The Secrets Mothers Keep

by Jacquie Underdown

  To keep seeking like this is silly. In the back of her mind, she knows this. She will never find John. If she were like her eldest sister, Mary, she would not be stuck down here among the suffocating shadows.

  But it’s the act of searching that distracts her from what else hides within this cave. Something so terrifying and painful. When the last threads of the rope snap, she will come face to face with this creature.

  Grace cries. Ugly, wracking cries with sobs and tears and snot. One thing she learned is there is no pretty way to grieve. Nearly everything about the process is ugly, except for one thing—the love for her sons, grandkids and siblings is now so much more acutely felt it sometimes overflows as tears. When she sits her youngest grandchild, Josie, on her lap and strokes the soft curls from her face, her heart is so full it’s close to bursting.

  Grace startles when a loud ding sounds from John’s mobile. At first, she thinks it’s him calling her back. The rope around her waist tugs. But then she realises the ding sound is for his emails.

  No emails come through anymore, except for the occasional spam that has avoided the junk folder.

  For a moment, she stares at the phone, contemplating not looking. She’s fallen for this before—looked at an email or answered the phone, only to find some forgotten person, an old friend or workmate, who hasn’t heard of John’s passing yet, and she has to tell them. Then, for days, even weeks, she’s thrown back into the cave of grief so deeply it’s hard to gather her breath.

  But curiosity sits alert beneath her flesh. Her muscles tic. She reaches for a tissue from the bedside table and wipes her eyes, blows her nose, dabs her cheeks, then gathers the mobile.

  With a slide and a press, she opens the email.

  Dear John

  I’m sorry it has taken so long to write back to you. You probably think that I was not interested in meeting you. But that’s not the case. Not entirely.

  I am scared of how getting to know you after all this time will impact my life and my family.

  Hearing that my father is alive after all these years of believing he deserted us, has been a shock, as you can well imagine.

  Even now, as I write this, I’m still scared. Scared if I will like you, let alone even consider loving you. The real you. Not the thousand images of the man I dreamed my father was during my life.

  So, if it’s okay with you, maybe we can just talk via email and get to know each other this way first. Then we can see how things might progress later. I’ve got a thousand questions as I’m sure you do too. I don’t even know where to start. So I’ll leave that up to you.

  Let me know what you think.

  Your daughter

  Rebecca Putsy

  Grace’s knuckles are white as she grips the phone. Her heart is a racing bullet train.

  Your daughter. Your daughter. The words keep rushing through her brain.

  With fast, jerky movements, she rolls into sitting position and spins her legs over the side of the bed until her feet are on the carpet. Feeling the plush carpet beneath her toes brings a sense of groundedness and allows her a moment to breathe.

  She scrolls to the top of the message, checks all the details. Yes, it is addressed to John. This is John’s private email. Yes, Rebecca Putsy mentions that John is her father and that he had found her after all this time. Yes, she did sign off with ‘your daughter’.

  Your daughter. “But we don’t have a daughter,” she mumbles as she pushes from the bed. “We don’t have a fucking daughter.”

  The rope around her waist twangs as more threads snap.

  Chapter 4

  Lily-Rose

  Lily-Rose flicks through the latest woman’s magazine. Three months in a row, yet another trashy photo of her is on the front cover.

  She groans at the bronzed, bikinied, loved-up version of herself in the arms of Antonio. He is tall and muscled—perfect.

  “For fuck’s sake,” she hisses and lifts the mag, so she can see it more clearly. The strong scent of fresh ink coating glossy pages wafts. Have they purposefully focused on the cellulite riddling her arse? “They bloody well have. You mean-spirited bitches.”

  Dragging her gaze away from her dimpled butt, she glances again at Antonio. The gorgeous smile, the dark, burning gaze that says ‘you’re everything to me’.

  Her stomach tumbles like it’s churning three-day-old milk. What a liar Antonio turned out to be. How stupid she was to fall for it. The curdling morphs into frothing anger, surges through her body and trembles in her hands.

  “You’re a using, treacherous bastard liar,” she shouts as she slams the magazine closed.

  Her breaths are thin, fast. She doesn’t know why she keeps torturing herself, trawling through websites, news sites and magazines for evidence of her own stupidity.

  Stupidity that destroyed her family.

  Lily-Rose eyes the envelope she had placed on the kitchen bench. It’s from her mother—clear from the handwriting—but at this time in her life, the last thing she wants to hear is her judgement on matters.

  She huffs and mopes to the other side of the bench, collecting the letter. She can’t leave it. It could, shock of all shocks, be important.

  “Mum, why can’t you call or send me a text like a normal person?” she mumbles as she tears open the envelope and unfurls the letter.

  Her mother is obsessed with letter writing. All through her childhood, Lily-Rose lost count of how many times she heard her mother say, ‘One letter can change the world’.

  Mum believes that if she sends a letter with her complaint or request that the receiver will presume there are thousands of unsent letters of the same opinion.

  Lily-Rose, to this day, cannot bring herself to write an email, let alone a letter, after the number she was made to write as a child.

  Looking over the familiar scrawl summons a strange sense of foreboding.

  Stop being so melodramatic; it’s a simple letter.

