The Secrets We Keep

by Nikki Lee Taylor

  “Do what? Sophie, you’re not making any sense, and I’m losing my patience.”

  “She wanted to give you the family you wanted. How could I possibly know that one day I’d work for you, and that this, whatever this is between us, would happen.”

  He stops pacing, and stares across at me. “Just tell me what you mean.”

  “The secret she kept from you about the egg donor. Bastian, it was me. That’s how I know.”

  He doesn’t blink, and he doesn’t move. “Say that again.”

  “Which part?”

  “All of it.”

  “When I met her in the park all those years ago, it was only by coincidence,” I tell him, my voice trembling. “But we got to talking about how I couldn’t afford my mother’s end-of-life care, and how stupid it was that I’d spent all my savings on freezing eggs. She said she’d do anything to give her husband a family, but couldn’t fall pregnant, so we came to an arrangement. She’d buy my eggs, and I’d use the money to help my mother die in as little pain and with as much dignity as possible. It wasn’t supposed to get so… complicated.”

  When he doesn’t respond, I try again. “That’s the secret. That she used an egg donor and didn’t tell you.”

  “No, Sophie,” he says quietly. “The secret is that when her and her sister were teenagers, they killed their father, because he was molesting them.”

  My head spins. The walls close in. “No, but….”

  “You sold your frozen eggs to my wife so she could get pregnant?”

  “Bastian—”

  “Yes or no?”

  “I…”

  “My children were conceived using your eggs, and not hers?” He swallows hard, and looks everywhere but at me. “How could you keep this from me?!”

  “I only just found out. She said her name was Jane. I didn’t know.”

  “And what? You thought the best way to respond was by stalking my children?”

  My bottom lip quivers, and I will myself not to cry. “I didn’t want to tell you and upset everything in your life. I just needed to see if there was any of Josh in them. Please tell me you understand.”

  “Josh?” he spits. “That’s sick, Sophie. You’re sick, and you need help.”

  Was it sick to hope some part of Josh might live on in Harry and Harlow? With everything that’s happened, I can’t tell anymore. “I’m sorry. The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt you.”

  “This is unbelievable,” he curses. “How the hell is this even possible?”

  I stay silent, too afraid to respond. Beside me, Miss Molly is curled into a quivering ball.

  “What the hell, Sophie? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I didn’t do it to you on purpose. I didn’t know.”

  He doesn’t answer. He just takes one last look at me then turns and walks out the door.

  Chapter Forty

  Madelyn-May

  The door slams as Bastian storms into the living room, his face contorted and red with rage. “Upstairs,” he bellows at the kids. “Close the doors and put your devices on. Headphones too. Now!”

  Harry and Harlow run from the room, the sound of their feet taking the stairs two at a time echoing back at me. “What the hell is going on?” I demand. “Why are you shouting at them?”

  Instead of answering, he pulls me up off the couch by my arm, and drags me through the kitchen and out toward the patio.

  When we are outside, he turns on me with a ferocity I’ve never seen before. “Tell me what I need to know, Madelyn-May.”

  “What you need to know about what?”

  His nostrils flare, and his hands are trembling. “About my goddamned kids. Tell me what I need to know about my kids.”

  “Your kids? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, they’re not yours, are they?” He’s screaming now. “Are they?! Tell me what you did that day in the park!”

  Terrified of doing or saying anything that will make this worse, I retreat into myself, searching desperately for the eye of the storm.

  “Is it true, Madelyn-May? Did you use some other woman’s eggs to get pregnant, and not tell me?”

  My eyes dart this way and that, searching wildly for any way out.

  “Answer me, goddamn it!”

  “I…” With no other way out, I summon all my strength, and attempt to turn this around. “Who told you that?” I shout with as much rage as I can muster. “Where were you just now?”

  “Don’t you try and turn this around. Answer my question.”

