The Children's Secret

by Nina Monroe

  “Ready to go?” Bryar says. “If we’re going to make it back in time for the Thanksgiving pot luck, we should leave now.”

  “Ready!” Laila and Hanif say.

  Astrid and Bryar laugh. “You guys are totally twins.”

  “Yeah,” they say. “We are.” They look at each other. They know that they both messed up: that Hanif should never have grabbed that pistol from Astrid or shot it; that Laila should never have tried to hide it. But they also know that sometimes good things come out of bad decisions. They really let Dad down, but it helped him understand them better—and it made him slow down and notice them again. So, in some twisted way, it’s all been kind of worth it.

  “We’ll see you at St. Mary’s!” Laila calls up to Mom and Dad.

  “See you there,” Mom and Dad say.

  The twins look at each other and laugh at how Mom and Dad said the same thing at the same time, like they usually do.

  Bryar and Astrid lean their bicycles up against the fountain, hang their helmets from the handlebars, and the four children walk up Main Street to St. Mary’s.

  * * *

  Abi stands back from the HAPPY THANKSGIVING banner and smiles. “It looks awesome, Cal,” she says.

  Everyone had been really surprised when the art teacher, Mrs. Tillman, agreed to let Cal take some paints home over the holidays. They’d been even more surprised that Cal plucked up the courage to ask her. After everything, they thought that maybe Mrs. Tillman would ban Cal from the art room. But she said that every artist needs to go through a rebellious phase—and that now it’s time to learn how to channel his art in a way that helps people rather than hurting them.

  Abi remembers how she felt when she looked at the graffiti on the mosque: how the words made her feel sick to her stomach. But at the same time, she remembers thinking how beautiful they were. The colors. The shape of the letters. And she knew that he’d done it out of love, to protect her.

  Cal gets up off his knees and stares at the banner. His hands and hair and sneakers are streaked with paint. He might be learning to channel his art but he still makes a mess.

  “Not too cheesy?” he says.

  He’s drawn turkeys and pumpkins and squirrels and chipmunks around the edge of the banner.

  “What’s Thanksgiving without a bit of cheese?” Abi says. “And anyway, you’ve given them an edge—a cool take on Thanksgiving.”

  Even when things were really bad with Mom, they’d still celebrate Thanksgiving. They’d have turkey sandwiches rather than a proper turkey, and the pie was from the frozen section at Walmart, but it still felt special. It was the only time they remember ever sitting down and eating together.

  “Cool banner!” someone calls from across the road.

  They turn around to see Skye walking toward them, along with her brothers.

  “Thanks,” Cal says, blushing.

  It took a while, after what happened in the stable, for them to find a way back to each other. But then, after school one day, Cal went to find Skye in the woods and asked her whether she’d come to the art room with him to look at what he’d been working on. After that, she started visiting most afternoons. The art teacher didn’t say anything. Now, Skye and Cal are always together. Abi’s never seen Cal let anyone get so close. Until they came to Middlebrook, he always said that it was just a matter of time before they’d be moved on again, so making friends was pointless. But Skye’s more than a friend. And this time, he doesn’t want to move.

  Cal and Abi are trying to forget that they’re on a trial period until Christmas, which is when they’ll have a court hearing about the fact that Avery wants to adopt them. Bill said that the judge is going to need to see some signs that they’ve made a real effort to settle in. And that Avery’s been able to keep them out of trouble. They have to prove to everyone that Middlebrook is meant to be their home.

  It’s more than they could have hoped for, especially after the news got out about Cal and the graffiti and about how Abi had taken the safety catch off the pistol. But Avery’s speech helped. There was a reporter from the Boston Chronicle at the opening of the mosque and she’d asked Avery’s permission to print it.

