This Secret Thing

by Whalen, Marybeth Mayhew

  And then Bess opened her eyes. She looked at Casey and reached out to her. The two grasped hands, and she saw Bess take in the surroundings, seeming to understand where she was and what had happened, no explanation needed. “You didn’t mess everything up,” Bess said to Casey through tears. “You were so brave today. What you did for Violet. You didn’t even hesitate.” She squeezed Casey’s hand, and Casey was surprised by the strength she still had. This was her good hand now, her good arm.

  Casey squeezed back. “So were you,” she said. “I didn’t know you knew how to do that.”

  Bess tried to shrug, then winced. “Well, I didn’t do it all that well. Obviously.” She dipped her chin in the direction of her bandaged shoulder.

  “Mom, you were a hero. You got us out of there.”

  Bess closed her eyes for a moment. “I don’t remember all of it,” she said, and opened her eyes again.

  “I do,” said Casey. “And maybe someday I’ll tell you whatever you don’t remember.”

  “You’ll fill in my gaps,” Bess said.

  Casey smiled. “Yes.”

  Bess’s face grew serious. “There are other gaps I’d like you to fill. You promised me you would when you’re ready. Think you’re ready now?”

  Casey gave her a scolding look. “Using your injury to guilt me into spilling my guts.” She tsked in mock disapproval. “That’s low, Mom.”

  Bess gave a little laugh. “Trust me when I say I wanted to get you to talk somehow, but this wasn’t what I had in mind.”

  “If you were brave enough to tackle a large man with a gun, I guess I should be brave enough to tell you what happened at school. Why I came back. You’ve waited long enough.”

  Bess gestured to the bed with her good arm. “And, hey, I’ve got lots of time.”

  Casey nodded. “That you do,” she said. “That you do.”

  And then she repeated what she’d told Violet in her room just hours before. It had been a dress rehearsal of sorts, she supposed, a practice run for this moment. She was glad she’d had Violet to talk to then. She was glad she had her mom to talk to now. She had fled school and run home. But the journey to actually get home had taken far longer than she had anticipated. She was glad to finally arrive.

  Violet

  Instead of her life returning to normal, it just kept getting stranger. She was in Micah Berg’s house, spending the night in his sister’s old room. Polly stayed in the room down the hall, the one Violet was pretty sure Olivia Ames had died in, but she didn’t mention that to Polly. They’d had enough talk of death for one night.

  Violet sat on the edge of the bed, too nervous to crawl under the covers, too keyed up to have any hope of falling asleep. A light knock on the door startled her, but she composed herself and said “Come in” just loudly enough to be heard. It was probably just Polly, checking on her yet again, or Micah’s mom, who’d come over and invited them to spend the night, considering all the cops streaming through their house, which was a crime scene once again. Or—she dared to hope—maybe it was Micah, responding to the text she’d sent him: I’ve got something to tell you. In person.

  The door opened and she saw his shape fill the doorway, like a wish granted. She’d hoped he would respond to the text, but this was too quick. Micah Berg sauntered. He strolled. The only time he hustled or rushed was when he chased a hockey puck down a frozen rink or rebounded a basketball. Or, she thought, when he hoped that the girl across the street had information about his father. Before she spoke, she reminded herself that that was all she was to him: the girl across the street.

  She beckoned for him to come in, motioned for him to close the door. He took a few steps forward but stopped at the midpoint between the doorway and his sister’s bed as if there were a mark there, like actors have on stages. He looked stricken, as though he were balancing on a tiny raft and surrounded by hot lava he might fall into. She and Nicole used to play that game all the time.

  “I found it,” Violet said.

  Micah looked down at her hands to see they were empty, then raised his eyes back to meet hers. “Well, where is it?”

  “I . . . must’ve dropped it. When everything happened,” she said. It was just a little lie, a necessary one. Everyone had to believe that a cop had found the drive on the scene, not that it had been turned over by the accused’s daughter. For her plan to work, no one could know what she’d done. It was this secret thing that would remain solely hers. Her mom wasn’t the only one who could keep secrets, she reminded herself.

