The Secrets We Keep

by Nikki Lee Taylor

  “…you’re betraying him?”

  I flop onto the couch and pull my knees to my chest. “It’s like, when I’m with you, there’s a part of me that’s still in relationship mode, and it helps keep me in the place I was with him, but, at the same time… I feel so guilty letting anyone else in. In one way, it feels I’m like betraying him, but then I wonder: if I close that part of me off completely, will it be like he was never here at all?”

  “Sophie—”

  “I know how it sounds, Bastian, and I don’t expect you to listen to all my problems. I don’t even know why you keep coming over, to be honest.”

  “I hope that’s not how you think I feel?”

  I throw up my hands. “But surely it can’t be worth it? I mean, look at me, I’m a mess. You can’t be attracted to me. I’m ten pounds overweight because I only eat what can be delivered to my door. I haven’t put on lipstick since, God, I don’t know when, and most of the time my hair isn’t even brushed. I cry half the time, I’m angry the rest, and in between—”

  “You’re still incredibly smart and beautiful, Soph,” he says, “and you’re doing your best. I’m not trying to be him – I need you to know that. For so many reasons, I would never do that.”

  Just outside the window, a tiny sparrow hops between the green leaves of a dogwood tree.

  “And besides,” he grins, sitting down beside me, “who said anything about coming to see you? The only reason I come over is to see Miss Molly. I thought you knew that?”

  I manage something that almost sounds like a laugh. “Well, she likes seeing you, that’s for sure. But I feel like you’re wasting your time with me, Bastian. I’m just… broken, or something.”

  “You’re not, and besides, who am I to judge? We all have our issues, Sophie, Jesus.” He runs a hand through his thick, brown hair. “I’m hardly a great catch, but we found each other, and that’s what matters. Not every relationship has to have a label on it.”

  I take him in. Broad shoulders from his days playing full-back for the Tigers at Princeton. Slender, artistic fingers. Straight, determined nose. When we first met, he reminded me of a compass: perpetually facing north, unwavering, and resilient. Then I came along. A magnetic field, misfiring, bound to pull him off course.

  “Why are your eyes so blue, anyway?” I ask, changing the subject. “I thought all Italians had dark eyes?”

  “Because, signora, my family is from Veneto in Northern Italy,” he exclaims, mimicking an Italian accent and dramatically waving his hand. “My family comes from a small village outside Verona, home of the famed star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet.”

  “Oh God… Why did I ask?”

  He grins and pulls me into the dip beneath his shoulder. “But seriously, Soph, we should go there, just the two of us.”

  “That wouldn’t go well.”

  “I mean it, Soph. There’s Venice, but there’s also beautiful mountain ranges and medieval villages. It would do you good to get away.”

  “Bastian, I think it’s time you went to work. You’ll be late.”

  “It’s not like the boss is going to fire me.”

  “Ever heard of leading by example?” I laugh. “Seriously, you should get going.”

  “Will you at least think about the trip?”

  “No, that’s ridiculous. First, I can barely make it to the market without having a full-blown panic attack. Second, I have Miss Molly. And third – well, let’s not get started on third.”

  “Let me worry about third. I can make it work.”

  “No, you can’t, and if you did, you’d hate yourself. Now, thank you for the coffee, and for checking in on me, but you better get going.”

  He gets to his feet, his tall frame forcing me to stand on tippy-toes to kiss him goodbye. “I do appreciate the thought, though,” I tell him. “Maybe in another life we could have wandered the streets of fair Verona, holding hands, and I would have loved that.”

  He nods, and kisses me softly on the forehead. “Call if you need anything, alright?”

  “I will.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise. Thanks again for the coffee.”

  He kisses me one last time on the cheek, and I know what’s coming.

  “I don’t want to hassle you, Soph, but the Jackson manuscript is due in today,” he reminds me. “Think you’ll get through editing it?”

  “Yes, boss,” I grin.

  “Don’t call me that. You know I hate that.”

  “Well, technically….”