  But I can’t back down. Not now. “How about you answer my question? Don’t come barging in here with accusations like that unless you can back them up. Where were you?”

  “It doesn’t matter where I was, Madelyn-May. All that matters right now is that you stop playing games, and tell me what I want to know.”

  “Well, it matters to me. Listen to what you’re saying. You told me you had to stay late at work to tie up loose ends, so that we could go away. Clearly, you were lying. So, where were you?” My construed anger quickly escalates into a legitimate demand. He couldn’t have been at the office, so the question remains. Where has my husband been?

  He throws up his hands, and turns in a disorientated circle. “Tell me, Madelyn-May. For once in your life, just be straight with me. I’m losing my mind here, alright? After everything yesterday, and now this, just tell me. Did you do it?”

  “First, you tell me where you were, because obviously you’ve been lying. Where were you, huh? Who were you with to come back here with an accusation like that?”

  “Seriously? Is this how you’re going to play it? After all the secrets you’ve kept? You’ve got some nerve, trying to put this back on me. Our daughter is in danger because of you and your lies, and even now you still can’t tell me the truth.”

  “Well, it’s starting to look like I’m not the only one here who’s been keeping secrets.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  He glances up toward the kid’s bedrooms, and my stomach twists. I’ve heard women describe a unique coil of the gut that comes only from having a cheating husband, but until now I’ve never suspected a thing. Maybe I should’ve been paying closer attention.

  “Bastian…” I exhale his name, and my shoulders drop. “You’re having an affair?”

  “Don’t turn this around,” he tells me again. “You’re in no position to get all high and mighty after what you did.”

  “You are. You’re having an affair. I can’t believe it.”

  Perfect Bastian, with his cute notes in the kid’s lunchboxes and thoughtfully packed bags. Perfect Bastian, with his rational arguments and never-ending patience. Perfect Bastian, with his undivided attention and flawless school pick-ups. All these years I’ve been too afraid to show myself to him, to let him see the cracks and flaws, because I believed he was perfect. Now I see that I am not the only one who has been keeping secrets.

  “It’s not that simple, Madelyn-May,” he tells me. “I wasn’t… I didn’t set out to.”

  “Oh, so it’s my fault you’re sleeping with someone else?”

  “Not your fault, but you were never present,” he says. “After the twins came, it was like you disappeared. Then there was your website, and it felt like you just forgot about us.”

  “I forgot about you? Is that what you think?”

  He sits on the outdoor lounge, and it strikes me how vast the empty space around him feels. “Well, that’s how it felt.”

  “Well, if I did, it’s because after the twins came, I felt like you didn’t see me anymore. God, Bastian, you were always so fixated on having kids. It was obvious that if I couldn’t get pregnant, you were going to leave me.” I walk in a slow circle, hands on my hips, trying to figure out what to say next. “How do you think that made me feel, to know that without kids I wasn’t enough for you?”

  “Why would you think that?” He looks at me, his eyes a mix of sadness and c
onfusion.

  “You made it pretty clear. I remember you specifically saying that if I couldn’t fall pregnant it was something you’d have to deal with. Not we, but you.”

  “Madelyn-May… I meant I’d have to deal with being disappointed. I’d have to deal with the idea of starting a family some other way. I never would have left you, Madelyn-May, not ever.” He gets to his feet and moves toward me. “We could have adopted, I mean… Would I have been disappointed? Of course. But I wouldn’t have left you.”

  He finally reaches out to me, and the enormity of the lies I’ve told pulls the breath from my lungs. “I thought if I didn’t give you a family….”

  But it’s too late. Now that someone has told him what Sophie and I did, Bastian will leave me, and it’s all been for nothing. Worse is the sudden realization that like my own mother, I’ve spent the past twelve years being jealous of my own children. I believed I had to contend with them for his love, and thinking I could never win, I didn’t even try.

  “Madelyn-May,” he begins. “Please tell me you didn’t do the things she said. Please….”