  Micah’s face changed from hopeful to devastated in a flash. “Then what did you have to tell me?” he asked, impatient and exasperated.

  “Before I lost it, I checked it. I checked it twice.” She waited a beat, then added, “Like Santa.” She grinned at him, and as she did, he saw that she had good news to deliver. He exhaled and smiled. “He’s not on there, Micah. He’s not on there anywhere.” Micah bridged the gap between them in two steps and swooped her up, hugging her so tight she could barely breathe. But she didn’t mind. She didn’t mind a bit.

  “Thank you,” he said, and kissed her cheek. Shocked by the unexpected contact, she pulled back, a reflex she instantly regretted. Micah’s face became all circles: round dots of color on his cheeks, round eyes, round mouth. He set her down and took a step back.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, holding his hands up. “I shouldn’t have done that. You’ve been so nice to me these past few weeks. You’re practically the only person who has been nice to me in this whole freaking town. I didn’t mean to overstep.” He lowered his head. “No one wants to be this close to a girlfriend killer.” He said it low, but she heard it.

  The silence between them swelled until she finally spoke, her words quiet, but clear. “You didn’t kill your girlfriend,” she said.

  He gave her a sad smile. “You’re sweet, Violet,” he said. “But I know what everyone thinks. Trust me, you don’t have to try to save me from that. You’ve done enough, just with what you’ve done.”

  He took a step back, ready to move toward the door. She could just let him go, let him and everyone else keep thinking what they’d thought since that night last spring. Or she could finally tell her secret. There were only so many secrets Violet could carry. She’d picked up a new one tonight, so this was as good a time as any to lay the old one down.

  “I saw you,” she said, and watched as his face changed from resigned to curious. “That night. Of your party. I was . . .” She searched for a less incriminating, less embarrassing way to say what she had to. “I was watching the party from my window.” She pointed in the direction of her house. “I had the window up, and I could hear everything.”

  She waited for him to grasp what she was saying. He frowned at her, perplexed. “You heard? You heard what?”

  “You broke up with her. And she was crying. She’d cheated on you, and you’d caught her.”

  “That part everyone knows. Lizzie McCoy told everyone that she saw Olivia kissing that other dude.” He gave her a half smile, like she was cute trying to be in the know.

  “But not everyone knows what I know,” she said. “It’s the part you didn’t tell anyone.” She waited for him to realize what she was referring to, watched as the flicker of knowledge crossed his face like a fluorescent light, coming on in phases. “I always wondered why you didn’t tell.”

  He raised his eyebrows, still unwilling to admit anything. “Why I didn’t tell what?”

  “She told you she was going to kill herself. She said she was going to drink enough to die. She said she was going to drink herself to death and make sure you got blamed for it. She said if you broke up with her she was going to ruin your life.”

  Micah winced, though Violet knew it wasn’t because of what she said. It was because he was recalling it. “It worked,” he said. “She ruined it.” His shoulders slumped.

  “But why didn’t you tell that part? That it wasn’t an accident? That she said she was going to do it? Why did you take th
e blame like you did?”

  “Because I blamed myself. I was hard on her that night. Things hadn’t been good with us for a while. We were basically over, but we were kind of both hanging on. Hell, that’s why she hooked up with that guy. But she was scared for us to really be over. So she threatened me. And I thought that was all it was—just a threat. She was always being dramatic, saying shit like that. So I ignored her. And I went inside and got drunk myself, and I never even looked for her again.” He looked at Violet, and she saw tears pooling in his eyes.

  “I just pushed it out of my mind and went and had fun. I didn’t see her again, so I thought she left. Come to find out, she did exactly what she said she was gonna do.” He shook his head. “It was her last words—those texts she sent—against mine. And I’m not one to speak ill of the dead. I figured, sure, people would think it was lousy, but I thought . . . I thought my friends would know me. They’d know I wasn’t the type of person who’d do something like that. I thought they’d ask me. They’d give me the chance to explain.”