  “Yeah I know, but it’s weird.”

  “Come back for dinner? Miss Molly said she’ll order your favorite pizza: quattro Stagioni, from Napoli around the corner.”

  “I’d love to, Soph,” he sighs, “but I can’t tonight. Madelyn-May has some Women in Business event she’s speaking at so I’m home with the kids.”

  “Of course,” I nod, hating myself for having asked. “No problem.”

  “Sorry….”

  “No need to be sorry – you’re a great dad. You shouldn’t have to apologize.”

  “Not apologizing for them, but for the Madelyn-May part.” He drops his eyes, and kicks at an invisible stone on the stoop. “She’s just…”

  “…your wife, Bastian. There’s no need to apologize.”

  “I know, but still….”

  “Miss Molly and I will be fine,” I tell him. “I’ll email the manuscript through by 2pm.”

  I close the door, and press my back against the wood. The situation is far from ideal, but somehow knowing we can never be together, that he can never fill the space James left behind, makes the guilt of needing him a little easier to bear.

  After making toast and pulling on a clean sweater, I grab the manila folder that’s been gathering dust on my desk and brace myself for what’s to come. Even if I dedicated the entire day to working on the Jackson manuscript, I’ll never get it done in time. At my feet, Miss Molly licks her lips and I slip her the last corner of toast. “You happy now? You’ve eaten my breakfast.”

  Content with her corner of jam-covered toast, Miss Molly pads over to the checkered dog bed beside my desk and flops down. A full day of editing someone else’s work can get tiresome, but at the same time, if it’s good enough and the writer talented enough, it might transport me away from my own tear-jerking tale.

  When the computer comes to life, I open the file marked ‘Jackson Manuscript.’ I’ll make my notes and changes on this electronic version for the author to see, but I like to read the old-fashioned way: holding paper in my hands. Bastian makes fun of it, calling me prehistoric and analog, but the texture of the paper provides an authenticity that helps me lose myself in the story. It’s a practice I try to implement throughout every aspect of my daily life. Ever since the accident, I have shunned the internet and any form of social media. As an editor, all my communications are provided via email, but that is my cut-off, the boundary of my safety zone. I know there are undeniable benefits and efficiencies that technology provides, like the way it allows people to reach out and see in, but it’s just not for me.

  “Alright, Miss Molly, we’ll break for lunch at 12.30pm. Sound good?”

  I take her disinterest as a resounding yes, and flip open the manila folder. According to Bastian, the author Angela Jackson is going to be the next Jodi Picoult, and he’s thrilled her agent chose his company Marozzi Publishing to present her debut novel.

  “What’s it about?” I asked, when he initially handed me the manuscript over some mediocre Chinese take-out.

  “I actually think you’ll enjoy this, Soph. It’s about a mother’s search for her missing son.”

  My fork clattered onto my plate, and I stared at him in disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding?! You know I can’t deal with something like that.”

  But he’d been adamant. “It’s not what you think. It might be hard for you in some ways, sure, but that’s why you’re the perfect person to edit it, Soph. No one has more perspective on this subject t
han you. It’s going to hit the Times Best Seller list. I can feel it, and we need a Picoult in our stable. You can do this. I know you can.”

  The manuscript has been gathering dust ever since, mostly because I’ve been too afraid to open it.

  “Okay, here we go, Miss Molly,” I breathe. “Let’s hope this little exercise doesn’t end badly.”

  Chapter Four

  Sophie 2005

  It was the first time I ever paid any attention to my mother’s hands. Between trying to write my first novel, which of course was a spectacular failure, texting, dating, and cocktails at Rittenhouse Square, looking at the skin on my mother’s hands had never been on the radar. But as we sat in the doctor’s waiting room with its mint-colored walls and hushed tones, I noticed how her skin had taken on a translucent quality. Her veins were cobalt-blue, swimming beneath the skin like stinging tentacles of a Pacific man-o’-war.

  “Did they give you any idea on the phone?” I asked. “Did he say anything about what they think it might be?”

