How to Keep a Secret

“Quite often it does. And other times it’s wonderful. Light and dark, like one of my paintings. Don’t you like Scott?”

Mack sniffed. “Of course. He’s cool. And he’s a great listener, but that doesn’t mean I want him and Mom to—you know...” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. She couldn’t work out what it would mean for her. In that car neither of them had been thinking of her, that was for sure. “I’d like life to stay the same for five minutes. Is that so hard to understand?”

“No. I understand how you feel, but have you thought about how your mother might feel?”

“About what?”

“Life. Your mother has gone through hell and back the last few months. The man she spent more than sixteen years with and loved very much—” Nancy raised her hand as Mack opened her mouth “—yes, loved very much, died. That’s tragic and difficult, and the whole thing was made even more difficult because of the mess he left. Your mother had no cushion to protect her from that blow. She’s been weathering the anxiety of that alone, along with managing your grief and her own. She’s been worried about how she’ll support the two of you, how she’s going to give you a good life, how she’s going to fix things so that I don’t have to sell The Captain’s House. She’s been focused on her own survival and on being a mother, a daughter and a sister. It’s about time she thought about being a woman.”

“I get that, but it’s like she’s forgotten Ed.” Fear made Mack defensive. She hadn’t forgotten him. She thought about him all the time. She carried his photo with her, although that wasn’t something she’d told anyone. What would happen if her mom loved another man? Where would she fit in that? She couldn’t see, and that scared her. “It’s like he never existed.”

“She hasn’t forgotten him. She’s trying to find a way of living without him. Ed’s gone.” Nancy said it gently. “And no matter how much we want things to be different, he isn’t coming back. Once a person is gone, they’re gone. You can wait six weeks, six months or six years but that isn’t going to change a thing. Your mom can waste years of her life locked in a cycle of grief, looking backward as I did, or she can pick up those memories and carry them forward into a new life. I’m hoping that’s what she’ll do, and the sooner the better as far as I’m concerned. She’s my child. No one wants their child to be unhappy. It’s the reason she puts you first in everything. One day, when you have a child of your own, you’ll understand that.”

“She didn’t seem to be thinking about me when I saw them together.” Mack knew she sounded petulant and selfish and felt a flush of embarrassment. “Sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. This adult thing isn’t as easy as it looks.”

Nancy smiled. “I suspect that for that short time she wasn’t thinking about you, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you very much. She’ll always be your mother. Nothing is going to change that fact.”

“I won’t stop talking about Ed. I’m not going to pretend he didn’t exist.”

“Of course you’re not. You can talk to me about Ed any time. All the time, if that’s what you’d like. And I’m sure you can do the same with your mom. She isn’t trying to forget him, Mack. She isn’t trying to push you out. She’s trying to find a way to move forward and that’s healthy. She deserves to be happy. You don’t want her to be sad, do you?”

“No.” Mack felt smaller than an ant. It wasn’t that she wanted her mom to be sad, of course it wasn’t. But nor did she want her life to be rocked by another major change. “I just—I felt as if I was losing my mom, too.”

“Oh, Mack.” Her grandmother wrapped her in a hug. “I don’t know how your mother feels about Scott, but I do know how she feels about you. She loves you, and nothing is going to change that. As for Scott, let’s assume for a moment that she loves him—maybe she never stopped loving him—that doesn’t take anything away from what she felt for Ed. There are different types of love, and not every marriage looks alike, but that doesn’t mean they’re not real.”

It felt confusing to her. Scary. “I’m not sure I can handle it.”

“You will. People are capable of so much more than they think they are. It’s possible to rekindle relationships you thought were lost, build a new life when the old one was dead, learn new habits, break old ones.” She eased away from Mack. “It’s possible to forgive a friend a grievous hurt.”

Mack felt another flicker of guilt that she’d been only thinking about herself. “What are you going to do about that?” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Are you going to kick Alice’s butt?”

Her grandmother stirred. “What do you think I should do?”

Mack was surprised. No one ever asked her advice. No one asked her opinion. She thought about it hard before she answered.

“I guess it depends. I mean, Alice was your best friend, which kind of makes the betrayal worse—”

“That’s it exactly.”

Mack felt her confidence grow. “—but also it sounds like Gramps was—” She pulled a face. “Actually do you mind if we don’t think about that part?”

“Not at all. I’d rather not think about it either, but you’re right—he was. He had a way of dazzling the people around him.”

“I know.” Mack tucked her legs up and leaned back against the pillows. “When he was in the room you kind of only noticed him.”

“Yes. Alice had lost her husband. It was tragic. She was alone and vulnerable. I suspect, for her, it wasn’t so much an affair, as a moment of madness. But there comes a point where you have to make a decision. You can carry anger and hurt round with you and keep stoking it and keeping it alive, or you can choose to let it go and build something new.”

“Is that what you did with Gramps? I mean, you cleaned him out of your life like dust bunnies.” She wondered if that was a tactless thing to say, but then she saw her grandmother smile.

“I did. And I said things I should have said years ago. Unfortunately he was too dead to hear them. But now that’s done.” She gave a burst of laughter and Mack looked at her anxiously.

“Are you okay, Grams?”

“Never better. Talking with you made me realize that I really have put it all behind me. Maybe it was all the clearing out. Maybe it was the yelling.”

“Maybe it was Ben.” Mack watched as her grandmother’s cheeks turned pink.

“Ben?”