How to Keep a Secret

“No way. Any discussions are happening right here in front of me, otherwise no doubt something else will emerge that I won’t find out for another ten years and by then I’ll be psychologically damaged for life.” Maybe she already was. Sometimes the stuff going on inside her head scared her. “Whatever happened to telling the truth? Right now I have had enough of my totally fucked-up family.”

Lauren inhaled sharply. “Do not use that language.” She snatched her bag from the table and pulled out her phone. “I’m letting Aunt Jenna know we arrived safely.”

Sending an SOS more like, Mack thought.

Her grandmother seemed to rouse herself. “Aunt Jenna is teaching today.”

Mack shared her mother’s desperation. “She needs to come over as soon as she’s finished. And she needs to bring cookies, or cupcakes—preferably both. And also Uncle Greg because he knows how to fix situations and this situation definitely needs fixing.”

She realized her mother hadn’t spoken to Scott. Nothing. No words had been exchanged. Just that one look so hot that if you stood in the middle of it you would have come away with seared flesh.

The atmosphere was so still and tight it was as if someone had sucked all the air from the room.

“Scott?” Her grandmother’s voice sounded faint. “I wonder if you’d mind leaving us? I think I need to catch up with my family. It seems we have rather a lot to talk about.”

Scott eased away from the counter where he’d been leaning and watching Lauren.

“You know where I am.”

It was Nancy who answered. “Thank you, Scott.”

Mack wondered why her grandmother was thanking Scott when he was, in a way, responsible for this whole mess in the first place.

15

Jenna

Revelation: a surprising or interesting fact

that is made known to people

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to go over to your mother’s again? You’ve been there every day since Lauren and Mack arrived.” Greg locked the front door of the cottage and they walked to the car together. “Maybe they need space.”

“They don’t need space.” Jenna thought about the message Lauren had left on her phone that morning. “Lauren needs backup.”

“And that’s you?”

“Yes. I’m her sister. She keeps telling me she’s fine, but how can she be fine?”

“I guess she’s doing what she can to hold it all together.”

“And that can’t be easy. She told me yesterday that the cause of death was heart disease. Damaged valve or something. Can you imagine that? Ed was forty. The whole thing is terrible for her, and she keeps getting these calls from London from that lawyer guy I met, so it never ends.” Jenna threw her purse on the back seat of the car and slid behind the wheel. “And living with Mom can’t be easy either. She doesn’t talk about the big stuff.”

Greg fastened his seat belt. “We’ve discussed this a million times. We both know your mother finds it hard to show emotion.”

“I know, but I thought she might have tried a little harder with Lauren. Didn’t you see how she was at dinner with Lauren the first night? She barely mentioned Ed.” Jenna waved to one of their neighbors who was walking their dog.

“Because she didn’t know what to say. A lot of people don’t know what to say in difficult situations, Jenna. She’s not alone. Not because they don’t care, but because they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. Of making it worse. And she was probably stunned into silence by the revelation about Scott. I know I was.”

“I still can’t believe she took Scott Rhodes to meet Lauren.”

“The part I find harder to understand is how he can be Mack’s father. If you’d asked me to list all the possibilities, he wouldn’t have made the list.”

He would have been top of her list, Jenna thought. Why hadn’t it occurred to her before?

She drove away from the beach, taking a left and then a right.

“Now I think about it, there was something—” she tightened her grip on the wheel “—they noticed each other.”