  Hearing the word she buckles my heart. “Tell me who you’ve been seeing, Bastian. I need to know.”

  As I wait for him to answer, my mind works overtime, sorting and unpacking every possible option for who could possibly have that kind of information. The receptionist at the clinic? The nurse in the theater?

  “Sophie,” he sighs. “Her name is Sophie, alright?”

  They say there are three stages of shock. Stage I begins with a sudden loss of blood pressure that causes your body to overcompensate. Your heart beats faster, blood vessels shrink, and your kidneys work harder to keep blood flowing to the heart and other organs. Stage II begins when that process fails, causing a lack of oxygen to your brain. You become confused and disoriented. By stage three, severe shock results in the complete shutdown of your kidneys, and then your organs begin to die. The result of stage III is usually death. Hearing Bastian say her name feels at least like stage I.

  “Did you say Sophie?” I repeat.

  “She works for me. She started in the office about six years ago, but moved to working from home not long after. You’ve never met her, or so I thought….”

  I quickly run through the calculations in my head. Could she have known Bastian when I first met her? Had she strategized this entire thing to steal my husband? No, I remind myself. She was twenty, and still in college when we met in the park. There are no coincidences. Sometimes things just happen for a reason. “And you’ve been sleeping with her for, what? A few weeks? A month? How long?”

  He looks away, and I know it’s been longer. Stage II.

  To stop from becoming disoriented, I focus on my breathing, and silently scream at my organs not to shut down. “And she told you this story about the frozen eggs, when? While you were at her place?” I take his silence as a yes. “Wow, Bastian, I don’t know what to say to you right now.”

  “Stop twisting this,” he demands, anger returning to his voice. “I want to know if what she said is true. Did you meet her in a park? Did you lie to me about all those shots and medications? Did you somehow convince a doctor to create embryos with her eggs and my… and not tell me? Did you really do all those things?”

  “You make it sound ridiculous.”

  His face turns scarlet. “It is ridiculous. Who does something like that?”

  “I don’t know, Bastian.” I throw up my hands. “I guess someone who doesn’t want to tell their husband they can’t produce eggs naturally because an illegal abortion at sixteen ruined any chance of that. A person whose ovaries were so infected with bacteria they had to be removed by a surgeon.”

  His face drains from scarlet to grey. “A backyard abortion…. Madelyn-May why would you do something like that?”

  “Because I didn’t want to give birth to my father’s baby, alright? Is that an acceptable enough reason for you?” Stage III. The next is death.

  He folds himself over onto one of the outdoor seaters, and rests his head in his hands. Unable to watch, I stare out over the pool, its depths calling for my surrender.

  There was a time, back when we first met, when I could hide who I was behind a shiny veil. I could pretend I had my life together, that I was fresh and lovely, a clean slate for him to write his life upon. But that’s all gone. He knows exactly how perverse and disgusting my life has been. He has pushed his way through the dusty webs, and with dirty hands pried open a box that can never be closed.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he whispers. “You should have told me. About the abortion, and everything else.”

  “Oh, come on, Bastian. How was I ever supposed to tell you something like that?”

  “You should have given me the choice.”

  “Well, what about my choice?” I turn back to him. “My choice was stolen before I even broke double digits. I was eight years old when he came into my room, for Christ’s sake.”

  Finally, he looks up and meets my gaze. “That’s right. I was eight when he first came calling, and it never stopped. Even after I left, he was still there inside me. He was dead, and yet there he was, still penetrating every part of me from the inside out. What would you have me do, huh? Have my own father’s baby?”

  “Stop it, Madelyn-May.”

  “No, you wanted to hear this, all the gory details, so I’m telling you, and you’re going to listen. I was sixteen years old when I begged a nurse to get that thing out of me. She had a dirty kitchen table, a set of surgical implements wrapped in a dish cloth, and the pain… was excruciating. Then, a woman I barely knew had to carry me two blocks home in her arms, the insides of my legs covered in blood. A fever set in, and I shook so violently I thought I was going to snap my own spine. I had no health insurance, but she took me to a hospital anyway, where a real doctor removed my ovaries. It’s a miracle I had a womb left to carry your babies.”

