The Children's Secret

by Nina Monroe

  Kaitlin turns away. When she looks back out through the windscreen, Priscilla’s car is disappearing round a bend in the road.

  She leans back and closes her eyes again.

  A picture of Bryar flickers behind her eyelids: Sunday afternoon, sitting next to Lily under the big maple outside their house, the yard flooded with sunshine. Bryar’s looking up at the magician, smiling.

  He’s my son, she thinks. I have to stand up for him. If she stays home and hides away, they’ll think Bryar’s guilty.

  She switches on the engine, puts the car in gear and drives toward town.

  CHAPTER

  28

  9 a.m.

  IN FRONT OF the library, a two-story white clapboard that sits at the crossroads leading out of town, the street is lined with news vans and trucks. Eva recognizes the logos: Fox News. CNN. ABC News. NPR.

  A couple of articles in the Boston Chronicle and all the news networks jump on the bandwagon.

  She notices Phoenix sitting on the low branch of an oak tree in the cemetery. He’s got his back turned to her, but she can see what he’s doing: raising his hand in the air, curling his fingers into the shape of a pistol, pretending to shoot at the sky. Is he doing it on purpose? To rile up the reporters?

  She had taught a kid like him in London. Wild. Tough. Walked to his own beat. Liked to attract negative attention—to make people think the worst of him just for the hell of it.

  Well, whatever he’s trying to do, it works: a reporter takes a picture of him with one of those long, telescopic lenses.

  Eva’s throat goes dry.

  She wishes she could run over and tell Phoenix to get down off the tree and go back to his cabin and stay there. She wishes she could gather up the children and protect them from this.

  Lieutenant Mesenberg said that she wanted to call the meeting to calm rumors following an unexpected level of press interest. She said it would be helpful for her and her team to offer a few clarifying comments to calm everyone down. Only, right now, it feels like this meeting—getting the whole town together, and these reporters—has done nothing but stir things up more.

  People pour through the doors to the library where the meeting is taking place. Reporters. TV crew. Locals. A few faces Eva recognizes from the town and many others she doesn’t. An open meeting like this was bound to attract a crowd.

  Eva checks her watch. Kaitlin should be here by now; the last thing she needs is to draw attention to herself by rushing in late.

  The Sayeds walk past her and then stand awkwardly in one of the far aisles, looking for a place to sit.

  When Eva asked Lily how the twins were doing at school, she said that they weren’t in their class, which was strange. Eva had wanted to reach out to Yasmin, to ask her how she was doing. Maybe she could catch her after the meeting.

  At the front of the room, behind a row of microphones, sit a line of men and women in suits and police uniforms. Lieutenant Mesenberg is standing up, overseeing it all.

  Priscilla and Peter are sitting in the front row. There are a few seats with reserved signs beside them. Priscilla’s wearing a baggy sweatshirt and leggings. Her hair is greasy and tied back. Eva thought that she’d make an effort for the meeting: that she’d be holding her head up high, wanting the world to see her as the successful law professor, determined to find someone to blame for what happened.

  Although they’re sitting next to each other, Priscilla and Peter aren’t talking or even looking at each other.

  Eva thinks about the row she had last night with Will. The coldness between them this morning. She’s seen couples break apart over less than what they were going through right now. She couldn’t bear it if she and Will ended up like the Carvers.

  “Eva!”

  Kaitlin rushes in, her cheeks flushed, and gives Eva a hug.

  “Thank goodness you’re here,” Kaitlin says. Her eyes are puffy: it’s obvious she’s been crying.

  Late last night, Kaitlin had called Eva. She’d told her that Ben wasn’t coming to the meeting. Apparently, Lieutenant Mesenberg advised against it, saying It would be too inflammatory. What she’d meant, of course, was that it wasn’t a good idea to put Ben in the same room as Priscilla.

  Over Kaitlin’s shoulder, Eva sees Priscilla turn around in her chair. She scans the room and then her gaze falls on Eva. They lock eyes.

