How to Keep a Secret

by Sarah Morgan

  “Good.” There was a wild look in Lauren’s eyes and she was shivering.

  Lie: to speak untruthfully with intent to mislead or deceive.

  “Are you cold? This place can be drafty.”

  Winter in the house was so much harsher, somehow. Summer shone light into dark corners but now, in the depths of February, the whole place felt tired and unloved. Or maybe it was the atmosphere. A house was only as happy as the people who lived there.

  “Scott fixed the windows,” Nancy said vaguely. “No more drafts.”

  “Scott?” Jenna glanced round cautiously, half expecting him to be leaning against a wall gazing at them all in brooding silence.

  “He was here earlier finishing off some work on one of the doors, but he left.”

  “Which shouldn’t be a surprise—” Mack glanced up from her phone “—given his track record.”

  Lauren flushed. “It wasn’t like that.”

  Why would her sister defend a man who had left her pregnant?

  Jenna wished now that she’d found a way to drag her sister out of here so that she could be on her own with her.

  “Sit down. Let’s eat.” Nancy put plates on the table.

  Jenna sat next to Lauren, across from Greg.

  Was her mother really going to act as if none of this was happening?

  And then she saw Nancy take a deep breath.

  “As we’re all together round the table, I thought this would be a good time to have an honest talk.”

  Really? Jenna thought. Did anyone in her family know how to have an honest talk?

  “That sounds healthy,” Greg said, and Jenna frowned.

  It sounded out of character.

  Nancy served casserole onto plates and handed them round. “Now that Lauren has had time to recover from her jet lag, we need to talk about what happens next.”

  Jenna added rice to her plate, appalled by her mother’s lack of tact. While she had the spoon in her hand, she added a mountain of rice to Lauren’s plate. Her sister needed to eat. “There’s plenty of time to think about the future.”

  “No,” Nancy said. “In fact there isn’t.”

  There was an awkward silence and Jenna felt a rush of irritation.

  Couldn’t her mother just once deliver soothing platitudes as she was supposed to?

  “Mom?”

  “We need to help Lauren formulate a plan.”

  “Plan?” Jenna failed to keep the irritation out of her voice. “You mean about Scott?”

  “No. I assume there’s nothing to be done there or she would have done it years ago.”

  “I’m here.” Lauren hadn’t touched her food. “Sitting right here at the table. And I know I need to make decisions. I need to find a job and somewhere to live.”

  “There’s plenty of time for all that, isn’t there, Mom?” Jenna tried to smile but only managed to bare her teeth. “You have ten bedrooms, so the house isn’t exactly overcrowded. Lauren can live here while she decides what’s best for her and Mack. The rest can wait.”

  Nancy sat down hard on the nearest chair. “It can’t wait.”

  “It’s only until I’m back on my feet again,” Lauren said. “We won’t get in the way. You’ll hardly see us if you don’t want to, and we certainly won’t stop you painting.”

  And there it was. The truth.

  Because they both knew that was the only thing that mattered in their mother’s life. Painting.

  “This has nothing to do with painting,” Nancy said. “You have no idea how I have struggled with this, but I know it’s the right decision.”

  “What is? What decision?” Jenna realized with a lurch of her stomach that this wasn’t about saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. This was something more.

  Her mother gripped the edge of the table. “I’m selling The Captain’s House.” There was a ripple in her voice that almost sounded like emotion. “The place is too big for me now. I’m on my own. I don’t need ten bedrooms.”

  Jenna couldn’t have been more shocked if her mother had clocked her with a skillet.

  “You said you would never sell it. You said your ancestors would turn in their graves.”

  “Things change.”

  Lauren was the color of hospital sheets. “Who are you selling it to?”

  Nancy studied her hands for a long moment and then looked up.

  “That’s the part that might be a little awkward. I’m selling to Scott Rhodes.”

  16

  Nancy

  Reflection: careful thought about a particular subject

  Nancy and Tom had been dating for precisely three months when he asked her to marry him. It had been a sunbaked day in the August of 1970 and they’d been watching the Island Queen ferry dock in Oak Bluffs.

  Even though she was in love, Nancy had no idea that Tom intended to propose. Why would she? She had little experience of relationships. Losing both her parents at the age of eight had taught her nothing was permanent. As a result, she held part of herself back.

  Tom, on the other hand, had no problem with relationships. He worked as a salesman, which turned out to be a perfect career for someone with his charm and charisma. The company he worked for was based in Boston, and he often spent weeks off island traveling.

  When he returned, it was as if someone had switched a light on.

  He turned that beam onto Nancy, who was dazzled.

  She’d dated one other man before Tom, and he had claimed he loved her despite her passion for painting. Tom had said he loved her because of it, so naturally when he’d proposed on that sunny day against a blue sky and a calm sea the first thing she’d said was yes.

