The Secrets Mothers Keep

by Jacquie Underdown

  Mary slept more soundly than she had in a long time because she trusted that he was right.

  Chapter 27

  June

  June makes her way to the kitchen for breakfast. Pia is already at the bench making toast and turns to watch June’s slow amble with a slight curl of her lips. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Overdid it at my yoga class yesterday,” June says. Her muscles are heavy and aching and she feels very much her sixty-five years. It happens from time to time when she creates a new routine.

  Pia laughs. “I’m doubly glad I missed it. Did Mum end up going?”

  June nods.

  “She’ll hate you today then. Yoga makes you discover muscles you never thought you had.”

  “Even for me. Can you pop two pieces of that bread in the toaster for me, honey?” June asks. “And switch the kettle on.”

  “How about I make you breakfast. You sit down.”

  June’s not going to say no to that offer, so she sags onto a seat at the reading table. There’s a new tablecloth dressing it—pale yellow cotton with small pink and white flowers. She threw the singed one out. A small chuckle escapes remembering that morning.

  “What’s so funny?” Pia asks.

  “I was thinking about the smudging incident.”

  “What happened there?”

  She wave’s Pia’s question away. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Ok.” Pia places the tea-bag in June’s mug and pours boiling water over it.

  The toast pops and the room is flooded with the sweet, yeasty scent of toasted bread. “Just a smidgen of butter please and a small scraping of Vegemite.”

  Pia carries the plate of toast and cup of tea and places them in front of June. “I know you said you can’t read your own tarot cards, but I reckon I could read yours.”

  June’s brows rise. “Why?”

  Pia shrugs then smiles. “I don’t know. I want to see if I can do it. Maybe, in a roundabout way, I got the psychic gene too.”

  June sits more upright. Any talk of genes thrums on the permanent memory of a life that once filled her womb. “You may have. But as I said, I’d rather not know the future.”

  “Oh, please, that’s not going to work on me. If you force us to sit here and let you read our future then you’re to be subjected to the same treatment. Grab your tarot cards.”

  June huffs out a breath. “Fine. I’ll give you the book too, so at least you can interpret what the cards are saying.”

  “But you’re not allowed to butt in. I want to see if I can feel what the cards are saying.”

  June looks sidelong at Pia with an impressed arched brow. She is certainly sounding like a psychic. Perhaps foresight is inheritable. “Fine. Go ahead. Do your best.”

  She collects her cards from a small cabinet where she keeps all her goodies: smudge sticks, angel cards, crystals, and runes.

  Pia’s eyes gleam as June places the cards on the table in front of her along with the interpretation book. “This is so exciting.”

  June giggles. She remembers when it was like that for her too. Her first interest in tarot cards came after Mum gave her a set for Christmas, the year Lily-Rose was turning five. She remembers practising so hard every day until she could memorise the different spreads and what each card meant.

  Then, when her confidence was high, she would perform readings for Mary, friends at work, and Mum when she came to visit. After a while, something sparked within her. No longer was she blurting out what the cards meant according to the interpretation guide but from the images that flared in her mind, personal to whomever she was reading the cards for.

  It was a surprise at first—it scared her. She put the cards away for at least twelve months after that. But then a friend convinced her to read her cards one day after work. Maybe because she was a little older or had a good year to think about it, but when those images occurred again, she embraced them.

  Over the years, she has read so many cards that all she gets now is a subtle flutter in her belly, never excitement like Pia has.

  “Okay,” June says. “But you really need to try and create a calm headspace and environment otherwise you’ll be too pumped up to hear the answers.”

  The smile is no longer on her lips, but her movements are sharp, showing June that she’s masking the thrill this is giving her. Who would have known? The last person she would have predicted to be interested in tarot cards is level-headed, responsible Pia.

  But then again, June had always thought herself a reasonable, rational person until life choices made her into someone else. When you lose something so important at a young age, it’s hard trying to fill the hole—an endless seeking and wandering and never finding. Spirituality offers comfort. It helps her deal with the guilt and sadness.

  June subtly shakes her head, tossing those thoughts away. She has learnt over the years that that type of thinking only leads to more ill emotions, which does no good for anyone.

  Meditation has helped a lot with managing thoughts, but there is no cure to that sharp, scraping sensation that hiding the past brings, short of medicating one’s conscience or not possessing one to start with.

  “All right. So how do we do this?” Pia asks.

  “We’ll do a three-card spread. Keep it simple for the first time.” She has a sip of her hot tea before she takes the cards from Pia and shuffles. “It’s important that I have a question in mind while holding the cards.”

  “Okay,” Pia says with a self-conscious chuckle. “Make sure you do that. I want to make this as proper as we can.” She waits a moment. “Do you have a question?”

  June nods. Will the bed and breakfast be a success financially and emotionally? A safe zone.

  Pia narrows her gaze. “Do I get to know?”

  June shakes her head. “You’re the one wanting this to be as proper as possible.”

  “Fair enough,” Pia says with a giggle.

  “When I hand these back to you, you are to spread them out in a rainbow shape with your left hand,” June says.