  “But no one did,” Violet said.

  One tear escaped and trickled down his cheek. Another followed close behind. “No one. They all just condemned me, and it was like, once they did that, I didn’t want to try to explain. I just, like, went inside myself, so no one could get to me. I figured it was easier that way. I’d finish out my senior year and get the hell out of here.”

  Violet nodded her understanding. Feelings like Micah’s made her into the girl at the window, watching the party but never daring to join it. She found it easier to keep her distance. There was less risk of getting hurt that way. She thought of her father—her own father—sending her away, her mother lying to her for years, her best friend pushing her away because Violet wasn’t cool enough. She understood being misunderstood, being rejected. She just never dreamed someone like Micah Berg might understand, too. She saw him smiling at her and gave him a quizzical smile back.

  “What?” she asked. She couldn’t fathom what he’d find to smile about after a speech like that.

  “And then one day,” he said, “I find the girl across the street hiding with Casey Strickland in my bushes. And everything changed.” He laughed.

  “So you don’t hate me? For keeping quiet all this time, for not coming forward?”

  He shook his head. “No.” He paused. “Actually, I—”

  He stopped short, clapping his lips together like a drawbridge closing. She wanted to know what he was about to say so badly, but something inside her told her not to ask. All in due time; she felt the words more than heard them. And for a moment she wondered if this was what her grandmother had been talking about, about being a Beaucatcher. Maybe this sense of knowing had lived inside her all along—an instinct, something that would grow over time, its own kind of power, gaining strength.

  There in that room with Micah Berg standing before her, working out what he would say next, she understood for the first time that she had more ahead, so much more. She felt herself straining toward this unknown future, not afraid anymore. The anticipation felt like she imagined riding in a convertible with the wind rushing through her hair would feel. She’d never done that before, but she had the sense that she would, someday. She would do it all.

  Nico

  October 22

  Nico stood in front of the mirror and knotted his tie with the practiced efficiency of a man who’d done so every day for many years. But this time he did it in front of the mirror on his dresser, in his bedroom, in his house. He pulled the knot firmly and thought about friendly neighbor Mike and the casual conversation he’d had with him the day before. He’d pretended to need to borrow a posthole digger to fix that post. He’d used the opening to let Mike know he had moved back in the house, and to clue Mike in on what he knew had been going on. He made sure to point out that Mike’s wife was the only one of the four of them who was clueless. Nico had built his career on clues, he’d told Mike, then watched with satisfaction as the other man nodded his understanding, looking stricken.

  Karen came into the room holding a cup of coffee, still wearing her nightgown. He pulled her to him and planted a kiss on the top of her head, inhaling the smell of her sleepy self, something he’d never thought of missing till he didn’t have it. There was an intimacy in knowing what someone smelled like first thing in the morning. It was a privilege to be the person who got to experience it, who knew that part and not just the part they showed to the world.

  “I missed you,” he said for the hundredth time.

  She smiled at him, still wary. She’d let him back in the house, but it would take a little longer to let him back into her heart. She had to know he wouldn’t abandon them ever again, not for any case, not for anything. That would take time. But he would wait as long as it took.

  “Big meeting today, huh?” It was not really a question, but she posed it as one.

  “Yeah,” he said, sitting down on the bed to slip on his shoes. He needed new soles.

  “I hope it goes well.”

  “I think I’m going to stop by and see Maria on the way in,” he said. He’d been putting it off, but he couldn’t anymore.

  “I’m sure she’ll appreciate that.”

  He turned to look at Karen. “It scares the hell out of me.”

  She sat down beside him. “So do it scared.”

  He grinned. “I guess I’m gonna have to.”

  “Are you going to tell her, about that last day with Matteo?”

  He was quiet for a moment, thinking it over again. He looked at Karen. “Should I?”