  She shook her head. “They just said my tests were back, and I had to come in. Who knows what it is, but I hope they fix it fast. I’m sick of being sick.”

  I nodded gently and squeezed her hand, careful not to press too hard.

  After the doctor asked us to take a seat in his consult room, he steepled his fingers, then folded them together into one bulbous strangle he used as a chin rest. “I’m afraid the news isn’t good,” he began. “The combined results of your pelvic exam, the transvaginal ultrasound we sent you for, and the CA125 blood test all indicate the presence of abnormalities within your ovarian region, Mrs Miller.”

  My mother leaned forward, and my body automatically moved with her. “What does that mean, abnormalities?” she asked.

  “Mrs Miller, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just come out with it. The tests conclude that you have ovarian cancer. We won’t be able to confirm the severity until we can remove tissue samples from your pelvis and abdomen. We determine the stage of the condition using what’s called the American Joint Committee on Cancer TNM staging system, which is a fancy way of describing a series of further tests. Through those tests we will be able to determine the size of the tumor and whether it has spread outside the ovaries, or further through your body, such as to the lymph nodes or distant sites.”

  “Distant sites?”

  “Areas such as the lungs or to organs like the liver.”

  My mother was leaning so far forward her hands were gripping the edge of his desk. “Is that likely?”

  “We can’t know for sure until we go through the staging process, and there’s no use panicking in the meantime. The good thing is that we found it. Once we know more, we can determine the best course of treatment.”

  “Treatment,” she repeated. “So, there’s something we can do, it’s not….”

  “I think it’s best if we wait until the results tell us what we’re dealing with. Now….”

  He continued talking about where my mother would need to go to have samples taken, and what would be involved, but I didn’t hear a word. My mother had cancer. Her hands were so pale….

  “Miss Miller?”

  “Huh?” I snapped back and looked at the doctor. In any other situation I might have noticed that he was no older than thirty-five, with thick, blonde hair, and a delicate freckle by the side of his nose. But I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want to look at his face or remember his name. I wanted him to disappear, to stop existing, then this might all go away.

  “Ovarian cancer is known to be hereditary,” he was saying. “So it might be worth getting a check-up yourself, and even consider the option of freezing some eggs if children are a part of your plans for the future.”

  “Children?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m twenty.”

  “Well, you’re never too young to consider these things,” he smiled. “With any luck we’ll have your mom here fighting fit, and it would serve you well to be aware of the risks and take any precautions you can. Just my advice.”

  I nodded, and reached for my mother’s hand. Children were the last thing on my mind. I was still her child.

  My mother asked me to spend the night, since my brother was away and my father was experiencing what she liked to call ‘the blues.’ In truth, he had been experiencing ‘the blues’ for the past eight years, the result of being dishonorably discharged from the United States Marine Corps, after a lifetime of service. When morning came and he sobered up, she would need me for moral support. She knew he wouldn’t take the news well. He didn’t take anything very well, not since ‘the incident.’

  When I opened the door to my old bedroom, I expected to feel larger than life, with its single bed, heart-shaped vanity, and lavender comforter. But down on the floor, with my curled back against the mattress, I felt small enough to crawl into the darkness under the bed, like I did when I was five. In the dark, you could create your own world without the bright lights illuminating every missing piece, every imperfection, every crack. In the dark, flaws stayed hidden, and no one had to know the truth. Under the bed, I could pretend whatever I liked. But out in the light, I was a twenty-year-old girl with the aching feeling her mother was going to die.

  Chapter Five

  Madelyn-May

  Her slender legs kick back and forth as summer air spirals in, catching her hair in invisible ribbons. Beside her, he shovels pasta from his plate to his mouth – fuel for a body that never stops growing.