  Abi thinks about those things Avery said about her parents and how she grew up surrounded by guns and how that didn’t make her a bad person—or her parents either. And she’d talked about Cal, too, that although he did a horrible thing when he wrote those words on the wall of the mosque, he had his reasons. And that it would help us understand people more and to blame them less. Cal wanted to protect his sister, she said. And he wanted to stay in the first home where he’s felt safe. He was scared that they’d have to leave—and fear makes you do stupid things.

  No one had ever tried to understand Cal like that. Or Abi.

  After the article, Avery got lots of letters of support. And some other letters too, that weren’t that supportive. But she didn’t seem to mind. People are never all going to agree about everything, she’d said. The main thing is that we’re talking to each other.

  Anyway, they’re trying really hard to make it up to Avery and to show Bill and the judge that keeping them here is the right thing.

  If there’s anything Abi’s learned over the past few weeks, it’s that no one’s family is perfect.

  You might have this amazing dad who loves you more than anything in the whole world—but no matter how awesome he is, he’ll never be able to fill the empty space left behind by your mom.

  You might have parents who end up splitting up because one of them falls in love with someone else and takes off because being with that new person is more important to them than staying with the person they married—and even their own kid.

  You might have parents who look like they’re really close but they keep secrets from each other, big secrets, like the fact that they’re pregnant, and who never tell their secret until something bad happens, like nearly losing the baby.

  And you might have parents who have loads of money and a big house and fancy cars and who give you nice clothes to wear—but none of that stuff makes them really happy and they have to tear down their big house and put on new clothes and say they’re sorry to each other to make it better.

  Having your mom taken away because she was a drug addict who shot someone to get her next fix is a pretty shitty deal to get as a kid, but it’s not the only shitty deal.

  * * *

  Skye walks away from Abi and Cal and goes to the back of the church. She kneels in front of Mom’s grave and clears away the old mulchy leaves.

  Wynn and Phoenix are there already. Wynn’s collecting the few leaves that are still a nice color, which he places on top of the grave, like bright flowers.

  It was Wynn’s idea that the children should get together like this, before the Thanksgiving party. Last time we did this, it made people happy, and Thanksgiving is about making other people feel happy, isn’t it? he said.

  Skye looks back at Mom’s grave. You put a whole lot of you into Wynn when you left, Mom, she thinks as she brushes over the letters of her name: Cedar Grace Bowen.

  Dad’s always going on about how, when people pass away, their spirit lives on in nature—in the trees and the flowers and the sky and the earth. But Skye thinks that people live on in those they loved. She sees bits of Mom in Dad and Phoenix every day—but most of all, she sees her in Wynn.

  She pulls Wynn onto her lap and hugs him. He snuggles in against her chest.

  “Pssst—!”

  Skye and Wynn look up into the oak tree next to Mom’s grave.

  “What is it?” Skye asks.

  “Don’t move,” Phoenix says. “I’m coming down.”

  Phoenix still does his disappearing thing sometimes. Like before, you’re still more likely to find him in a tree than on the ground. But he’s been spending time with them too. For ages, they felt guilty about assuming that he was the one who’d fired the gun. And Skye had felt bad that she hadn’t set everyone straight. But Phoenix brushed it off, like it didn�
��t matter.

  I’d have thought it was me too, he said once.

  Which made Skye realize that he was way smarter than people gave him credit for.

  She’d asked him about Astrid’s phone that Dad found under his mattress. About why he’d taken it from the stable that day and kept hold of it.

  I reckoned that Astrid had already paid enough for what she did that afternoon. She didn’t need people watching that video.

  So, you were protecting her?

  Astrid’s like me, Phoenix had said. People don’t get us because we don’t do what they expect us to. And we get stuff wrong without meaning to. And even when we mean to do the bad stuff, there’s a reason for it, even if that reason doesn’t make sense to anyone else.

  Skye realizes that she’d been one of those people that Phoenix talked about. That she’d assumed that Phoenix was messed up because he did things differently from the rest of them. And she’d thought the same about Astrid too.

  Without making a sound, Phoenix climbs down from the tree and stands next to them. “They’re here,” he says, his eyes sparkling.

