The Secrets We Keep

by Nikki Lee Taylor

  Samara backs up, and I train my eye on the strange light. As we draw closer, I realize what I am seeing: a lit cigarette. It’s difficult to see her at first, but she’s there. Dressed in dark clothes, and standing in thick underbrush on the other side of the road, is a woman smoking a cigarette.

  “Do you see her? There, behind the tree.” I watch as the woman smokes the last of the cigarette and stamps it out on the ground.

  “I do,” Samara nods. “She seems out of place. Creepy.”

  The woman’s eyes are focused on Bastian’s house. She is so fixated that I wonder how close we can get without her noticing us. “Go a little closer,” I whisper. “But really slow. Actually… wait.” I unclip my seat belt and climb over into the back.

  “Sophie, what the hell?”

  “I can see better from here. Now, go slow.”

  Samara reverses back, turns off the engine, and climbs over the seat to join me. She holds up her phone and zooms the camera in on the woman. “What do you think she’s doing?”

  “I don’t know,” I whisper. “But whatever it is, it can’t be good.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Madelyn-May

  This morning marks the first weekday since I built my company that I haven’t gone in to work. It would be lovely if I was taking the day off to relax – maybe I’d pour myself a glass of wine and watch a movie. But unfortunately, that’s not the case. Since Harlow’s fight in the playground, an uneasy feeling has settled in my stomach, and I haven’t been able to shake the sense she is hiding something from me.

  Standing my ground with the principal and counselor allowed Harlow to realize for the first time that, despite my shortcomings as a mom, I’m on her side, and so it is with trepidation I begin the arduous task of rummaging through her life. When I was twelve, in all of two seconds my mother could have upended my two drawers and lifted my mattress in search of a diary, and the job would have been done, but these days it’s a much more arduous task. I need to log onto Harlow’s laptop and go through her files. I must search her iPad, and the external hard drives she has, then move on to the cloud storage allocated to her phone – and then finally comb through her actual bedroom.

  She must have taken her iPad with her to school, but any information it holds is stored, along with content from her phone, on our cloud. But first things first. When the screen of her laptop lights up, I whisper a silent plea, for forgiveness, and also to not find anything I don’t want to see. I scroll through the main drive of her laptop, looking through photos and Word documents. There are homework sheets and other allocated schoolwork, but nothing that draws my attention. I click on her browser history, and smile when I see that the last eight searches were how to convince your parents to buy you a dog. I scroll down further, and find that she has also searched for something called the Philadelphia Big Sister Program. When I click the link it takes me to a site about life mentors for young girls, and the first hint of a niggle tugs at my insides. I can’t imagine why she has visited this site. When I’m satisfied there are no more clues on her laptop, I close it, and stand quietly in the middle of her bedroom.

  Compared to the space I shared with my sisters, Harlow’s room is every girl’s dream. Instead of the bunks I had to share with Melody, my daughter has a king-size bed, complete with white comforter, white pillows, and a white throw. Bright-blue scatter cushions complete the look, and above her head is a white tulle canopy, sprinkled with fairy lights. Her closet is brimming with clothes, mostly designer labels, and she has already started her handbag collection. Two Chanel and one Gucci. When it comes to providing for my children, I spare no expense, but what have I really given her, other than a room so beautiful it’s been featured in Vogue Kids, and a collection of overpriced status symbols? When I was a child, I never could have dreamed I’d be able to provide for my family this way, but despite the pride it gives me to buy them the world, in my heart I know kids don’t care how luxurious their bedroom is. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Harlow is the first to invite other girls over to show off, but at the heart of it, if a mother’s love is absent, how bright can a room ever really shine?

  Since I’m already inside her inner sanctum, I begin the slow task of going through every drawer, careful to put everything back exactly where I found it. If I’m being paranoid and there are no secrets, the last thing I want to do is break the trust that has finally started to build between us.

  I check beneath clothes, and rifle through her sock drawer. I pull old books and toys she has grown out of from cane storage baskets, and tear up when I see her first bunny, Mr Jenkie, crumpled under a pile of magazines. I pull out board games and books, and come across one of my own favorites, The Velveteen Rabbit. I sit cross-legged on the carpet and pore through the pages until I find my favorite bit:

  You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who must be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.

  I am not Real. Here in this beautiful room, in this sprawling house, I am not Real. And that’s the whole problem. My eyes have not been loved off. My joints are not loose, but strict, tight. And I have made myself untouchable. Maybe if I was Real, I think, my family would understand, and I wouldn’t need to be in here trying to figure out what my daughter is keeping from me.

  I pack the baskets away, and move to the last search area: her bedside drawers. If there’s anything hidden in her room, it’s likely to be stashed inside one of these drawers, and as I open the first one my stomach twists. I move discarded bottles of nail polish, and hair clips, and about a thousand scattered beads that are supposed to be housed inside a jewelry making kit. There are tubes of glitter, and torn-out pictures of Harry Styles and Niall Horan. All typical items for a twelve-year-old. And then I find the envelope. On the front, her name has been handwritten in an unfamiliar scrawl, and inside is a small discarded sheet of tissue wrapping, and a note. With trembling hands, I unfold the paper, and begin to read. The first thing I notice is the writing, all loops and long strokes, distinctly female. I try to take consolation in the fact that it wasn’t written by a man, but I have no idea who this woman signing off as Harlow’s ‘big sister’ could be. Was there an email about this Big Sister Program sent from school? Did Harlow mention it, and as usual I wasn’t paying attention? Why does this woman want to drop off a gift, or collect my daughter from school?

  Bastian and I are already walking on eggshells, and the last thing I want to do is overreact—again—but with everything that’s been going on, I need to be sure this program is legitimate. I text Bastian, then think back to the way Harlow was messaging in the car the day I picked her up from school. My gut feel says that she was texting this woman from the program, and if that’s the case, the storage cloud should tell me more. Our children’s data is saved to our cloud account – a provision of them having their own phones and tablets. So, while I wait for Bastian’s reply, I go into our home office and click on Harlow’s phone backup. Like a detective, I quickly scroll through all her messages, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Most of the texts are from Bastian, telling her he’s out the front of school. There’s a few from her friends, and one or two from me, but when I get to the date of her fight at school an unfamiliar number pops up:

  Its Harlow we met at the mall on Sat. Got into a fight at school cause of mom’s work. Sick of no1 ever getting wot it’s like 2b me. Maybe we could meet?

  So sorry to hear that and hope ur ok. Let’s make a time soon.