The Children's Secret

by Nina Monroe

  She’s always loved seeing him in uniform but none of it feels real any more. It’s like he’s just dressing up for a part.

  “I’d better go—I don’t want to be late.” He kisses her once more, on the lips. “We’ll have some time together soon, just the two of us. I promise.”

  She watches him walk through the stable and out of the door. Hears him getting into his truck and switching on the engine.

  Lucy shuffles her hooves behind Kaitlin and nudges her with her nose. Kaitlin’s heart hammers.

  “Ben!” she calls out and starts running.

  Across the valley, she sees Priscilla’s cottage, shining white in the morning sun.

  She catches up with his truck halfway down the drive.

  “Ben!” she yells. “Ben!”

  Finally, he hears her, stops the car, and winds down the window.

  She comes to stand alongside him.

  “What is it, Katie?”

  She looks at him and she can feel it, even before she says anything—what the words she’s about to say are going to do to them.

  “I can’t do this any more,” she blurts out. “I can’t—” Her voice breaks.

  “Katie?”

  “I want them gone, Ben. The guns. All of them.”

  * * *

  After her confrontation with Wendy, Priscilla went home to have a shower and change her clothes. She’d wanted to go straight back to the hospital but she had to find a way to calm herself down before facing Astrid.

  She meets Peter at the bottom of the stairs.

  “How did it go?” he asks.

  “You were right. About Wendy. About everything.”

  “I’m sorry.” He touches her arm.

  She looks up at him. “Are you?”

  “Come on, Cil, you know that she was in this for herself—”

  She shakes him off and walks past him.

  “What matters is that we have our little girl back. That we’re both here for her,” he calls after her.

  She turns around again. “For how long?”

  “Sorry?”

  “For how long are you going to be here for her?”

  “For as long as you need me.”

  They look at each other. And then she hears a car slowing on the road that runs past their house and looks down the driveway—the driveway they’d fallen in love with before they even visited the house. The way it curved round, concealing the cottage until the very last minute.

  And then the cottage itself: an old shell that needed to be gutted and rebuilt. But that was what had excited them. They had similar tastes; they knew how they wanted to live. Priscilla had loved those long evenings when they’d sat together at the kitchen table, looking over the plans, building their lives together here in Middlebrook, forgetting the case she’d run from. It had felt like the chance for a fresh start.

  Maybe they can have that again, she thinks. They can’t go back to the beginning, of course. They’ll have to live with all these years that lie between them, the decisions they’ve made—the mistakes they’ve made. But they can try again. Try better.

  “Why don’t you come with me to the hospital—we should both be there for Astrid right now,” she says.

  She hears the sound of a car again. But this time, it’s drawing closer.

  And then they both see it. A rental car pulling up the drive. And sitting behind the wheel, the woman who took her husband away.

  CHAPTER

  51

  10 a.m.

  PRISCILLA SWERVES INTO the hospital car park, parks in the first spot she finds and runs to the entrance.

  God, I’m stupid! she thinks as she follows the signs toward the pediatric ward.

  Stupid to believe that anyone really cared about what happened to Astrid.

  Stupid to think that Peter still loved her—that he was even thinking of staying.

  Stupid to believe that she could depend on anyone other than herself.

  “Priscilla?”

  She looks up. It’s Kaitlin Wright.

  “I thought I made myself clear last night,” Priscilla says.

  Kaitlin stands up. “You did.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “I want to talk to you. Properly this time.”

  * * *

  “Maybe we could sit down?” Kaitlin suggests, indicating a couple of armchairs in the family room.

  “I’m fine standing, thanks.”

  Priscilla regrets having agreed to this. There’s nothing she wants to hear from Kaitlin Wright. Not now. Not ever.

  Blood rushes to Kaitlin’s skin. “I—I understand why you don’t want to see me.”

  “Look, if you’re here to apologize, just get on with it. I hope it will make you feel better. Then be on your way so that I can get back to my daughter.”

  Kaitlin takes off her coat and sits down in one of the armchairs.

  Priscilla stays standing.

  “Maybe you’re right—maybe I’m here to make myself feel better. I don’t know. I’m too confused by everything to work out what my motivations are. But I know I have to talk to you about what happened.”

  Priscilla wants to tell Kaitlin what she can do with her soul-searching or her confession or whatever it is she’s trying to accomplish. She’s done with listening to people and trusting people and believing that they’re ever interested in anything other than themselves. From now on, it’s just going to be her and Astrid. They don’t need anyone else.

  “Please hear me out,” Kaitlin says.

  Priscilla wills herself to move but something holds her back. Maybe it’s tiredness. Maybe she actually feels sorry for Kaitlin. Maybe a little part of her is curious to hear what bullshit excuse she’s going to come up with to justify why Astrid got shot.

  “Okay. But I don’t have long.” She sits down.

  “Ben and I grew up together,” Kaitlin starts.

