How to Keep a Secret

by Sarah Morgan

  His generosity humbled her. “I loved him, but I loved you, too.”

  “I know.” He brushed her tears away with his thumbs. “I wish this hadn’t happened to you.”

  She’d wished that, too, but of course if it hadn’t happened she wouldn’t be here now, with Scott. She was so confused it hurt.

  He lowered his head and kissed her. What began as a gentle, exploratory kiss soon turned hotter and more demanding. She lost awareness of her surroundings. There was only the thrum of blood in her ears and the heat of his mouth on hers. It was a kiss filled with regret, hope, love and promise.

  Rocked by emotion, she wrapped her arms round his neck and wriggled closer.

  They were so absorbed by each other neither of them heard the car door open.

  Through a mist of head-spinning desire Lauren heard Mack’s voice, shrill and shocked.

  “Mom? Scott?”

  Startled, Lauren jumped away from Scott and turned to face her daughter.

  How could she possibly be here? Why wasn’t she at school? How long had she and Scott been sitting in the car talking?

  “You’re—” Mack choked out the word. “Ed just died, Mom. You loved Ed. How can you kiss another man? It’s disgusting. And you, too—” She glared at Scott. “You made me trust you. You made me like you! And the whole time you were using me as a way of getting back into my mom’s pants. I hate you. I truly hate you.” She turned away, stumbling over her bike and almost falling. It took two attempts but finally she climbed onto it and cycled away at a furious speed.

  Lauren felt physically sick. Finally, after so many long difficult months, their relationship had reached a new place. And it had been a good place.

  And now this.

  Scott looked white and shaken. “She hates me.”

  “She doesn’t hate you,” Lauren said. A terrible weariness descended on her.

  “You heard her. She said—”

  “That’s a teenage thing.”

  “Hating?”

  “Using words like stones.”

  “She said I was using her to get into your pants. What you and I have—that’s separate. I wanted her to trust me. I wanted her to like me. Not because of you, but because she’s my daughter.”

  “I know. You need to not pay too much attention to what she said.”

  “What? How?” There was a sheen of sweat on his brow. “That’s a terrible accusation and she is wrong.”

  “Teenagers say that kind of thing sometimes. I hate you. No one loves me. I hate my life. She doesn’t hate you. That’s not what’s going on here.”

  He ran his hand over his face. “How do you deal with it?”

  “I lie awake at night anxious. Long after she has forgotten it, I’m still worrying about it.”

  Scott shook his head in disbelief. “So what are we supposed to do? I need to tell her she’s wrong.”

  “Let me talk to her first.” Lauren fastened her seat belt, her hands shaking. “Can you drive me home?”

  “Shouldn’t we talk to her together?”

  “Scott, she saw me kissing you. Talking to her together would be the worst thing we could do right now. She’s feeling vulnerable and isolated. She feels as if I’ve betrayed her. And Ed.”

  His gaze met hers. “I was the one who kissed you.”

  “That makes no difference.”

  “What are you going to say to her? You can’t tell her there’s nothing between us, Laurie, because that wouldn’t be true.”

  “She isn’t ready to deal with the idea of me diving into a new relationship. I’m not ready for it either!” What had she been thinking?

  “This isn’t a new relationship. I’m her father, Lauren. It can hardly come as a surprise to her that we have feelings for each other.”

  What were her feelings? She didn’t even know. “What we feel doesn’t matter. She isn’t going to be able to handle it.”

  “Wait—” his voice sounded hoarse “—you’re saying you’re never going to have another relationship in case it upsets our daughter?”

  “Eventually, maybe, one day—” she faltered. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying. I feel guilty and confused and right now like a seriously bad person. I can’t see you again, Scott. I mean, of course I’ll see you—this is a small island—but I can’t—we shouldn’t—not like this—”

  Of all the things she’d thought about over the past six months, plunging into another relationship hadn’t even been on the list. But he was right of course. This relationship wasn’t new. Feelings had been stored deep, lain dormant, but they were still there. There was a deep, unshakable connection between them that was impossible to ignore.

  She’d been worried she might fall in love with him again, but she realized now that she’d never fallen out of love.

  She knew exactly what her feelings were and the reality filled her with despair.

  He clearly felt the same way. “So that’s it? This is it?”

  She was trembling.

  “I guess it is.” She’d let him go once before and that had been hard. How much harder was it going to be this time? “It has to be.”

  33

  Mack

  Contrite: full of guilt or regret; remorseful

  Mack abandoned her bike in the garden of the Sail Loft and ran through to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  She flung herself down on the bed and sobbed.

  She was crying so hard she didn’t hear the door open, but she did feel the bed dip as her grandmother sat down next to her.

  “Go away,” Mack hiccupped. “I want to be on my own.”

  “Is that really what you want? Personally I hate being on my own when I’m upset. Every time I discovered another of your grandfather’s affairs I used to lock myself away, when what I needed to do was have a good vent with someone who loved me.”

  “No one loves me.” Mack choked into her pillow. “I don’t matter to anyone. I want Ed. I wish Ed hadn’t died.”