  Right there and then he’d slipped a ring on her finger. She would have rather he hadn’t done it in full view of the passengers spilling from the ferry to spend the day on the island, but Tom had always been impulsive.

  It had been Tom who had suggested she paint the scene of their engagement so that they could remember it forever and she’d enthusiastically recreated the scene exactly as it was and hung it in the entryway at Tom’s request.

  It had hung there throughout their marriage, the blue skies and sparkling seas a reminder of that day.

  She’d been relieved, and also a little surprised, that Tom had embraced the idea of living in The Captain’s House.

  He was hungry, impatient, always looking for the next thing. He rarely sat still whereas Nancy could spend hours in one position while she painted, losing track of place and time. She’d expected him to try to persuade her to move to Boston or even New York City, but he hadn’t.

  “You’re a Stewart,” he’d said, swinging her round as if they were in a ballroom, not on a beach. “The Stewart family has always lived in The Captain’s House.”

  That was true.

  After her parents had passed, Nancy had lived there with her grandmother, a woman who had little in the way of a sense of humor but much in the way of possessions.

  Each generation of her family had added to the house, until it was crammed with objects from the past. There were days when it felt as if she was living in a museum.

  “One day this place will be yours,” her grandmother had said, and Nancy had wondered what she was supposed to do with ten bedrooms and seven hundred cobwebs. The weight of responsibility pressed down on her, but she also felt a sense of purpose.

  It was her job to keep the house for future generations and it was a relief to have someone by her side while she did it.

  It didn’t take her long to realize Tom didn’t share her emotional attachment to the place.

  “It’s freezing,” he’d say, as they pulled on more layers of clothing and lit another fire in the living room. “We should replace all the windows with something more modern and fix the heating.”

  He made other suggesti
ons that made Nancy realize he didn’t understand the house at all. Her job was to preserve it, not rip out the heart of it. Quite apart from the fact they didn’t have the money, she didn’t want to do any of those things.

  But it was the only thing they argued about. Other than that, they were happy.

  When Tom was away, which was often, she had her art and her house.

  The artist in her appreciated the graceful lines and the architecture, the woman in her loved the space and the light, and the child in her was comforted by the feeling that generations of her family were somehow there with her. Despite its size, it was impossible to ever feel lonely when your history was stamped in every crack in the wall. It was the kind of house that didn’t just belong to a family, but became another member of the family. And maybe a part of her had thought that with a house like this sheltering them, a family would be protected.

  It turned out she’d been wrong about that, just as she’d been wrong about so many things.

  They lived on Tom’s salary, most of which was eaten up by the eye-watering costs of keeping up The Captain’s House. She felt fortunate that Tom’s career in sales brought in enough that they could at least make ends meet. He traveled a lot, but that was the price they paid for financial security and, given that the house drained money and living in it had been her idea, she wasn’t in a position to complain.

  Nancy sold the occasional painting, but the money didn’t make much of a contribution to their household expenses.

  Had she been painting for money she would have given up, but she’d never painted for commercial gain. She painted because doing so made her happy. When she was painting, everything else vanished from her mind. It was art, but it was also a form of meditation. She could no more give up painting than she could give up breathing.

  Her sudden and unexpected career success had coincided with the birth of her first child.

  Lauren had been two weeks old when a wealthy summer visitor had spotted one of Nancy’s paintings in a local café. He owned a gallery in Boston and had a buyer who he knew would devour Nancy’s atmospheric seascapes.

  He’d taken everything she had, and come back for more.

  Her work went from being largely ignored to being much in demand.

  Soon she was the one who had to travel. She had exhibitions in New York, Paris, Geneva, London.

  With two young children it would have been impossible but by then Tom had lost his job and failed to get another, which meant that when he wasn’t on the golf course he was home. He was a wonderful father to the girls, always playing with them and making them laugh. He held them enthralled in that beam of light that drew everyone to him, while Nancy stood hovering in the shadows.

  She tried to feel grateful rather than hurt. She reminded herself that it was because Tom was good with the children that she was able to embark on the tour.

  She’d arrive home exhausted, and feel like a stranger in her own house.

  Without her there to add structure to the day, the girls were almost feral and any attempt on her part to instill discipline seemed to widen the rift.

  The harder she tried, the more alienated she felt.

  Tom would scoop up the girls and say, “The three musketeers are off to the beach. See you later.”

  Nancy felt excluded, but she had no idea how to insert herself into their cozy triumvirate. She loved her daughters. She loved Tom. What was the matter with her? Why did she always feel as if she was on the outside looking in?

  And then came that day in June, when she’d arrived home early from an exhibition in Europe and found Tom in bed with a girl he’d met on the beach.

  Nancy stared at the tangle of bedding and bare limbs and knew her world would never be the same again.

  “It didn’t mean anything, Nancy.” At the same time as he was throwing the girl out the door, he’d thrown a hundred excuses at his shattered wife.