  Again that excited smile. “Okay. I can do that.” She takes the cards from June and carefully spreads them out in a rainbow shape.

  “You don’t have to go overboard on neatness. It’s nice to have a few variances because those cards stick out more like they’re wishing to be chosen.”

  Pia finishes up and pulls her hands away. “All right. You can now choose three cards please.”

  June wants to choose cards that have no relevance to anything, but she can’t bring herself to dampen Pia’s excitement by providing a confusing read. It’s rather flattering and heart-warming that Pia is showing so much interest.

  She picks the first card and hands it to Pia. Pia places it on the table in front of her. June doesn’t look at what it is because she knows she’ll start reading them herself. She picks the next card and then the next. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m not going to look at the cards. I’ll face the wall.”

  “That’s cool with me.”

  Pages flutter. Then silence.

  “Hmm,” Pia hums. “What can this card mean?”

  Curiosity swells inside June to turn and look at the cards for herself. But she restrains.

  “Okay,” Pia says more to herself. “I’m not sure what your original question was, but this card has a few interpretations. Maybe if you tell me, then I’ll be able to work out which one fits.”

  June shakes her head. “Use your gut. What do you feel it says?” So many times in her life, she’s been ridiculed for this new-age interest and much of the time June has been made to feel like an idiot for her fascination in the unexplainable. But she can’t discount her experiences in life even though they are not able to be explained by science yet.

  “Okay, my gut is saying that you’re hiding something, and it’s hurting you to do so.”

  June’s chest tightens. This is why she doesn’t have her own cards read. Not since fifteen years earlier when she went to a card reader at
the Salamanca Market who gave a similar reading. She can’t remember the finer details, except for how it frightened her. It was too close to the truth.

  “Okay,” June says as steadily as she can, glad she doesn’t have to meet Pia’s eyes in case she is unable to hide her discomfort.

  “So, I’m not sure if that means anything to you or not, but I’ll keep reading to see if the other cards make sense of that.”

  June clears the tension in her throat. “Sure,” she says, though she can hear the weakness in her voice.

  More pages shuffle. More silence. “Mmm. This is all very interesting. Give me a moment to see what I can intuit here. Okay. I think this one means that in order for you to let go of the past, you must come face to face with it. A revelation and awakening at the same time. Oh, hang on … because the card is upside down, it may not be a pleasant experience.”

  June closes her eyes as her head reels with this news.

  But really, how much credence can she give to this card reading? It’s Pia’s first time. And besides, the results could be interpreted in multiple ways.

  “Does that make any sense for you?” Pia asks.

  “A little. Yes.”

  “Phew. Good. I was worried I was making stuff up that was completely wrong. You’ve gone silent—I thought you were being polite.”

  June doesn’t speak as Pia looks for the interpretation of the final card in the booklet.

  “I really don’t like the look of this one. It makes me feel nervous,” Pia says.

  June can’t take it anymore, she turns her head and peers at the cards spread out before Pia.

  The Hanged Man, an inverted Wheel of Fortune and the last one is The Tower.

  June leans over and scrambles all the cards. “That’s enough. We really can’t take these too seriously.” She starts moulding them into a neat pack.

  Pia angles her body away as she stares at June with her lips pressed flat and eyes narrowed. “I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”

  June forces a smile, but it’s strained and tight across her teeth. “Not at all. I’m so tired from class yesterday. I think I need to have a nanna nap.”

  Pia arches a brow. “Nanna nap? Since when?”

  “Since now,” she says, shoves the cards back in their silk pouch and throws them into her cupboard. “I’m sorry. Maybe we can do this another time.”

  Pia nods slowly. “Sure.”

  June hurries out of the kitchen and upstairs to her bedroom. She closes the door behind her and leans against it for a long time, attempting to slow her heart with deep breathing.

  She runs a hand down her face, blinking rapidly, desperate not to succumb to the tears stinging her eyes, but the burden of her past choices is too much to bear at times. She is so damn sick of their intrusion.

  Despite the decisions in her past being made for reasons beyond her control, they are in conflict with her own innate ethics and have never sat comfortably. Keeping these secrets concealed has meant sacrifice after sacrifice, not only in her life but spiritually and emotionally. How many more sacrifices can she possibly make?

  When she was younger, she had aspirations to become a scientist, but that had to be cast aside once she fell pregnant. She had loved her high-school sweetheart, Joshua, with all her might. Her pregnancy was an accident—a ripped condom in their eagerness and inexperience. And she had to leave him behind in Hobart without ever an explanation as to where she went.

  For years, she wondered what had happened to him. If only they were given the chance to be the parents they wanted to be together, then life could have been very different.

  But she was never given that choice. Times were much different back then. She either lost her baby or she lost Joshua. Of course, she chose her baby.

  June crawls onto her bed, nursing her head on her pillow as tears rush down her cheeks. Her entire life has been designed in such a way that it shall always remain hidden that she had a baby when she was fifteen.