  “Oh, honey—”

  Mack felt her grandmother’s hand on her head. Part of her wanted to push her away, but another part wanted to fling herself into her arms and be held.

  “I wish we’d never come here. I want my old life back.”

  “Change is always hard, especially when it wasn’t your choice. Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  Mack discovered she did, and in halting, choppy bursts she told her grandmother about going to visit Scott after school and what she’d seen.

  She’d expected to see her shock reflected in her grandmother’s face, but Nancy didn’t react the way she’d expected.

  “You saw them kissing.”

  “It was more than a kiss. It was like one of those movie kisses where the people look desperate. Kiss or die, that kind of thing.” She brushed the tears away from her eyes and stiffened defensively. “You look pleased. How can you be pleased?” Her voice rose. “No one understands. I hate everyone. I hate my mom, I hate Scott and most of all I hate my stupid life.”

  Instead of reacting to this dramatic announcement, Nancy patted the bed next to her.

  “Sit up. It’s time you and I had a talk.”

  “We’re talking.”

  “No. You’re sobbing into a pillow and giving me teenage drama, but I have no idea how to deal with teenage drama because I skipped that part of parenting, so I’m going to have to treat you as an adult. You did say you wanted to be treated like a grown-up, didn’t you?”

  Had she really said that?

  Right now she wished she were back in kindergarten waiting for her mother to pick her up.

  Mack hauled herself upright. Adult. Right. She wasn’t feeling it, but she could probably fake it. “What do you want to talk about?”

  She noticed that her grandmother was wearing anot
her of her brightly colored scarves. This one was a swirl of turquoise and green. Mack wasn’t used to seeing her so glamorous. Everything and everyone was changing round her.

  “Why don’t we start with your telling me why it upset you seeing your mom and Scott together.”

  Wasn’t it obvious? “Dad just died! I mean Ed. Ed died. Mom was supposed to love him and now she’s kissing some guy—”

  “She was kissing Scott.”

  “Sure, Scott, but—”

  “Scott who is, in fact, your father. A man she also loved very much.”

  “You can’t love two people! That isn’t how it works.”

  “Welcome to adulthood.” Nancy’s voice was loaded with sympathy. “It’s messy, complicated, the pieces don’t fit and the picture rarely looks the way you want it to. It’s called real life.”

  “Real life sucks.” Oh yeah, very adult, Mack.

  “Quite often it does. And other times it’s wonderful. Light and dark, like one of my paintings. Don’t you like Scott?”

  Mack sniffed. “Of course. He’s cool. And he’s a great listener, but that doesn’t mean I want him and Mom to—you know...” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. She couldn’t work out what it would mean for her. In that car neither of them had been thinking of her, that was for sure. “I’d like life to stay the same for five minutes. Is that so hard to understand?”

  “No. I understand how you feel, but have you thought about how your mother might feel?”

  “About what?”

  “Life. Your mother has gone through hell and back the last few months. The man she spent more than sixteen years with and loved very much—” Nancy raised her hand as Mack opened her mouth “—yes, loved very much, died. That’s tragic and difficult, and the whole thing was made even more difficult because of the mess he left. Your mother had no cushion to protect her from that blow. She’s been weathering the anxiety of that alone, along with managing your grief and her own. She’s been worried about how she’ll support the two of you, how she’s going to give you a good life, how she’s going to fix things so that I don’t have to sell The Captain’s House. She’s been focused on her own survival and on being a mother, a daughter and a sister. It’s about time she thought about being a woman.”

  “I get that, but it’s like she’s forgotten Ed.” Fear made Mack defensive. She hadn’t forgotten him. She thought about him all the time. She carried his photo with her, although that wasn’t something she’d told anyone. What would happen if her mom loved another man? Where would she fit in that? She couldn’t see, and that scared her. “It’s like he never existed.”

  “She hasn’t forgotten him. She’s trying to find a way of living without him. Ed’s gone.” Nancy said it gently. “And no matter how much we want things to be different, he isn’t coming back. Once a person is gone, they’re gone. You can wait six weeks, six months or six years but that isn’t going to change a thing. Your mom can waste years of her life locked in a cycle of grief, looking backward as I did, or she can pick up those memories and carry them forward into a new life. I’m hoping that’s what she’ll do, and the sooner the better as far as I’m concerned. She’s my child. No one wants their child to be unhappy. It’s the reason she puts you first in everything. One day, when you have a child of your own, you’ll understand that.”

  “She didn’t seem to be thinking about me when I saw them together.” Mack knew she sounded petulant and selfish and felt a flush of embarrassment. “Sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. This adult thing isn’t as easy as it looks.”

  Nancy smiled. “I suspect that for that short time she wasn’t thinking about you, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you very much. She’ll always be your mother. Nothing is going to change that fact.”

  “I won’t stop talking about Ed. I’m not going to pretend he didn’t exist.”

  “Of course you’re not. You can talk to me about Ed any time. All the time, if that’s what you’d like. And I’m sure you can do the same with your mom. She isn’t trying to forget him, Mack. She isn’t trying to push you out. She’s trying to find a way to move forward and that’s healthy. She deserves to be happy. You don’t want her to be sad, do you?”

