was no reason for Simon to know. Some truths were taken to the grave. “But I’d probably be giving it back anyway right about now. So you’re actually on schedule. Let me…” I left them alone in the living room for only as long as it took to retrieve what was no longer mine.

  There was no time to skip down memory lane. I pulled open the keepsake box, and fitted my hand around the velvet. I resisted the urge to open it, reminisce, remember. The smaller velvet box underneath remained in its resting place. The wedding ring would remain mine, at least. It wasn’t an heirloom, pretty, or even all that expensive. But the simple platinum band with its single miniature diamond was all I had now.

  Deliberately, I marched back out and put the box in Simon’s outstretched palm.

  “He went to find his clothes, I think,” Simon said, closing his hand around the box and depositing it in his sport coat’s inside pocket.

  “Let me drive you back to Santa Monica.”

  “Do you want to have dinner? I don’t know if I’ll have a chance to come back to town before the wedding.”

  “You haven’t popped the question?” Didn’t asking for the ring seem a bit premature, is what I wanted to say. What if she said no? I could have held on to this little piece of Andrew a little longer.

  Simon gave me a funny look. “We’ve talked about it.” I guess I was still in the land of the immature. The last time I’d gotten engaged it had been a surprise. Mature adults over the age of thirty talked about these kinds of things. They probably had to plan weddings and honeymoons around careers and vacations, not when there were a few days off from school. “She wants a short engagement,” he was saying. “We want to start a family right away. Neither one of us is getting any younger. I want our kids to enjoy their grandparents as long as they can.”

  I wondered, not for the first time, if Minnie would have enjoyed them. If the Clarkes would have loved her. Would she have reminded them too much of Andrew? Or not enough of Andrew and too much of me?

  “I have to get to work early in the morning, so I don’t think I can do dinner tonight.” I knew my limits and I’d about reached them. Sitting stoically while Simon reminisced was a form of Chinese water torture I’d barely survived the last two or three times we’d done it.

  “Yep, there’s a seven-thirty meeting,” Lucas said, coming back into the room. Fortunately, he was fully dressed this time around.

  “Will you ride with us?” I asked Lucas. For a moment, at least, I needed a buffer between myself and both of them.

  The goodbye at Simon's hotel was awkward. I hugged him hard. This would be the last time we were together like this. The next time I saw him, he’d probably be married, have a baby in tow. I don’t know why there was such a sense of finality in our parting. But it was there. Maybe because I’d given up the last bit of Andrew.

  I held up my hand and shaded my eyes against the sun as another Clarke left my life.

  Chapter 22

  Lucas

  Nari hopped back up onto her seat and slammed the door—hard.

  “Where’s your car?”

  Having ditched one guy, she seemed eager to cut me loose as well. But I didn’t want to be gone that easily. I wanted to know why Simon didn’t know about her marriage. Why she chose to tell me about the baby. I bounced my phone on my knee. “Can we swing by Sunset? I have the keys, so it should still be there unless the city towed it.”

  “Fine,” Nari said, pulling saucer-sized sunglasses down over her eyes. She shot north on the ramp to the Pacific Coast Highway. The Range Rover moved fast for something that had to have the curb weight of an Asian elephant.

  “Ocean’s different out here,” I said. Nari didn’t turn her head. I looked around at all the gadgets, hoping I was doing a good job of keeping up a conversation with the car’s interior.

  We came to a five-way intersection with the Pacific on one side and cliffs on another. She swung a hard right. Even with a seatbelt on, I held on to the grab bar for dear life. With the SUV’s high center of gravity, every twist and turn sent me sliding across the leather.

  Nari slammed on the brakes to avoid a collision with the Mini in front of her. The sign said we were at Capri road. From my Sierra club Saturdays, I knew we were a long way from Hollywood.

  “Are we going to talk about it?” I said.

  Alchemy must have turned her foot to lead, because we zoomed past several canyons faster than I could read the signs.

  “Talk about what, Lucas?” Her voice was flat. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “How could you give your daughter away?”

  Though we nearly clipped a man on a three-legged stool squatting next to a homemade “Map of The Stars” sign, he didn’t move a muscle. As we took the corner on to a residential street far too fast, I imagined he’d had too many brushes with barreling luxury trucks to be fazed.

  The Range Rover’s brakes were pretty good. Nari screeched to a halt on a tiny street in what I think was Brentwood. Tall fences with even taller trees behind them shaded the roadway.

  She turned on me, whipping off her sunglasses. “You think it was easy?”

  “You get up, get dressed, and walk through the day.”

  “This is so unfair and judgmental. You know what I go through every year.”

  “Does the sexual healing work?” I couldn’t keep sarcasm from my voice. “I couldn’t find it last night.”

  In a flurry of movement, Nari unbuckled herself, jumped from the car, and s
talked down the street.

  My head pounded with the door slam. But I sobered up quick enough to get myself out of the car. She couldn’t move that fast in her strappy sandal things, and I was able to easily overtake her.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, laying a hand on her bare upper arm.

  “Are you?”

  “It was uncalled for, what I said back there.” I wanted her to know that I wasn’t a mean spirited person. I was confused, though. So very confused how a normally compassionate woman—a woman who worried more about her patients than most doctors—could do something so cold.

  “I thought it would be easier than it is,” Nari started. Her eyes closed. I could see that she had been transported to the past. “The woman at the agency said it would be difficult initially. The physical pain of my milk coming in, the episiotomy stitches. But that, that was the easy part. A hormone shot and pain pills cured me in a few days.”

  “But…”

  She blinked rapidly a few times, pulled her sunglasses down, turned away from me.

  “But what, Lucas? Do you want to hear that everyday my heart aches a little? That I avoid playgrounds, pediatrics, and parties. That Minnie is eleven years old—”

  I brushed a hank of hair that had escaped her bun, over her shaking shoulder. “You named her?”

  “Your mother named you. Babies are little people. They’re just people we can’t keep.”

  “But you could have kept her. You didn’t have a crazy husband or overbearing religious parents.” I paused. Maybe that was it. I’d met kids in school with fundamentalist parents. Parents they hid every non-conforming aspect of their lives from. “Was it your mom and dad?” I asked, ready to lay blame.

  “Threatened to disown me,” she said with such finality I almost believed her—almost.

  “But wouldn’t they have changed when you had the baby?” Didn’t all parents come around when their wayward children brought cherubic little ones around?

  She shook her head like her parents were immune to the charm of babies. “Plus, my husband had died.”