How to Keep a Secret

And didn’t she know it.

“I know you’re coping with a lot. First Dad—”

“Ed.” Mack had refused to call him anything but Ed since the night of the funeral and it made Lauren feel sick with guilt.

“He was your dad.”

“I don’t have a single morsel of his DNA.” Mack glared fiercely at the water. “Does he have blue eyes?”

“Excuse me?”

“My real dad. Blue eyes?”

Lauren swallowed. “Yes, but being a father is about more than DNA. Ed was your father in every single way that mattered.” She was too tired for this conversation. Her head throbbed from lack of sleep and too much crying.

“Newsflash—the whole egg being fertilized thing matters, Mom, otherwise the rest doesn’t happen.”

“Your dad loved you. Love is showing up, honey. Sticking around.” Do you hear that, Ed? It’s about sticking around. Checking that your heart is working okay. Going to the doctor. She knew it was irrational to be angry with Ed for dying, but that didn’t seem to help. The words if only were stuck in her brain like an earworm. “He was there when I was pregnant with you, when you were born, when you cried in the night. He was the one sitting at the school concert when you sang solo, and the one who was right there talking to your teachers.”

Mack thrust her jaw out. “I’m calling him Ed.”

Lauren felt helpless. She was terrified of saying something that would make a bad situation worse. “I know it’s difficult for you, leaving London in the middle of a very important school year—”

“Are you kidding? That’s the only good thing about this. I don’t have to take those stupid exams.”

But those “stupid exams” were important.

What if she’d ruined her daughter’s life? “You’ll go to school here. There are good schools on the island.”

“But they don’t know, right? They don’t know everything that has happened?” Mack’s horrified tone said everything about the way she was feeling.

“No. It’s up to you how much you tell.”

“I won’t be telling anyone anything. It’s going to stay a secret. It shouldn’t be a problem. I learned from the best.”

Lauren felt as if her heart was splintering into pieces. “Don’t say that. It’s important to talk to the people you love.”

“You’re seriously saying that to me? If Aunt Jenna were here right now she’d be doing that word thing she does where she gives you a definition. Hypocrisy—when your mom tries to get you to do something she doesn’t do herself.”

It required superhuman patience to hold on to her temper. If circumsta

nces had been different she would have called Mack out for her brattish behavior, but she knew her daughter was mixed up and miserable and taking that misery out on the person closest to her.

She gripped the railing. She felt dizzy and wasn’t sure if it was lack of food or whether she was coming down with something. Could hypocrisy make you dizzy?

She’d wanted to be everything her own mother wasn’t. Attentive, interested, loyal and, most important of all, present. Why hadn’t anyone told her it was harder than it looked? Why hadn’t anyone told her that what constituted “good” parenting wasn’t always obvious? She’d taken her own mother as an example and promised herself that she’d do everything differently. In the end she’d made her own set of mistakes.

“I know you feel I did the wrong thing. I’ve made decisions you disagree with, but I do want us to keep talking. I want to know how you’re feeling, even if it’s hard to hear.”

“I feel like crap, okay? And I don’t want to talk.” Mack’s jaw lifted and her expression was combative. It had been the same since the night of the funeral.

Lauren wanted to wrap her daughter in her arms and hold her while she cried and talked it out, but Mack had turned into a porcupine. She had a feeling that if she hugged her she’d be pulling needles out of herself for the next month.

“Mack—”

“A person is entitled to privacy, right?”

“There’s a difference between privacy and secrets, Mack. When you make new friends—” please let her make new friends “—you might find it helps to talk to them.”