  Skye and Wynn crouch beside him.

  “Look!” He stretches out his arm toward the woods.

  A branch snaps.

  They can hear soft, heavy footsteps padding through the dark bit of the wood.

  Wynn gasps. “It’s them!”

  He darts forward but Phoenix grabs his sweater and yanks him back. “Just watch, Wynn.”

  Wynn stumbles back. The three of them watch and wait, holding their breath, as a big bear, her fur a mix of brown and gold, like the leaves in Wynn’s bucket, walks under the trees, followed by her three cubs.

  And then, as quickly as the bears came, they’re gone. For a second, Skye wonders whether Wynn’s stories actually wished them into existence.

  There are more footsteps but this time they’re accompanied by voices. The three Bowen children turn around and see the others walking toward them.

  Cal comes over, grabs Wynn from behind and swings him round and round. When he lets go, Wynn stumbles around, dizzy.

  “Hey, careful of his arm,” Skye calls out. But really, she’s glad. That Cal likes Wynn so much. And that he likes Phoenix too. That he’s not just hers—that by loving him, he now belongs to all of them.

  Cal goes over to Phoenix and looks up into the tree. “I saw you jump down—is it a difficult one?” he asks.

  “No, you could totally do it. You just need to find the good foot holds.” Phoenix says.

  Even though he’s the younger one, Phoenix has been teaching Cal to climb some of the coolest trees in the woods behind St. Mary’s. Before Cal came to live in Middlebrook, he said that He’d never climbed a tree in his life. Now, when you look up and see a figure sitting in a tree somewhere in Middlebrook, it could as easily be Cal as Phoenix. It turns out that some people are happier off the ground.

  “Do you have them?” Wynn asks Bryar.

  Bryar nods and taps his backpack.

  “I think we should go to the pond before it gets dark,” Wynn pipes up.

  The kids look at each other and smile and, without anyone having to say it, they take off through the woods behind the cemetery toward Middlebrook Pond. Bryar trails a little behind the rest, turning every now and then to look over his shoulder through the bare trees.

  * * *

  The FOR SALE sign that stood, for over a year, outside the old house at the end of Main Street has gone now.

  It’s the house past the church and the library and all the other houses, the one that stands on its own, just before the crossroads that leads out of town.

  It’s an old house, but it’s been looked after well. It’s got a red roof and white clapboards and a wrap-around porch. It’s a house that looks like it’s stood here for ever.

  Whenever she passed it, the house made Eva think of home: its oldness; the rose beds in the front garden, like at her parents’ house in Dorset.

  There’s been a buzz around Middlebrook about who’ll be moving in.

  Lily and Will stop walking.

  And then they look at each other and smile.

  “What’s going on?” Eva says.

  “You got it?” Lily asks Will.

  “Yep.” He digs around in his pocket.

  “Got what?” Eva asks.

  He holds two closed fists out to her. “Which one?” he says.

  “Seriously?” she laughs.

  She taps his left hand. He holds out an empty palm. “Try again.”

  She taps his right hand. He unfurls his fingers. A key sits in his palm.

  “What’s this?” she says.

  He smiles. “A bribe.”

  Lily laughs. “A bribe?”

  “To make you stay,” Lily says. “Or to make you think about it, at least.”

  After coming home from hospital, Eva had spent days looking up flights back to the UK and making plans for their return. But then, as things settled down, in the weeks after the shooting, she stopped checking so often. And then she stopped talking about going home. And after a while, she stopped thinking about it too, in that way that time has of making you forget the things that once felt so urgent. Though not altogether. There are days when she can feel it pushing up under her ribs—that longing for home. But maybe that’s just how it will always be.

  And now it’s Thanksgiving. Soon, it will be Christmas. And then the baby in the spring.

  “You bought a house?” Eva says. “But we don’t have the money—”

  “The bank has the money though, doesn’t it, Lily?”