  Eva wishes she could tell Priscilla that this isn’t what it looks like. That she isn’t taking sides, she’s just trying to be there for the people who need her. That she wants to be there for her too.

  Priscilla turns back round.

  Eva kneads a knot at the base of her neck.

  Lieutenant Mesenberg picks up a microphone and taps it to check that it’s working. An electronic whine sweeps over the room and everyone falls silent.

  Eva and Kaitlin find a seat a few rows behind Peter and Priscilla.

  Detective Mesenberg starts speaking. Eva lowers her head. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Priscilla at tapping her phone and then looking back across the room at the door, like she’s waiting for someone.

  Over the next half-hour, various detectives make statements. The reporters ask questions. A few members of the public do too.

  Why is it taking you so long to find out what happened?

  Where’s the gun?

  Have the Carvers brought charges against the Wrights?

  Is Astrid Carver going to make it?

  Has Ben Wright been charged?

  Could you confirm the severity of Wynn Bowen’s injury?

  Is it true that the children were left unsupervised?

  Has the President responded to the request for tighter gun control?

  The President? Christ. The last thing this community needs is for him to weigh in, thinks Eva. And aren’t there shootings that take place all over America, every day? Why would this one be on his radar?

  The questions keep coming:

  Is it true that the Wrights gave their son access to a firearm?

  Could you confirm reports that the adults were consuming alcohol on the afternoon of the shooting?

  Is it true that Bryar Wright has been undergoing psychological treatment?

  She hears Kaitlin sucking in her breath.

  Eva thinks about the tabloids back home in the UK. How they target people. How they have no qualms about printing half-truths or untruths for the sake of a good story. She supposes it’s the same the world over.

  She reaches out and puts her hand over Kaitlin’s.

  Eva looks at the back of Priscilla’s head as she feels Kaitlin sinking into herself. Priscilla’s head is bowed, her hands folded in her lap. Then Eva hears the screech of a chair behind her. Everyone turns around.

  True’s standing up in the middle of the room. “Pointing the finger isn’t going to do anyone any good,” he says.

  Eva notices Skye sitting beside True, Wynn on her lap, his cast covered in words and pictures.

  Usually, True is a picture of health. But not today. Today, he looks tired. Eva would be surprised if any of the parents who were at the party on Sunday have been sleeping.

  On True’s other side, Phoenix sits cross-legged on his chair. He’s ripping one of the information flyers from the police into little pieces.

  They’re the only three children in the room; the others are at school.

  Then Eva looks back over at Priscilla. Her eyes are dark and wide and angry. She notices that Peter is holding her hand now, but not out of support. He’s pinning her down.

  “This was an accident,” True goes on. He has a deep, deliberate voice. “A terrible accident. And we need time, as a community, to heal.” He pauses. “This isn’t a show. All of you …”—he sweeps his hand across the reporters at the back of the hall and then to the police and officials sitting on stage—“ … should go home and leave us alone.”

  Then he sits down.

  The room falls quiet.

  Lieutenant Mesenberg clears her throat. “The purpose of this meeti
ng is to keep the public informed about the investigation. We’re aware that it’s a highly sensitive case, especially in a small community such as this. No one is blaming anyone, sir.”

  Priscilla pulls free from Peter’s grip and stands up.

  “I am!”

  It hits Eva again: what a state Priscilla’s in. The greasy limpness of her hair. The bitten-down nails on the hands she’s holding out in accusation. Her bloodshot eyes.

  “My eleven-year-old daughter was shot.” Priscilla voice trembles. “And now she’s in a coma. And it wasn’t an accident.” She gulps. “Someone’s to blame.”

  Behind her, Eva notices the Sayeds. Yasmin’s eyes are wide with fear.

  If anyone is innocent in all this, it’s the twins. They’re too well behaved and kept too strictly in line by their dad to have gone anywhere near that gun. But Eva knows that Priscilla doesn’t care about that: she’s going after everyone who was at the party on Sunday afternoon. In her eyes, simply being there makes them guilty.