  Now it was her turn to think it over. “I don’t know. It’s the truth. But it’s also a hard thing for her to know about her dead husband.”

  “I thought I’d just ask her if she has any questions about the autopsy report, make sure she understands that it was likely an accident. He was drinking in his car. Probably had the car running. Passed out and somehow the car went into the lake. And that was it.”

  “But why was he at that lake drinking on a Wednesday evening?” Karen mused. “That’s what she’s got to be asking herself.”

  “Because his brother had just sent him away,” Nico said, sadly. “He’d chastised him, and sent him away.”

  “He’d just confessed he’d been with a prostitute. You had a right to be angry.”

  Nico nodded, thinking about that day. Matteo had been in agony over what he’d done. But he’d also been concerned about what he’d seen, more importantly about who he’d seen, a man he said he recognized but couldn’t place. “I’m telling you it’s someone I’ve seen before, like in the papers. Some government official. He didn’t like that I saw him. I wasn’t supposed to.” Matteo’s eyes were wild, darting around the room.

  Nico hadn’t handled it well. He’d called his brother an idiot. He’d told him he didn’t have time for his shit that day. He had a huge case in court the next day and needed to go over his testimony. “You got yourself into this. You get yourself out.”

  Then Matteo said the thing that Nico could never—would never—forget. “But I need you.” And Nico had turned his back on him. He’d never seen him again.

  The truth—the whole truth about what had happened with Matteo—had gotten him back into the house. Once he had explained to Karen why he’d been so dogged in his search for his brother, why he’d thrown himself into investigating Norah Ramsey, Karen understood much more. She still didn’t like the decisions he’d made, but she gave him the chance to make better decisions going forward. It was all he could ask for.

  Now, Karen planted a kiss on his cheek. “You’ll do the right thing,” she said. “You always do.” She raised her eyebrows. “Eventually.”

  He laughed, grateful for the bit of humor. Grateful for his wife. Grateful for the life he’d been given back, a second chance to do the right thing. He didn’t intend to ever need a third.

  Polly

  She’d done this before, of course. With Norah when she was a kid. But that had been many ye
ars ago. Now they had fancy gadgets to make it easier. She spread the newspaper out on the table and placed the pumpkin in the center of it. She’d bought a new pumpkin to replace the other one, a casualty of Calvin’s rampage.

  Bess sat at the island watching her spread the paper out, drinking wine with her good arm. “This is all the lifting I can do these days,” she quipped, and raised the glass to her lips.

  “Well, cheers to that,” Polly said. She went back to arranging the paper so not one bit of Norah’s table showed. “You said Casey’s dropping by?”

  “Yeah, she’s busy packing to go back to school, but she said she’d come supervise for a minute. She says she’s an expert pumpkin carver, but I think she just wants to keep an eye out for Violet, make sure Micah has the best of intentions.”

  Polly rolled her eyes. “Well, according to Violet he has no intentions at all. But you should see the way he looks at her. I give it a coupla months, and they’ll be an item.”

  Bess smiled knowingly, then changed the subject. “You doing OK?” she asked, her voice tentative.

  “Yeah,” Polly said. “It gets a little easier each day. I’m not having as many nightmares. You?”

  “Physical therapy is gonna be a bitch. And I worry I’ll never have mobility in my arm like I used to. You don’t realize how much your shoulder controls what your arm does.” She sighed. “Funny how one thing can affect so much.” She ran her good hand through her hair. “But mentally, I’m doing OK. I’m not as scared as I thought I’d be. Course I’m militant about the security system being on.”

  Polly raised her eyes heavenward and nodded an emphatic agreement to that. She felt much the same about their security system ever since “the incident,” as she’d come to call it. Sometimes she replayed that moment of letting Barney in, her eyes straying to Bess pouring the wine, forgetting all about locking the door behind her in the process. She’d always regret leaving it open for Calvin to walk right through. But that was the past, and there was nothing that could be done about it. And, as Bess said, she’d apologized enough.