This Secret Thing

by Whalen, Marybeth Mayhew

  After her mom had gotten over the shock of Casey’s arrival, Bess had relayed what had happened with Violet’s mother, spilling what news she’d gathered and, Casey suspected, embellishing some details in places where the actual truth was thin. Her mother was energetic as she spoke, seeming to draw energy from Norah Ramsey’s plight. Though they were no longer close friends, Bess Strickland still pretended to like Norah Ramsey, to care about her.

  But Casey suspected her mother was jealous of Norah, though Casey couldn’t have guessed why. Norah was a single mom, when Bess had a devoted husband. Norah didn’t seem to have friends outside of work (which made more sense, in light of recent developments), while her mom was the queen bee of the mom squad. Casey had always thought of her mother’s friends as grown-up Mean Girls. Most of them were the mothers of her own friends, which accounted for many of the activities and decisions she herself had made while in high school. Now she wondered how life could’ve been different—how she could’ve been different—if that had not been the case.

  In the six weeks she’d been away, she already saw it all differently. In her absence, her mother had pulled Nicole—who had never seemed to care before—into her orbit. But instead of social status and cheerleading like with Casey, now Bess cared about play competitions and lead roles. It didn’t really matter, in Casey’s opinion, what was at stake, just as long as Bess—and her offspring—won.

  Casey knocked lightly on the guest bedroom door for the second time.

  “Come in,” Violet’s voice said.

  She opened the door to find Violet perched, awkward and uncomfortable, on the edge of the guest room bed that only Casey’s grandmother ever slept in. “Just wanted to make sure you’re OK,” she said. Casey gave Violet a fake smile, becoming for a moment the Casey that Violet expected. So much of Violet’s life had been upended, Casey didn’t need to add to it. “Would you like to go for a walk?” Casey asked.

  Bess

  She drove with one hand on the wheel and one hand on the casserole dish to keep it from sliding from the seat onto the floorboard of her massive SUV. How she longed for a tiny car, compact and zippy. Instead she drove the vehicle that was chosen and bought for her by her husband, the sort of car required for hauling kids and their paraphernalia. One day, she told herself. One day she would have a vehicle that matched her and not her lifestyle. But not today. Today she was in this car, and in this lifestyle, even if lately it seemed that neither matched who she was inside.

  She eased through a four-way stop, feeling the heat from the fresh-from-the-oven dish radiating through the pot holder she’d placed on top of it. She was taking a meal to a family in need, something she did often for a variety of situations. It was, as she told her girls, the least she could do. She had made her go-to poppy-seed chicken casserole, perfect for the ill, the new parents, the bereaved. The ultimate comfort food, replete with creamy goodness and topped with buttery crackers. She didn’t know the calorie count and didn’t need to. She wasn’t eating it. And, in the face of an unexpected and mysterious loss, she wondered if anyone would.

  This particular family was one she didn’t actually know. Though the kids went to the same school as Nicole, they were younger, which meant Bess hadn’t crossed paths with the mother. Still, when the sign-up notice came through her email, she recognized the name from the news. She’d followed the story like so many others. A healthy, active middle-aged man, who by all appearances was living a normal life, had disappeared. No indication of trouble, no reports of suspicious activity beforehand. He was just . . . gone. And in his absence, a wife and two kids were left to wait and to wonder as the police investigated and the media speculated. The school had arranged meals for them, first prevailing upon those closest to them, then branching out to the parents at large, appealing to the question that haunted everyone: What if it was you?

  Bess eased her hulk of a vehicle into their narrow driveway and thought the worst thing she could think: She wished it was her. She wished that her husband, Steve, would disappear just like this man had. That one day he just wouldn’t come home. That she could play the role of the distraught wife as strangers brought her food. That life as she knew it would end, so that, eventually, she could start a new one.