  “Someone shot my daughter,” Priscilla goes on. “And I’m going to find out who it was and make sure they pay for it.” She looks around the library, as though if she looks hard enough, she’ll work out who’s responsible for hurting her child.

  Peter tries to pull Priscilla back into her seat, but she shakes him off.

  She keeps staring out at the room.

  And then her face crumples. She lifts her head. “And it’s not only the shooter who’s to blame. Every one of you who thinks it’s okay to have guns in your home is guilty. Every one of you who thinks you have a God-given right to own guns. You’re the ones who put my daughter in danger. Who put all our kids in danger.”

  She wipes her eyes on the sleeve of her sweatshirt and then runs down the aisle between the chairs and out through the back doors. They bang shut behind her.

  Everyone’s talking now. Whispering and asking questions and looking around, including the officials on stage.

  Slowly, Eva stands up.

  Kaitlin looks up at her. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to go after her.”

  “After Priscilla?”

  “Maybe I can talk to her—help her see that being angry at everyone like this isn’t going help Astrid.”

  And she shouldn’t be alone right now, Eva thinks. Not with all that grief and anger. Maybe they’re not natural friends; and maybe Priscilla’s wrong, lashing out against everyone like this, but she’s still hurting more than any of them will ever understand.

  “Okay.”

  Eva wants to be here for Kaitlin but, right now, she feels that Priscilla needs her more.

  “I’ll call you,” Eva says.

  Kaitlin nods but she’s not looking at Eva any more. Her eyes are far away. Something inside her is giving up.

  “We’re going to get through this, Kaitlin. I promise.”

  Eva doesn’t know what she’s promising or whether she even has the right to promise anything when she doesn’t know how this is going to turn out, but she has to get to Priscilla.

  She runs down the aisle. But as she gets to the back doors, they swing open and a moment later, reporters are pushing past her, cameras flashing, and then a woman walks in: a bright blue suit; a short blonde bob, hairspray-stiff; red lips; charcoal eyes. She recognises her from somewhere. She feels the familiarity that comes from staring into the face of a stranger over and over. It clicks into place.

  The New Hampshire governor is surrounded by men and women in sutis with badges bearing her name.

  Whispers ripple through the library.

  Lieutenant Mesenberg comes to the front of the stage. “Governor Warnes,” she says. “We weren’t expecting you—”

  The governor strides down the aisle, walks up the steps to the stage, picks up one of the microphones and looks out across the crowd. She pauses to smile and then she says, “I’ve come to express my deep, deep sympathy for what happened to your community on Sunday afternoon.” She holds her right hand to her heart. “I would like to thank Dr. Carver for inviting me to this local gathering. It’s clear that Middlebrook is a very special community.” She takes the time to scan the faces sitting in front of her. “I would also like to take this opportunity to announce that, as your governor—and as a candidate for the US Senate—I will make gun control a cornerstone of my campaign.” She leans into the microphone. “That’s a promise.”

  Eva stands at the doors, stunned. And then, something catches the periphery of her vision. Priscilla, looking back through the open doors of the library, past Eva, past the reporters and the people gathered in the library, to the governor, the woman leaning into the microphone, the one person in this room who she knows is on her side. The woman she invited to the town meeting.

  Eva was wrong. Priscilla doesn’t need her. And she isn’t alone. Not even close.

  CHAPTER

  29

  11 p.m.

  YASMIN GETS INTO the driver’s seat of Ayaan’s black Suburban, his work truck that’s always full of tools and samples and architectural drawings. That and his prayer mat. Designing buildings and his devotion to Allah: the two things that drive his life.

  She asked him once if she could drive his car.

  He’d laughed at her. Stick to the Subaru, he’d said. It’s more manageable.

  But Yasmin didn’t want manageable. She wanted to feel the weight and the size of the car. The power of the engine. The space around her. She loved the height of the seats: how it made her feel taller and stronger, like she was floating above the world rather than being swallowed up by it.