  When Lily-Rose was stomping around the place, hands on hips, as a young girl, dramatising about some such thing, Mum would always say, “I swear, Lily-Rose, you must have been a princess in your past life because all you do is expect and demand that others be at your beck and call.”

  At fifty-years-old, Lily-Rose isn’t much different.

  And, no, she hasn’t grown up to be a princess, just fated to be a famous actress.

  She dips her eyes to the letter and reads.

  Dear Lily-Rose

  I know you are going through a hard time in your life now, but I want to let you know that I am here for you.

  I want you to come home to be with me and your family. Being cooped up in that big empty house on your own cannot be healthy.

  You need the love, warmth and kindness of your family, so you can work through everything with support.

  Lily-Rose flips the page over, trying to find evidence that someone has forged Mum’s handwriting and written this letter. Yes, Mum could hug well and is sympathetic when required, but this—this loving, kind, gentle nature—is not her mother.

  Maybe Aunt June had tricked her into smoking pot or taking that ayahuasca stuff that is all the craze. There has to be a catch.

  Is Mum sick?

  Her heart thuds. She races to finish the letter, body tight as she anticipates bad news. She can’t handle any more bad news. Not now when everything is falling apart.

  I’m proposing to you, the same proposition offered to June, Grace, and Pia. Come home. Together, I want to restore Viewtree House to its full potential and transform it into a profitable bed and breakfast.

  I’ll put forth the house as capital, all I ask of you and the others is to foot your share of the renovation expenses. All profits made from Viewtree House will be split equally.

  You are in the best possible place for change, Lily-Rose. This new beginning is here for you. Pack your bags, handle your affairs, and come home.

  Your loving mother

  Mary Rivers

  Lily-Rose folds the letter care
fully and places it on the bench. Mum can’t be serious, can she? Does she honestly expect that Lily-Rose will ‘settle her affairs’ here in Sydney and head on back to Tasmania to run a bed and breakfast?

  She laughs shrilly.

  What a bizarre request. One, because her mother has obviously thought that with this letter alone, Lily-Rose would jump on a plane and spend the rest of her years in the company of her mother and two aunts, who, in very polite terms, can only be labelled as ‘eccentric’. Very polite.

  That’s if her aunts even agree. She doesn’t have to wonder if her daughter, Pia, will accept such a proposal. She is in San Francisco having the time of her life, building her career.

  But what is most bizarre about this request is that Mum has come to the decision to open her beloved house to the public. Lily-Rose stares at the letter, finger running back and forth across her bottom lip.

  The front door buzzes. It’s Sunday afternoon—she isn’t expecting anyone. Her assistant and cleaner have been given the weekend off.

  Lily-Rose bustles out of the kitchen, down the long hall, her wedges clacking on the shiny tiles. After a quick glance in the wall mirror, a pout, and a tussle of her blonde hair to give it volume, she opens the front door.

  “Hugh,” she breathes. Her husband is the last person she expects to see standing on her front porch—their front porch, technically, but he moved out twelve months ago.

  Even after a full year, her heart is a ragged ball of glass sinking to her gut when she peers into his light brown eyes.

  In those eyes, she can see reflected back the first moment she noticed him across the university courtyard; she can see him in a cheap rented tuxedo waiting at the end of the aisle as she strides towards him in her wedding gown; she can see his hiccupping cries through her sweat and strain as the doctor holds their daughter in the air and bleats her first cry; she is forty-two and Hugh is glancing sideways at her with admiration after watching her movie premiere; then she is forty-five and his suntanned skin is reflected in the frothy waters of Bondi Beach; she is fifty and he’s sitting on the bed, staring, unmoving, as the scent of grief and disappointment rolls off him.

  Everything about him is so familiar, his height, his salt-and-pepper hair, yet she can barely maintain eye contact.

  “Lil,” he says with the shortness she has come to expect from him.

  She gestures behind her to the hallway. “Come in.”

  He shakes his head. “I’d rather not. I’m dropping by to give you this. I thought it best if I gave it to you face to face, rather than leaving it to my lawyer.”

  Lily-Rose narrows her eyes as she looks at the A4 yellow envelope Hugh is shoving at her. Her heart races a fraction faster.

  “What … what is it?” She has an inkling, but she hopes it isn’t true.

  “Divorce papers.”

  He holds her gaze as she takes the envelope from his fingers. “Oh. This quickly? I thought, you know, we’d give it some time.” As the words slide from between her lips, she wants to reel each one of them back.

  Had she believed there was a chance they could get back together? Is she hoping they can?

  “Yes. Best to get it over with,” Hugh says.

  “That easy? Wipe your hands clean and move on with your life?”

  “You didn’t seem to have a problem when you were screwing Ronaldo.”

  “Antonio,” she corrects, then winces.

  Hugh blows out a long breath. “I’m not going to stand here and argue. Here are the divorce papers. Have a good afternoon.” He spins and marches down the front stairs, not looking back.