  He was lonely. She was always painting or traveling.

  Nancy heard one thing—

  It was her fault.

  She wasn’t good at relationships. She couldn’t keep her husband and her children preferred their father.

  It was worse than bereavement, because every time she saw him she remembered that she wasn’t enough. That girl had turned out to be the first of many. Tom grew more adept at hiding it, but Nancy always knew. There would be late-night phone calls. Nights when he disappeared without telling her where he was going. It grew so bad she found it hard to be in the house with him, and one day she tackled it head-on.

  “I think you should move out.”

  “Why? You’re never here anyway. I’m the one who is there for the girls while you’re flying around the world being a big star.”

  Nancy had held the hurt inside. “I’m supporting my family.”

  “That’s right, rub it in. Make me feel less of a man because I’m not earning. There are plenty of women out there who appreciate me.”

  She knew about those women, and she’d watched as he’d raked his hands through his hair, those same hands that had stroked their way over flesh that wasn’t hers.

  “I think you should go to them.”

  This time there was panic in his eyes. “Leave my kids? No. I love them and they love me. We have fun together. They need their father.”

  The implication was that she was boring and that they didn’t need her.

  My kids. As if Nancy didn’t have a role to play.

  “They need stability. They don’t need a father who spends his life with his pants round his ankles.”

  “They’re not going to know unless you tell them.” His gaze challenged her. “They’re having the perfect childhood. Are you going to take that away from them?”

  She thought about what it had been like growing up without her father.

  At best they’d resent her. Maybe they’d even hate her.

  Nancy couldn’t bear the thought.

  As she was contemplating the horror of that scenario, Tom delivered the final blow.

  “If you send me away, they’ll blame you.” And she knew that what he was really saying was I’ll make sure they blame you.

  It gradually dawned on her that to keep any sort of relationship with her daughters and protect them from being hurt, she was going to have to keep her husband.

  It felt as if she was making a deal with the devil.

  17

  Mack

  Pressure: trying to persuade or force someone

  to do something

  Mack slammed her locker shut and wished for the millionth time that they’d never left London. The other kids streamed past her in the opposite direction, leaving her feeling like a lone salmon swimming downstream.

  If she could have picked a superpower, it would have been invisibility.

  It was her third week at her new school and so far it had been a disaster. In London she’d managed to blend, chameleon-like, into her surroundings but here she didn’t know the people or the rules well enough to do that. She was terrified of doing something wrong and making herself a target.

  They were studying totally different stuff, and the other kids were already in friendship groups. She knew from experience that breaking into those groups and being accepted would be a nightmare. The girl who had been assigned to show her round and support her had vanished back to her friends as soon as her job was done.

  The worst thing was lunch in the cafeteria. It was a huge open space where the strong flourished and the weak and vulnerable were exposed. Mack felt like a lone gazelle grazing on the savannah in full view of a pride of lions.

  Her mother had encouraged her to join after-school clubs to meet people, but so far she hadn’t spoken more than a few words to anyone and all she wanted to do at the end of the day was go home and escape to her bedroom. The thought of extending the torture wasn’t appealing
.

  Across from her a lanky dark-haired boy was pinning up a poster advertising the Coding Club.

  Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:30 to 4:00 p.m.

  She felt a thrill of excitement. In London, the focus had all been on traditional subjects and cramming for exams. There was no coding club.

  Mack checked no one was looking and glanced again at the poster.

  Could she go?

  No. Excitement gave way to gloom. She knew from experience that to express interest in computer coding would be social suicide, especially when she was so new.

  First impressions counted.

  She turned back to her locker, ignoring the yearning inside her. Whatever label she managed to earn in these early days would stick. She didn’t want it to be nerd or geek. Bad things happened to nerds and geeks.

  She dragged her heels to English. She loved reading, but the essays they were set were so boring.

  If she’d been a teacher she would have made it more fun.

  On a scale of one to ten, how much do you want to strangle Anna Karenina?

  She grinned to herself and then saw a student looking at her and quickly wiped the smile off her face.

  She tried not to think about Phoebe back home in England.

  Without making eye contact with anyone, she slid into an empty seat and pulled out her books.

  She’d already read the book the class was studying. Was she supposed to say so? Or pretend to be stupid?

  “Hi.” The girl next to her flashed her a smile that almost blinded. “I’m Kennedy. And you’re new. I’ve seen you in some of my classes.”

  Mack was so relieved that someone had finally spoken to her, she almost melted with gratitude. “I’m Mack.”

  “You’re British? Oh my God.” Kennedy pressed her hand to her chest. “I love your accent. Where are you from?”

  “I lived in London, but my mom is from here. I’m only half-British. She was born on the Vineyard.” And if it was going to make her more popular she would be as British as possible.

  “But now you’ve moved back? From London? Why?” Her tone suggested she couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to do that.