How to Keep a Secret

Dammit, Lauren, why didn’t you talk to me?

But it sounded as if Ed hadn’t wanted to tell Mack either.

Feeling the sudden kick of jet lag, she toed off her shoes and went to stretch out on the sofa and then decided the place was too pristine to encourage lounging and slipped her shoes back on. She thought about her own comfortable living room with the sofa handed down from Greg’s parents and the dining table they’d had from his grandmother. She felt a wave of homesickness so strong that for a moment she couldn’t breathe. “Sorry to be irritable. I miss you. I wish you were here. I wasn’t expecting to fly into a storm of drama.”

“I’m the one who is sorry. It’s been a long day. I guess I forgot to switch off the therapist when I walked through the door. You’ll handle this, honey, I know you will.”

Her relationship with Greg wasn’t something she examined closely or even thought about. Other people said she was lucky and she knew she was, but she didn’t wake up in the morning and think I’m married to Greg Sullivan, lucky me. But tonight she was thinking it. Tonight what they had felt precious, as if she’d had a piece of china in her house for years and only now understood its true worth.

She tightened her hand on the phone and glanced quickly toward the door to check she was still alone. She felt guilty thinking about her own problems when her sister was going through hell. “I’m sorry if I seem obsessed about this whole baby thing. I promise to relax more. When I’m home I’ll go to yoga. Buy me a mindfulness book. I promise not to throw it at you.”

They talked a little

longer and then said their goodbyes.

Jenna wandered into the hallway and glanced up the stairs where Lauren had vanished an hour before.

It shook her to acknowledge that she and Lauren weren’t as close as they’d once been.

But maybe that was inevitable.

She walked back into the living room and stared into the street. Her sister’s house was big, but it was still hemmed in by other houses. The house across from them was digging into the basement and there were construction noises and clouds of dust from dawn to dusk.

She’d forgotten what it was like to be in a city, to live with the thunder of noise, the crush of people and so much traffic that crossing the road felt like an extreme sport.

It reminded her of her first few months of college in Boston. At first it had felt exciting to be away from the island, but over time the gloss had faded and she’d missed the Vineyard. She’d missed being able to walk to the beach and chat to the fishermen as they brought in their catch. She’d missed bumping into people she knew when she went to buy a loaf of bread. She missed sunrises and salt air, the feel of sand under her feet and the breeze lifting her hair. Most of all she’d missed Greg, who had gone to college in New York City. It was as if someone had wrenched part of her away.

Was that how Lauren was feeling without Ed?

All it had taken was a few days in her sister’s company for her to realize how wrong she’d been to envy her.

You never really knew what was going on in someone else’s life.

She, of all people, should have remembered that.

9

Mack

Humiliate: to say or do something which makes

someone feel ashamed or stupid

I hate my stupid life.

Mack lay in the dark, wishing the house would collapse and bury her in the rubble.

She hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. She’d meant to say a few nice things about her dad—Ed? What was she even supposed to call him?—and then sit down, but in the end what came out of her mouth hadn’t been what was in her head. Epic fail. And now she didn’t know what to do. She’d cried herself dry and she didn’t know if she was crying for herself or Ed.

She knew she was acting loopy.

She’d felt loopy ever since she’d discovered her dad wasn’t her dad.

That had been the worst day of her life. She’d started to shake like a little kid on her first day at kindergarten. She’d lived in terror of someone finding out and now she’d made the nightmare come true.

Abigail, Phoebe and Tracy had been in the back row at the funeral, supposedly to give her moral support. And David had been there, too. David, from the neighboring boys’ school, who she’d been exchanging looks with for a while. Boys didn’t usually look at her, but she’d been quietly hoping he might ask her to the movies or something. She’d even tried making herself more “girly,” but it had all been for nothing.

It would be round the whole school that Mackenzie didn’t know who her dad was. A few of the kids in her class had divorced parents, but at least they knew who they were. No one had identity issues. She’d walk into class and everyone would stare at her. She’d be on display, like some sort of museum exhibit.