  But this she could count on: she would return home from this errand, and, shortly after, Steve would come through the door, carrying his briefcase and complaining about his day. They would make polite conversation through dinner—tonight with extra plates at the table—and then he would disappear behind his office door to do whatever he did in there, and she would be left to watch whatever she could find on television. The best nights were when there was something good on.

  She shifted the car into park, the transmission adjusting with a heavy, weary thunk. She opened the driver’s side door just as the phone, resting in its spot in the center console, rang. She cast a longing glance at it. She wanted to answer it but couldn’t just then. Instead she had to carry dinner to a family in crisis, then go home and serve dinner to her own family, pretending that her daughter’s unexpected arrival home from college hadn’t scared her, that her other daughter’s anger didn’t concern her, that her houseguest was a welcome addition, and that she still loved her husband. Casey’s arrival bothered her most of all. She sensed that something was terribly wrong, no matter how much Casey acted like coming home unexpectedly was no big deal. While Bess was determined to get to the bottom of it, she couldn’t just yet. There was simply too much going on at the moment.

  When she could, she would talk to her daughter, insist she tell her the truth about whatever had transpired back at school that sent her running home. The question was, would Casey be honest? Bess recalled being Casey’s age. She was very rarely honest with her own mother. Bess liked to think they had the kind of relationship where Casey could tell her anything. But she also knew that Casey had become more distant since the breakup with Eli, less inclined to share more than cursory details. Bess had thought things would smooth over once Casey got immersed in college life and forgot all about Eli.

  But it was hard to immerse yourself in college life if you’d left college behind.

  There was no time to think about what it all meant. A man had stepped onto the porch and was watching her warily. She climbed out of the car, retrieved the casserole dish, and balanced the bag of rolls and container of green beans on top of it as she cautiously made her way up the front walk. The smell of home cooking wafted up, and her stomach rumbled in response, a reflex more than real hunger. Bess was an excellent cook. Everyone said so. She wondered how many meals she’d made since she’d stood at the altar beside Steve, pledging to love, honor, and plate up the four food groups in a new and creative way every night.

  Under the man’s watchful eye, she felt oddly nervous, complicit even, as if she were somehow participating in this family’s plight by bringing them food. Wasn’t that why people reached out to those facing hard times? To help was to separate yourself from those you helped, the distance across their threshold far wider than it appeared. It was acknowledgment that tragedy had befallen this house, yet insurance that the plague would pass over your own.

  “I brought food,” she said dumbly, offering up the casserole as proof. “Dinner,” she said again, as if that wasn’t obvious, seeing as how it was nearly dinnertime.

  The man stepped forward with his arms extended, studying her face as he did. She wondered what he saw as he regarded her. A pretty woman, or someone who was once pretty?

  “This is for Maria Rinaldi,” she said. “I’m from the kids’ school.”

  “Yeah, she told me someone was coming,” the man said. He nodded in the direction of the porch behind him. “I’m her brother-in-law,” he added. He looked back at the house, his face a mixture of concern and sadness.

  For a moment she feared he would invite her in. But he simply took the dishes, mumbled his thanks, and closed the door, leaving her standing empty-handed and alone on the porch. “It was the least I could do,” s
he said to no one, then turned and went back to clamber up into the car that was too big for her and head home to the life that was too small.

  Violet

  She and Casey fell into step with ease, as if they’d walked together many times. Casey’s ponytail swung back and forth in time with their footfalls, and Violet found herself watching it, her eyes drawn to it like one being hypnotized by the rhythmic movement. When the ponytail stopped swinging, Violet realized that Casey had stopped moving and came a breath away from running right into her. She started to apologize, to make an excuse for why she hadn’t been looking where she was going, when she noticed Casey pointing to something in front of them.

  Violet had been so absorbed in the bouncing ponytail, in this walk with the older, cooler girl, that she’d not thought about where they were going. And now they were mere feet away from what could only be called a media circus that had formed on Violet’s front lawn. She felt Casey tug on her arm. “We can’t let them see you,” she said. “I bet they’ll figure out who you are.”