  The agonising shame of falling pregnant so young was painful enough a reason to keep it concealed. But mostly, if Lily-Rose ever finds out that June is her biological mother, after all these years of lies, what will that do to her daughter and this family?

  Still to this day, Lily-Rose is her number one concern. Every decision has been for her. All those days, weeks, months and years of being an outsider looking in on a life she could have had for herself was all for Lily-Rose. And June never complained.

  She can’t blame Mary for any of this. Mary has gone far beyond what a sister would ever be expected to do. And Robert—what an amazing man to go to such lengths to carry out the charade. He would have done anything for Mary, and June would be eternally grateful that he loved Mary enough to perform this one kindness. Even put his reputation and profession at risk.

  When Lily-Rose was seven, June met an amazing man, Adam. He was a couple of years older than her. She fell in dizzying love with him and hope was, once again, a force within her because, with this man, she could be happy, normal.

  But the day came when he wanted more. He asked June to marry him. But she knew that if she said yes, he would expect her to live with him, and then what? What if he wanted to move to another town, another state? June couldn’t risk leaving Lily-Rose. Never ever could she leave her. So she ended it with Adam.

  Mary never asked why; they all knew the reason.

  Then when Lily-Rose was ten, Robert passed away. Life turned very bleak after that...

  June sits up quickly, wiping at her eyes. No. She can’t get into this. If she wants to navigate life with a semi-semblance of normality, she has to cast those thoughts aside.

  She rolls off the bed and grabs her meditation pillow from the clothes cupboard. She places it on the ground and sits cross-legged.

  That final tarot card doesn’t mean anything. Change happens all the time, every single second of every single day. It doesn’t have to indicate that her bubble she has existed in here at the manor is going to burst or that she will be slipping and sliding as she attempts to find her feet on new ground.

  The past is going to stay behind her. Life will go on as it always has. For the sake of this family, and herself, it must.

  June closes her eyes, settles her mind by concentrating on the melodic chirp of birds, the building noises that echo from the back of the manor, soft voices downstairs, and the creaks and groans of the house as it settles into a new day.

  She breathes deeply, in and out, and when she has a slight sense of calm, she focuses on her breath. No more thoughts. She must find peace in the here and now. She must.

  Chapter 28

  Grace

  Grace pokes her head into Mary’s bedroom. Clean and orderly, as always, the curtains tied back, but it is otherwise empty.

  Grace’s stomach is a simmering mass of nerves. She needs to find Mary, so she can help her decide what to do.

  As a child, Mary was whom Grace went to for guidance and for help. Now that John is no longer here, she finds herself falling back into that dynamic. Easy to do—Mary is genuinely caring, but nothing ruffles her feathers so much that she loses her level head.

  Contrarily, Grace has always been emotional. As a teacher, it sometimes worked against her, especially when she reacted too much to the whims of the nastier students. But it also worked in her favour as her emotions opened her heart enough to care deeply about the kids.

  She shuffles down to the library—empty. Towards the staircase, she stops outside June’s bedroom, but the door is closed. She hesitates there, lifts her hand to knock, but decides against it.

  Right now she needs Mary only.

  Grace makes her way downstairs, a rainbow of muted colours flooding through the leadlight window, and heads along the entrance hall and out through the front door.

  She finds Mary on a garden stool, floppy straw hat on her head, white gloves on her hands.

  “There you are,” she says breathlessly.

  Mary looks up and climbs to her feet as quickly
as she can. “Everything okay?”

  Grace shakes her head and holds up her mobile phone. “I received an email back from Rebecca.”

  Mary’s eyes widen. “The daughter?”

  Grace nods.

  “Well, open it up and let me read it.”

  Grace lights up the screen with Rebecca’s email while Mary takes off her gloves then hands the phone to Mary.

  Mary is silent for a minute, which feels more like ten, as she reads the email.

  Since Grace’s decision to understand the story behind John’s daughter, tight impatience has taken her over. Now, though, she’s unsure if she’s done the right thing by opening this line of communication with Rebecca.

  Mary hands the phone back and meets Grace’s gaze head-on. With little noticeable emotion, she says, “She sounds very upset about John’s passing.”

  “I got the same impression.”

  “She appears to be a sensible person.”

  “I agree,” Grace says.

  “I can understand why she would want to meet in person because tone can be lost in emails, especially when the writer isn’t necessarily skilled in the art of letter-writing.”

  Grace glances nervously out over the roses, then back to Mary. “You see, I interpreted that differently.”

  “Oh?”

  “I think her reason for her wanting to meet with me is because what she has to tell me is … heavy.”

  Mary glances off to the side in thought. “I can see how you can interpret it that way. And I think you’re right. Whatever it is she has to tell you about her past and her connection to John will be impactful.”

  “I’m going to go meet with her,” Grace blurts.

  “Good. It’s best to have no mysteries left. It’s not always true that what we don’t know won’t hurt us. In my experience, the very thing we don’t know can be the only reason why we hurt.”

  Grace tilts her head to the side and studies Mary’s face, not sure exactly what she is alluding to. But right now, she isn’t concerned with vague responses but more so about this situation with Rebecca.