  “Yep!”

  “Lily’s been in on this?”

  “Of course. It was Lily’s idea. I think I had the idea too, but she likes to take the credit, don’t you, Lily?”

  Lily punches Will’s arm playfully. “It was totally my idea, Dad.”

  Eva looks back at the house. “It’s an upgrade from the eighties bungalow,” she says.

  “Yes it is. It will need work though,” Will says.

  “I’ll help,” Lily adds.

  “It could be nice—to make somewhere our own,” Will says.

  “You’re assuming that I’m going to say yes,” Eva says.

  Will gives her a sideways smile. “Wasn’t that how I got you to marry me?”

  Eva smiles. “Maybe.”

  “I’m going before you two get all slushy.” Lily climbs onto the bike. “Promise you’ll give it a chance, Mom?”

  “Mom!” Eva and Will say at the same time.

  “If you start calling me Mom, we’re definitely going back to England,” Eva says.

  “You’re the one who wanted me to integrate.”

  “Not that much.” Will laughs.

  Lily clips on her helmet.

  “I’ll give it a chance,” Eva says.

  “You’ll love the inside,” Lily says. “We’ve decided which room should be the nursery, haven’t we, Dad?”

  Will nods.

  “Oh, so you’ve seen the inside already too?”

  “Yep!” Lily puts her feet on the pedals. “See you later, Mom and Dad!”

  And then she’s gone.

  As they watch her pedal away, Eva thinks that this, more than anything, would make her stay: that her little girl is happy, that she has friends. That in the last two months, she’s come to see Middlebrook as her home.

  “If you decide against it, it would make a nice holiday home,” Will says. “We could come back for vacations.”

  “Since when did we become the kind of people who can afford a holiday home?”

  “Well, whatever you decide, I’m sure we’ll work it out, my love.”

  “We will, will we?”

  He smiles and hands her the key.

  Together they walk up the porch steps. Eva opens the screen door and slots the key into the lock.

  * * *

  Lily pedals as fast as she can down Main Street and then along the narrow path behind St. Mary’s, the one that runs along the brook. She
cycles past the cemetery and into the woods and she keeps going until the path gets too bumpy. She leans her bike up against a big oak tree, takes off her helmet, puts it in the basket and walks the rest of the way, through the thick part of the wood, until she gets to the pond.

  And then she stops and looks at the children standing on the dock, holding rocks between their fingers, and writing on them with paint markers. They’re writing the things they’re thankful for: the good things that have come through the bad things they’ve had to live through since the shooting.

  She watches them crouch down on the edge of the dock and, one by one, they drop their rocks into the water. She imagines the heavy rocks sinking into the soft, wet soil at the bottom. They’re going back to the earth, she thinks. And maybe, thousands of years from now, they’ll wash up on the shore and other children will find them.

  As she looks out across the pond, Lily’s eyes blur in and out of focus as she thinks about how different it will look soon, when the temperature drops and it freezes over and the water stops moving. Bryar’s told her how the whole town comes out to skate and how fishermen drill holes into the ice. And then, in the spring, there’s a famous polar bear swim when the bravest people from Middlebrook jump into the freshly thawed water. Spring. The baby will be here then. She can hardly believe that she’s going to be a sister.

  She blinks, her eyes refocus and she looks back at the pond as it is now, today, and how the ripples from where the children’s rocks went in, spread out and overlap and then dissolve.

  “Lily!” Bryar’s noticed her. “You made it!” He’s standing on the end of the dock, waving at her. His face is beaming.

  She waves back.

  Then she looks over at Astrid. Their eyes catch, and they smile.

  Bryar comes over and hands her a rock.

  She already knows what she’s going to write on it. Clem—short for Clement. The name of the baby brother she’s going to have in the spring, the name she’d chosen with Mum and Dad. And, on the other side, she’ll write the name of the boy she got to know here, in this town, thousands of miles away from London; the boy who made her feel like this could be home, after all.