  Harry and Harlow, born right on the due date and in perfect health. Even my labor was easy compared to the horror stories of other women. The first contractions began at 2pm, and by 6.30pm they were in our arms. Harlow came first, a soft bundle of pink skin wrapped in white swaddling. She had the brightest eyes and the loudest wail I had ever heard. Her face was round, and punctuated by the same cheeky dimple that charmed me on my first date with Bastian. She was warm, and sweet, and drenched in the scent of possibility, the kind that exists only on the skin of a newborn baby. To anyone else, she would have been a miracle, but not to me. The nurses gushed and hovered over her, the baby they called the prettiest on the ward. I kissed her, eventually, more of an apology than anything else because I knew they were wrong. She was not perfect. She was a living flaw. A personification of the pain and mistrust that had woven itself into my DNA. She had to be. A womb as fractured as mine could not have created anything else.

  I watch her now, with filly legs she is yet to grow into, and hair that reflects the light like glass. She is twelve years old, and has Bastian’s home-made spaghetti sauce splattered across her face and neck. Before my eyes, she digs a spoon into the sauce and flicks it at her brother, squealing in delight as his face freckles with red.

  “Harlow!” Bastian cuts in from the other side of the kitchen. “Don’t throw sauce at Harry. We’ve talked about this.” The ladle balances in his hand, and a tea towel is folded over his shoulder, the corners as neat as an origami swan.

  “Daddy, but he wanted me to,” she sings in a voice made of sugar and candy. “He likes it.”

  My husband rests his hands on his hips in a bid to look intimidating. “Harlow, that’s not true. What did we say about telling lies?”

  “But it’s not a lie. He likes it. Look….”

  Beside her Harry is poking out his tongue, twisting it at an almost inhuman angle trying to reach the sauce, making it difficult to argue.

  “Harlow,” Bastian sighs, looking to me for support, “I know this might be hard for you to understand, but we can’t act however we like, then lie about it. There are rules, and one is that we don’t throw food at each other, even if he does like it. Got it?”

  She rolls her eyes and stabs her fork into the spaghetti with the violence of a Joe Pesci film.

  “Harlow,” I try, “there are other ways to make Harry laugh that isn’t breaking the rules. You could make faces at him, or do that thing you learned at school, you know, when you pretend to walk down in
visible stairs behind the bench?”

  “Mom,” she sighs, without looking up, “I haven’t done that since I was like, six. Why do you even bother?”

  This time the stab reaches my heart. Have three years passed since the last time I saw her do that? Shaking it off, I gather myself, and push out from the bench. “I have some work to do upstairs. Are you right to watch them?”

  “How about we take the bikes down to the park?” he counters. “It is the weekend, after all. You could come?”

  At the mention of bikes, Harry’s head snaps up, and his fork drops noisily onto the bench. “Can we, Mom?!” He leaps off the stool, his weight shifting from one foot to the other, like a dog ready for its afternoon walk. “Can we?”

  “Harry….”

  “Come on Mom, please. You never come with us.”

  “I’m sorry, buddy. I have a lot to get done for my meeting in the morning.”

  “Maybe you could write a story about riding bikes at the park?” he tries.

  His pleading eyes convince me that I am broken. But instead of feeling compelled by his desperation, it annoys me that saying no will lead to that familiar itch of guilt. “I can’t,” I tell him flatly. “I have work to do. But Dad will take you. And Bastian, don’t forget it’s Sunday.”

  “Right, Madelyn-May,” he replies. “Like I could.”

  My gaze lingers, and I contemplate forcing a smile, but instead I simply nod and look away. From his tone, and the lusterless way he mutters my name, it is clear that once again I have let them down. Not that he would ever say it. There is always so much left unsaid between us. Every conversation fraught with silent curses and unspoken accusations that hang in the air like storm clouds.

  Taking the stairs two at a time, I wonder how something as simple as tone can convey so much. There were times when Bastian said my name in tones so hushed that the inflection alone caused my heart to race. And times he has croaked it out in pieces, so fraught with laughter I thought we might both stop breathing. He has spoken it with such tenderness, such outrage, such passion, purity, and persuasion, that I would have followed any instruction that came after. But now my name is said in a tone so empty that the letters echo off each other, repelling and colliding in the air.