  “Madelyn-May, what happened to you is—”

  “You were my choice,” I tell him, emotion causing my voice to break. “All my life, everything was decided for me – but not you. You were the one thing I chose for myself, and the idea of losing you, of you looking at me the way you are right now, was the most heartbreaking thing I could imagine. So I lied to you, Bastian. I hid what I was, and where I came from, so I could turn myself into your Madelyn-May. The woman we both wanted me to be.”

  “I never asked you to be anyone but yourself.”

  “You say that, but I can see from the way you’re looking at me that you never would have married me if I’d told you the truth. You wanted a wife you could take home to your family, a partner to have children with, and I wanted to be that for you. I wanted the chance to be that for myself, and by your side I finally could.”

  He runs a hand through his hair, and looks away. “I’ve heard everything you’ve said, Madelyn-May. But I need time. You’ve lied to me in a way that is insidious, and despicable. The things you’ve done, they’re maybe unforgivable. I’m sorry for what happened to you, I honestly am. No one should ever have to go through even one of those things, but that doesn’t give you the right to do what you did. You could have talked to me, you could have… I don’t know, trusted me, but instead you lied, and snuck around behind my back. You put other people in terrible situations, and caused them to make hard choices.” His eyes take me in, and I know he is looking at a stranger. “Right now, I just need to be somewhere other than here.”

  I wipe roughly at my tears, frustrated at not knowing what else to say, but mostly because in my heart I know he is right. “Are you going to be with her?”

  “She’s the least of your problems, Madelyn-May. I think it’s best if you take the kids, and go overseas tomorrow like we planned. It’s safer for them, and I need some space. I’ll be in touch after I’ve had time to think.”

  “You’re not coming?”

  “I can’t be around you right now. The flight is at 6pm. I’ll come back to the house after you’re gone, and st
art trying to get my head around all of this. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the way it has to be.”

  “But you’ll come and meet us eventually? This isn’t….”

  “I don’t know what this is anymore. I need to think about what’s best for the kids.”

  “What do you mean what’s best for the kids?”

  He steadies himself. “I mean, I have to put them first. I know you’re their mother… to a point. But that doesn’t mean you’re what’s best for them.”

  “Bastian…. How can you say that?”

  “Think about it, Madelyn-May. You’ve never been their mother, not really. Not emotionally, and now apparently not biologically, either.”

  “That’s so unfair.”

  “What’s unfair is letting me think they were our kids for twelve years, when this whole thing, this whole marriage, in fact, has been a lie.”

  “Well, you’d know all about lies, wouldn’t you,” I hiss. “You’re the one sleeping with someone else.”

  He takes a deep breath, and looks at me. “Take the kids, and get on the plane tomorrow, Madelyn-May. I need space. I need… to be away from you. If you can’t do that, then you’ll leave me no choice other than to contact a lawyer.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Lacy

  I glance up at the house then check my watch again. 10.55am, and still no movement.

  I call Madelyn-May’s office to check if she went to work, and some girl tells me that as of today she is taking extended leave. In the meantime, she asks, would I like to leave a message? Not bothering to respond, I hang up and toss the phone aside.

  With the blinds drawn, the house looks like a sleeping giant. Quiet and still, but about to explode. Despite the red-and-white No Smoking sticker plastered across the dash of my new rental van, I light up a cigarette, and draw long and deep. I would normally make an effort to get out and smoke so that I don’t lose my deposit, but these damned mornings are getting too cold to care about shit like that. And besides, I’m pissed. Yesterday, Madelyn-May ruined everything. She unraveled all our plans. But I can’t let that stop me. I made a promise, and it’s one I intend to keep.