  Casey pulled her into the edge of the front yard of the house across the street. Micah Berg’s house. “Ice Berg” they called him, on account of his talent at hockey. But Violet always thought of the nickname as meaning something else—how cold he was. He had, after all, lived across the street from her for most of their lives yet had never bothered to learn her name. She knew almost all there was to know about him. Things he didn’t know that anyone knew. Though she’d never said that aloud to anyone, not even Nicole. Now she was glad of that. She suspected her secrets were not safe with her former best friend.

  As Casey sought coverage for them in a small natural area closer to Micah’s house, Violet thought about Nicole’s ugly words about her mother. She would need to keep in mind that Casey was Nicole’s sister, so Violet probably couldn’t trust her, either. Casey crouched down behind a bush and gestured for Violet to do the same. Together, from their hidden vantage point in the neighbor’s yard, they watched the circus. “Man,” Casey whispered as if she might be overheard. “There sure are a lot of them.”

  “Yeah,” Violet breathed. The trucks and people made it hard to see her house. She scanned the exterior, hoping to see something familiar, something that felt like she was looking at her home. A man moved just enough for her to glimpse a swath of orange. She willed him to move so she could see if the pumpkin was still safe and sound on the porch, waiting for her mother to come back and explain why she’d bought it early, waiting for the two of them to carve it together. She closed her eyes and tried to envision what they would create: the triangle eyes, the gap-toothed, open-mouthed permanent grin, the light glowing from within.

  “Do you know the guy who lives here?” Casey asked.

  Violet opened her eyes at the mention of Micah. “Not really,” she lied.

  Casey glanced over her shoulder at the Berg house. It had once been a busy place, with Micah and his friends coming and going, playing football in the front yard or basketball in the driveway. But since last spring it had been fairly quiet, except for Micah’s nightly sojourns to shoot basket after basket alone, the sound of his dribbling a kind of lullaby in recent months.

  “I don’t like being here,” Casey said.

  “Were you here?” Violet asked in a low voice. “That night?” she added, even though she didn’t need to. Casey no doubt knew what she was referring to. Before today, what had happened at the Berg house had been the talk of the neighborhood. Now it seemed that the drama had packed up and moved across the street, right into Violet’s own house.

  “Yeah,” Casey said. She was silent for a moment. “We were friends.”

  “You and Micah? Or you and . . .” Violet didn’t say her name. She didn’t like to.

  “Me and Olivia,” Casey said. It felt to Violet like Casey said Olivia’s name louder, as if in defiance, hoping Micah would hear her name carried on the wind like the accusation it had become since her death. So many people held him responsible, and it seemed no one could, or would, say differently.

  There was still talk of prosecution. Violet had resolved to decide what to do about the part she’d secretly witnessed if it ever came to that. She wasn’t sure if what was happening with her mom now would change her mind. She looked back at her house, the street that ran between the two houses jammed with vans and people.

  “It’s his fault,” Casey said.

  “You don’t know that,” Violet said, too quickly and too forcefully. She clamped her mouth shut. A few moments of silence passed by before she added, as if it were merely an afterthought, “I mean I’ve heard he says differently. Maybe it’s true.”

  Casey regarded her for a moment, as if considering engaging in a full-on debate about whether Micah Berg did or did not aid and abet his girlfriend’s death. Violet could see Casey decide not here, not now. Instead she simply said, “Well, I hate him.”

  “You shouldn’t hate anyone,” Violet replied, her mother’s words coming out of her mouth reflexively.

  Casey gave a small, bitter laugh in response. “Yeah?” she asked. “We’ll see if you still feel that way after all this is over.” She gestured at Violet’s house with an angry jab, and Violet could tell there were things she was not saying. Not about Micah or Violet’s mom. Things about Casey. But Violet didn’t ask, and Casey didn’t offer. The two of them shifted at the same moment, their muscles cramping from crouching so long, then looked at each other and smiled.