  “If you’re here to defend your husband—”

  Kaitlin swallows hard. “I’m not.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No. But I need to start from the beginning—to help you understand.” She takes a breath. “Like I said, Ben and I grew up together in El Paso, Texas. We went to the same high school. We were in the same grade. Our parents socialized. My dad’s ranch was next door to the farm that belonged to Ben’s family.” She pauses. “We were meant to be together.”

  “Am I meant to find this romantic?”

  Priscilla can’t bear this. Sitting here, listening to what a wonderful marriage the Wrights have, all the time knowing that her own husband’s girlfriend has just parked her car in their driveway.

  Kaitlin continues as though Priscilla hadn’t spoken. “Ben and I met when we were kids. When our lives were tied up with our families. We didn’t question where we came from or what we believed or whether the choices our families made were right or wrong—we were too young or too naïve or too plain stupid to ask questions. But you see, part of why we fell in love was because we were so familiar to each other—because we lived next door to each other, because we shared the same experiences and understood each other’s worlds.”

  “You’re saying you married Ben because it was easy?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. What I do know is that I love him. That, along with Bryar, he’s the most important person in my life. That nothing makes sense without him.” She looks at Priscilla. “And I believe he’s a good man.”

  “So, you are here to defend your husband?”

  “No. What I’m trying to say is that because Ben and I grew up together, we didn’t question each other, not in the same way that you do when you fall in love as adults.”

  “I’m not sure what all this is leading to.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not making much sense. I’m only just working it out for myself. I guess what I’m saying is that it’s taken this week—with Astrid getting shot and Wynn getting hurt and our children being investigated—for me to wake up.”

  “To wake up?”
r />   “To question the way things have always been—or how I’ve let them be.”

  Although every part of Priscilla wants to look away, she keeps her head up, her eyes locked in.

  “And I’ve realized that you’re right.”

  “I’m right?”

  “Yes. You were right to keep kids away from the party.”

  Priscilla looks at Kaitlin’s bright green eyes and her frizzy red hair and her flushed cheeks. “Go on.”

  “And you’re right to blame me,” Kaitlin says. “More than any of those kids who were in the stable on Sunday. More, even, than Ben. The kids didn’t know what they were doing. And as for Ben, guns are part of his life—and his work. He’s thought it through. But me? I just went along with it. I never questioned what I really thought or wanted. And you know what? It turns out that I don’t want those guns anywhere near my home. That I never did. Even as a kid in El Paso, seeing my dad’s guns around made me nervous—like they make Bryar nervous. I hated how they looked. I hated the sound of them and the smell of them when they were fired. I think that I knew, then, deep down, that I didn’t want to have anything to do with them. But I went along with it because I didn’t think I had a choice.” She takes a breath. “But I see things differently now—that’s what I came to tell you. Now, every time I even look at the safes in our home or at Ben’s trophies or the pictures of him and his grandfather on the wall, it makes me feel sick to my stomach that I never did anything about it. And that makes me most guilty of all, doesn’t it?”

  Priscilla sits back. There were many emotions she’d prepared herself to feel for Kaitlin Wright, but admiration wasn’t one of them. She’d underestimated her.

  But then she remembers those first days, when she and Peter had just moved to Middlebrook. How she’d look across the valley at the house opposite theirs and wondered who lived there and whether they’d be friends.

  “So, I get it now,” Kaitlin goes on. “Why you cut off contact—after what happened to your dog. And why you feel like you do now.” She pauses. “How you must hate us. Hate me.”

  Priscilla looks out of the window. After all the rain, it’s turned into one of those bright September mornings that seem to wash everything clean.

  “You know that Astrid loaded the gun,” Priscilla says.

  “Yes. But if there hadn’t been a gun in the stable—or ammunition in the house—she wouldn’t have had a gun to load.”

  Priscilla turns back at Kaitlin. She was the last person in the world who Priscilla thought would understand.

  “What does Ben think about all this?” Priscilla asks.

  “We’re not really talking about it.” Kaitlin’s voice chokes up. “I guess I’ve let him down too. I was meant to be on his side.”

  Priscilla looks over at Kaitlin. “I don’t hate you, Kaitlin. And I don’t hate Ben either. Or Bryar. And Ben shooting my dog—that wasn’t the real reason I cut off contact between us. Astrid was wrong to take Jake out: he was a difficult dog. He’d had bad experiences in his previous home. Astrid should have known he’d freak out when he saw the horses.” She moves her eyes back to the dark window. “It just brought it all back.”

  Priscilla notices a reflection of herself and Kaitlin in the window pane. She’d always thought that they were so different.

  “You know why I stopped practicing law?” Priscilla asks.

  “You used to practice law? I thought you were always an academic.”

  Priscilla laughs. “No. I looked down on academics: locked up in their ivory towers making up grand legal theories without a clue about what goes on in the real world. Before Peter and I moved to Middlebrook, I was a named partner in a law firm in Boston. I was one of the most successful young female attorneys on the East Coast.”

  Kaitlin smiles. “I’m sure you were.”

  “I specialized in defending the rights of women locked into abusive marriages. I wanted to give them and their children a way out. The courage to extract themselves. Enough money to start over.”