  “No.” Mack felt smaller than an ant. It wasn’t that she wanted her mom to be sad, of course it wasn’t. But nor did she want her life to be rocked by another major change. “I just—I felt as if I was losing my mom, too.”

  “Oh, Mack.” Her grandmother wrapped her in a hug. “I don’t know how your mother feels about Scott, but I do know how she feels about you. She loves you, and nothing is going to change that. As for Scott, let’s assume for a moment that she loves him—maybe she never stopped loving him—that doesn’t take anything away from what she felt for Ed. There are different types of love, and not every marriage looks alike, but that doesn’t mean they’re not real.”

  It felt confusing to her. Scary. “I’m not sure I can handle it.”

  “You will. People are capable of so much more than they think they are. It’s possible to rekindle relationships you thought were lost, build a new life when the old one was dead, learn new habits, break old ones.” She eased away from Mack. “It’s possible to forgive a friend a grievous hurt.”

  Mack felt another flicker of guilt that she’d been only thinking about herself. “What are you going to do about that?” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Are you going to kick Alice’s butt?”

  Her grandmother stirred. “What do you think I should do?”

  Mack was surprised. No one ever asked her advice. No one asked her opinion. She thought about it hard before she answered.

  “I guess it depends. I mean, Alice was your best friend, which kind of makes the betrayal worse—”

  “That’s it exactly.”

  Mack felt her confidence grow. “—but also it sounds like Gramps was—” She pulled a face. “Actually do you mind if we don’t think about that part?”

  “Not at all. I’d rather not think about it either, but you’re right—he was. He had a way of dazzling the people around him.”

  “I know.” Mack tucked her legs up and leaned back against the pillows. “When he was in the room you kind of only noticed him.”

  “Yes. Alice had lost her husband. It was tragic. She was alone and vulnerable. I suspect, for her, it wasn’t so much an affair, as a moment of madness. But there comes a point where you have to make a decision. You can carry anger and hurt round with you and keep stoking it and keeping it alive, or you can choose to let it go and build something new.”

  “Is that what you did with Gramps? I mean, you cleaned him out of your life like dust bunnies.” She wondered if that was a tactless thing to say, but then she saw her grandmother smile.

  “I did. And I said things I should have said years ago. Unfortunately he was too dead to hear them. But now that’s done.” She gave a burst of laughter and Mack looked at her anxiously.

  “Are you okay, Grams?”

  “Never better. Talking with you made me realize that I really have put it all behind me. Maybe it was all the clearing out. Maybe it was the yelling.”

  “Maybe it was Ben.” Mack watched as her grandmother’s cheeks turned pink.

  “Ben?”

  “Come on, Grams. I know you’re really into him. And he’s into you.” She nudged her grandmother. “You should see your face. You’re blushing.”

  Nancy put her hands on her burning cheeks. “It’s been years since I blushed.” She gave Mack a naughty look. “And years since I did other things.”

  Mack felt a flash of panic.

  Teasing was one thing, but this—“It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t need the details.”

  “Good, because I have no intention of giving you details.” Her grandmother seemed almost playful and Mack decided it was definitely time to move the subject away from Ben.


  “What are you going to do about Alice?”

  “I’m going to talk to her. It’s time we were honest. Secrets are like walls. They stop you getting close. If our friendship is going to endure and be something worth having, we need to break down those walls.”

  Mack pulled a face. “That’s going to be awkward.”

  “Life is full of awkward, but this thing with Alice is like having a stone in my shoe. I can keep walking, but I know it’s there. We can’t move forward comfortably until it’s out in the open, so that’s what I’m going to do. I’m hoping we can start over. That’s all you can do, isn’t it? Give up or start over, and we Stewarts aren’t good at giving up.”

  “That’s brave. And forgiving.” Mack felt something else was needed. Something grown-up and worthy of the conversation they’d been having. “I guess love is complicated.” She couldn’t even imagine it, but judging how so many adults made crazy decisions she had to believe it was true.

  “It is complicated.”

  Mack relaxed. It was good to know that in the world of adult conversations, she wasn’t a complete failure. “But it must be worth it, or people wouldn’t keep doing it, right?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Mack wondered if her grandmother was in love with Ben. “Do you think Mom is in love with Scott?”

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  “Because that would be awkward, too. Also, I’ve probably already messed it up.” Now that the shock had faded, Mack wished she could turn the clock back and react differently. Why did her feelings always explode out of her? She wished there was a pause button she could press to give herself time to think before reacting. “Scott is probably relieved I’m not his responsibility. After the way I yelled at him he’s probably already planning his next sailing trip round the world to get away from me.”

  Although he was her biological father, he wasn’t really tied to her in any way, was he?

  He’d walked away once before. He could walk away again.

  And after she’d been so rude, he probably would.

  She thought about the sailing lessons and about Captain and the fun of helping out in the boatyard. She thought about how Scott had encouraged her to talk about Ed even though it must have been hard for him and how patient he’d been with her.