  This was America, she thought. A country that invited you to fill up its vast spaces.

  She looks out through the windscreen at the house.

  Ayaan came in late again, threw his clothes on the floor and collapsed on the bed. She’d put the comforter over him and tried to cup her body into his, hoping he’d put his arms around her. But his body was too limp with sleep to respond to her. He hasn’t touched her in days; he’s barely looked at her. She can feel it: that he’s punishing her for taking the twins to the party. The information meeting at the library had made him even more angry.

  She switches on the ignition. The truck roars to life; the sound sends a thrill through her body.

  It’s the same feeling she got when she heard the engines of the plane that took her to New York when she was seventeen. As the plane climbed into the sky, her old world fell away: Lahore, her parents, the endless overlapping circles of relatives who filled her house and the mosque.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t love her family, or her life in Pakistan. She just kept thinking that there must be another place or another life—somewhere that didn’t expect her to stay small and quiet; and there must be someone else inside her too, someone strong and brave and free. Someone who could do and be anything.

  She’d glimpsed that person, briefly, at Columbia. But then, when she went home and married Ayaan, she fell into the same old patterns: the shy, obedient daughter, the compliant wife. The person who’d do anything to avoid conflict. And the person she was, when she was in New York, disappeared.

  As she sits behind the steering wheel, she pictures herself driving through town and then turning out onto the highway—she imagines keeping going; driving long enough until all this begins to fall away. The life she had with Ayaan and the twins. Her routines. The patterns of faith that Ayaan kept so strictly—if anything, more strictly since moving to America.

  She looks at the clock on the dashboard: 11.02 p.m. She knows she won’t be able to sleep, so there’s no point going back into the house.

  She reverses the car out of the driveway.

  As she pulls out, she looks across at the Days’ bungalow. They don’t have drapes on the windows, so you can see right in. Eva is leaning over the sink, and Yasmin longs to reach out to her, to let her know that she doesn’t blame her for encouraging her to go to the party; that it was her own decision. And she’s sorry for not being braver. For not bein
g a better friend.

  Eva raises her head and Yasmin thinks that maybe she sees her but then she turns away from the window and the kitchen light goes off.

  As Yasmin drives down Main Street, she notices how yard signs with WARNES FOR US SENATE have sprung up all over town.

  The governor had never paid much attention to Middlebrook, not until today when she marched through the library, climbed onto the stage, grabbed the microphone and made this town her cause.

  Ayaan doesn’t like her—says she’s too loud and too opinionated. But he needs women like her to support his mosque. Priscilla had advised Ayaan to reach out to Governor Warnes when they were fundraising, and she’d been right, of course—she’d mentioned the mosque in a number of her speeches, got it some positive attention. And so, regardless of his personal views, Ayaan had invited her to cut the ribbon at the opening on Sunday.

  What if she finds out that we’re involved in this? Ayaan had whispered as they listened to Wendy Warnes talking about her newly found passion for gun control.

  Yasmin hadn’t bothered to reply. He didn’t want to hear what she thought: that there were more important things at stake than what Governor Warnes—or anyone, for that matter—thought about them.

  I’ll explain it to her, he’d said, answering himself. I’ll tell her that the twins had nothing to do with this.

  A few times, over the past few days, Yasmin has walked into the twins’ bedroom and found them whispering. As soon as they notice her, they go quiet. When she suggested to Ayaan that maybe they should sit them down and talk to them about what happened on Sunday, he told her to leave it alone.

  She thinks back to the program on the radio this morning. How that psychiatrist had said that parents didn’t ever truly know their children. How parents are in denial about what their kids are capable of.

  Yasmin keeps driving. Past the closed storefronts. The library. And then the church. A boy sits on one of the branches of the old oak tree in the cemetery; he swings his legs against the night sky. She slows the car to get a better look, but the boy jumps down and disappears through the trees.