  “That’s amazing work.”

  “It was. It is. And I was good at it. Really good. You wouldn’t have wanted to come up against me in court.”

  “I can believe that.”

  “But then I went too far.”

  “Too far?”

  “Pride—isn’t that what gets us all in the end? I was representing a young woman in her late twenties. She had three children—an eight-month-old, a two-year-old and a five-year-old. Her husband was former military. He’d served in Syria and suffered from PTSD. He was out of control. Drank too much. Spent all their money on liquor and cigarettes. Refused to get help. He’d have such big flare-ups of anger that she’d lock herself and her kids in the bathroom to get away from him. Once or twice she packed her things and moved to her mother’s house but he always persuaded her to come back.” Priscilla looks up. “She loved him, you see. Felt sorry for him; found excuses for his behavior.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “I fought hard. I wanted her out of that marriage—for good. I wanted her to have a fresh start: a new home in a new neighborhood. New schools for the kids, regular childcare checks. No visiting rights until Dad had gotten himself on some kind of treatment program.”

  “You didn’t win?”

  “Oh, I won. I always won.”

  “That must have been so satisfying—knowing that you’d helped her.”

  Priscilla nods. “Sure. At first. She was safe—and she and her kids had a future.”

  “So, what was the problem?”

  Priscilla buries her head in her hands. She doesn’t know why she’s telling Kaitlin all this. No one here knows, not except Peter, and even they haven’t talked about it in years. But she feels she has to tell her.

  “The night after the case closed, the woman went back with her kids to her mother’s house. And later that night, her husband broke in.”

  Kaitlin’s fingers flutter to her throat. “Oh God.”

  “He brought his pistol with him. One of the many he had in his home. He shot his ex-wife. Then the kids, who were sleeping. Then the grandmother. And after that, he shot himself.”

  A silence falls between them.

  Priscilla thinks that Kaitlin is going to leave. Now that she knows what Priscilla is really like, she’ll realize that whatever she might have done differently in her life, no matter how sorry she is for what happened in the stable, none of it compares to this—to how Priscilla destroyed a whole family.

  Kaitlin stands up and comes over to Priscilla’s chair. She kneels down next to her and takes her hand. “Thank you for telling me.”

  Priscilla stares at Kaitlin’s hands, rough and callused from her work with the horses.

  “I don’t know how you survived a case like that,” Kaitlin adds.

  “I didn’t. Peter and I moved to Middlebrook. I started the law faculty here. Hid away behind lectures and books. We had Astrid. And I tried, in my way, to fight for gun control—to make myself feel better about what happened. But none of that really worked, did it?”

  “You know it wasn’t your fault, right?” Kaitlin says.

  Priscilla’s throat contracts. “I pushed him too hard. He was suffering. And he had a gun.”

  “It would have happened regardless of the case, Priscilla. You can’t make someone do that. He was sick. He needed help. You stood up for his family—you did your job. You couldn’t have known what he was going to do.”

  “It still feels like it was my fault.”

  “What would you have done differently—if you could take the case all over again?”

  “I … I don’t know.”

  “You did your job, Priscilla. And you did it really well. And this horrible thing happened—and I understand why it made you feel like it did—but it’s not on you.”

  They remain silent for a while. Then Kaitlin stands up.

  “I’d like to help you,” she says.

  Priscilla looks up at her. “Sorry?”

  “I’
d like to make it my cause too—to fight for gun control. To make sure that America is safer for our kids.”

  “But—what about Ben?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t worked things out that far. But I can’t ignore it any more—how differently Ben and I feel about guns. I can’t go along with it just to keep him happy.” Kaitlin goes over to the chair and picks up her coat.

  “But you said you loved him—that you were meant to be together?”

  Kaitlin turns around. “How can we be together with this hanging over us? He doesn’t want to see it. Now that the investigation is over, he thinks that we can go back to how it was. He doesn’t understand that everything’s changed for me.” She puts on her coat. “I should leave you to get back to Astrid—I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

  Priscilla stands up and catches Kaitlin’s arm. “Listen,” she says. “You’re right—to be worried about the guns. And I’m glad that you came and talked to me. And I do think we can work together. I’m not sure how yet, but we can try.” She presses her arm. “And you were right about something else too.”

  Kaitlin looks up at her.

  “Ben’s a good man.”

  Kaitlin’s eyes fill with tears.

  “I worked for long enough prosecuting men who had no right to be with their wives or their families, to get a sense of what a good man looks like,” Priscilla goes on. “And Ben’s one of them. Don’t lose sight of that.” She pauses. “I did. I let go of Peter. I didn’t realize that he wasn’t happy any more.”

  The two women look at each other and, for the first time in three years, an understanding settles between them: of how fragile marriage is.

  Kaitlin sniffs. “But being good isn’t always enough, is it? To make a marriage survive?”

  “It’s a start,” Priscilla says. “A good one.”

  Before Kaitlin turns to leave, she looks at Priscilla once more. And as the women stand there, in this hospital room, they both feel it: that something has shifted between them.

  CHAPTER