  “What should we do?” Violet asked.

  Casey shook her head and rolled her eyes. “I honestly didn’t think much past hiding when I saw all the people. I was just afraid they’d bombard you like you see on TV.”

  Violet shuddered at the thought of reporters asking questions she couldn’t answer, with cameras recording it all. “Thanks,” she said.

  Casey shrugged. “Don’t mention it.”

  Behind them came the sounds of footsteps, and they both turned to see who was approaching. But instead of finding a person, Casey was met with a wet nose and a big tongue licking her face. Her pensive mood forgotten, she laughed, her hands sinking into the dog’s coat as she reached out to pet him.

  “Chipper,” Violet said. Chipper was the Bergs’ Irish setter, most often at Micah’s side, especially lately. Violet often wondered if Micah felt like Chipper was the only friend he had left.

  Instinctively, she looked up to find the boy she’d loved from afar for as long as she could remember standing just an arm’s length away. She stood, suddenly not caring if the reporters found her. She would not crouch on her haunches as Micah Berg stood over her.

  It took her a second to find her voice. “Sorry,” she said. “For being in your yard.” She hitched her thumb backward, indicating the crowd of people in her yard as explanation. She wasn’t sure whether he would recognize her, whether he would realize she was the girl who belonged in that house. She wondered if he was just glad a crisis was occurring somewhere else. Maybe take the heat off him.

  He nodded but didn’t smile. Micah was wearing his Yankees cap, but with the brim facing front like normal. He used to always wear it backward, before everything happened. It was kind of his trademark. But he didn’t anymore. Violet thought it was because he was trying to say he wasn’t the same person.

  He was holding a basketball, which he now spun nervously as his gaze traveled from Violet to Casey. “Hey, Casey,” he said.

  “Micah,” Casey responded, but she kept her eyes on the dog. She gestured to Violet. “You know Violet? Your neighbor?” There was a tone of sarcasm in her voice, and Violet wished she’d shut up. She didn’t want Micah to associate her with Casey’s hard feelings about him. She didn’t want him to think she shared them.

  “Sure,” he said, and nodded at Violet again. This was the most interaction they’d had since one time last year when he had a whole conversation with Sean Withers at the locker next to hers, and she pretended she couldn’t find her book just so she could smell his cologne for a few moments longer. When he
’d walked away, their eyes had met. He’d looked into her eyes and said “Hey,” and she swore her heart had literally skipped a beat.

  “Y’all wanna go out through my backyard?” he asked now. He dipped his chin in the direction of Violet’s house and gave them a cryptic grin. “Not like you can go back that way.”

  “Yeah,” Casey said. “We kinda got trapped.” Her voice sounded like she’d forgotten she was mad at him.

  Micah rolled his eyes. “I know how that feels,” he said, and Violet saw Casey’s eyes flash as she remembered that Micah Berg was her enemy.

  “Is there, like, a fence back there we have to climb over?” Violet hurried to ask before Casey could say something mean.

  “There is,” Micah answered. “But I can show you how you can walk around it, cut through the next-door neighbor’s yard. They don’t mind.”

  “OK, that would be great,” Violet said, sounding childish and stupid to her own ears. But if she kept talking, then hopefully Casey wouldn’t.

  Chipper had flopped down at Micah’s feet, and he roused the dog with the same low whistle she often heard through her open window at night. “Come on, Chip, let’s show these ladies out.”

  The boy and the dog started walking, and the girls fell into step as they followed them toward the backyard. But this time Violet didn’t watch Casey’s ponytail as they walked. She watched the back of Micah Berg’s head, committing this moment to memory so she could relive it again and again in the days to come. It was a comfort to be this close to Micah Berg, to have exchanged words with him and be properly introduced. In a desert, she thought, you’re grateful for every drop of water you can find.