  Inside her throat is a jagged plum-sized stone, painful as her breaths try to squeeze past it. She has been married to Hugh for twenty-nine years, and after everything she has been through in the last twelve months—the whirlwind two-week affair with Antonio while shooting a small part in Italy, then the humiliation and shame when every sordid detail of that affair including a sex tape, photos and audio were released to the paparazzi by Antonio himself, and then the fallout with Hugh once he had learned of her betrayal—these divorce papers are the biggest blow of all.

  She shuts the door. When back in the kitchen, she sags onto a stool. This envelope has sapped her of every last thread of strength. Tears burn her eyes.

  With Antonio, she was a shiny Barbie doll just unpacked from its wrapper, and he had played with her, marvelled at her feminine lines, moved her limbs, bent her over, swivelled her this way and that.

  She wasn’t blemished. She wasn’t old. She was a plastic object of joy. And she had basked in his fascination like he was the sun—hot, balmy bliss.

  Sure, she was a fool and her desperate clawing for affection ended with her losing her husband but for those two weeks, she loved being the star in a man’s universe again.

  A stronger woman—her mother comes firmly to mind—wouldn’t have fallen for the charms of a man half her age. She would have known from the start that Antonio’s single-minded plan was to screw her over after a little free-for-all between the sheets.

  Perhaps Lily-Rose knew all along that that was what the affair was about, but what Antonio had given her was a temporary reprieve from the aching hollowness in her birdlike bones. Bones that could never, no matter how much she tried, become whole and strong.

  Lily-Rose throws the envelope onto the bench like it’s a hot ember.

  She reaches for Mum’s letter and drags it to her over the smooth bench top.

  She still can’t believe her mother has asked for such a thing: for Lily-Rose, a famous actress, to spend the rest of her years in a small, rural Tasmanian town. And she even used her best stationery.

  But if it were such an absurd notion, why is she now considering it?

  Chapter 5

  Pia

  Pia sits at her favourite coffee shop in the Mission District of San Francisco with the letter from Nan in her hand. The shop is cramped, full of eco-friendly timber chairs, pot plants, and the whooshing sound of an espresso machine.

  Since reading Nan’s proposition to come home and turn Viewtree House into a bed and breakfast, something strange has been happening. San Francisco has become abhorrent. Knowing that there is an escape plan and an excuse to high-tail it out of here, it is as though she has taken off her glasses and is seeing this place for real.

  It could have something to do with the conversation she had last week with her boyfriend. A conversation that has sat in her guts like rancid food, leaving a rotten taste on her tongue ever since having it.

  Ben March, an app and social media investor, worth millions, has been her lifeline here. But with what came out of his mouth last Friday night after they stumbled home from a bar to his apartment, obliterated the lifeline.

  Pia has tried to fit in with this crowd that not only wants to strategise, analyse, hypothesise and scrutinise business but also themselves, and now, obviously, relationships.

  This girl from Australia is never going to be like that. That’s the reality. And here, in this letter, Nan has given her a perfectly acceptable out.

  She quickly texts her mother.

  PIA: Did you get the letter from Nan?

  LILY-ROSE: Yes.

  PIA: And?

  LILY-ROSE: I’ve already put the house on the market. Your father is wanting half of everything, so this will fast-track the whole process. And once this is settled and I’ve dealt with a few other loose ends, I’m heading to Campbell Town.

  Pia’s mouth falls open. Not in a million years did she anticipate her mother would say yes to this. Pia giggles as she shakes her head. Not in a million years can she picture Lily-Rose Freedman, diva actress, running a bed and breakfast in rural Tasmania. Then again, she bets Mum didn’t anticipate that Pia would consider it too.

  Her entire adult life has been geared at running her own hotel. She doesn’t have a Bachelor of Business and a Masters of Hotel Management for any other reason than to one day buy and run her own hotel.

  Ever since she was a young g
irl, racing across the country with Mum, staying in all kinds of hotels, she has loved every aspect—from the bell boys to the cleaning maids, to the restaurants and bedding.

  But her goals are so much bigger than a small manor in Tasmania. She has her sights on a chain of hotels like the Hilton.

  But maybe that’s this city’s ego rubbing off on her—bigger, better, faster, stronger, richer. Going by the excitement brewing in her blood at the thought of going back home, perhaps her dreams aren’t so big after all.

  Pia tucks a strand of blonde hair behind her ears.

  PIA: I’m coming home too.

  LILY-ROSE: What the actual fuck? What about your career? What about Ben?

  Well, her career is easily disposable. She works ridiculous hours with barely a break. For good money, sure, but to live in San Francisco, you need to earn more than decent money. She has a six-figure salary but has to live like a pauper once rent is paid.

  And Ben, well Ben can go and move onto someone bigger, better, faster, stronger and richer than Pia. She has compromised on many things by living in this city, but she will not settle for anything other than a trusting, monogamous relationship.

  Pia had laughed in Ben’s face when he had, minutes after what she thought was great sex, asked her, in all seriousness, if she was interested in a polygamous relationship.

  Pia sat up in bed and pulled the sheet over her breasts. His suggestion had the awful feeling of making her want to gag on the dread creeping up her throat.

  Ben sat up too, crossed his legs, not bothering to cover himself. Suddenly that half-erect penis with every pubic hair artfully waxed was a signboard of everything she hated about this city.