The Secrets We Keep (23 page)

“I know,” Blake says. “I know.” And he thinks of all the crimes that happen under people's noses, unnoticed because of their proximity, and the belief that someone so close would be incapable of doing such a thing.

“I wish we could do something more,” Andy says. Which gets Blake thinking.

And Andy and Blake shake hands and part.

Mike,

You wouldn't believe what's going on here. It's stupid. I'm not going to insult you by even telling you about it. I've called their bluff. You used to say that about work: most times, you just call their bluff and it goes away. I do it at work sometimes, when people are horrible. If they threaten to go elsewhere, I smile and ask if they'd like me to call around some other hotels and find them a room. When that guy insisted his moussaka had given him food poisoning, even though thirty-five other people in the restaurant had eaten it with no problem, and said he was going to report us, I wrote down the number of our contact at environmental health for him and we never heard another thing.

So. I've called their bluff, “good and proper” as your mother would say. (I may never be able to bring myself to speak to your mother again.)

While I'm waiting for this all to go away, I thought I'd start on the quilt. But something went wrong with the cutting out, and now all I have is shreds and shards of fabric. And when they were your shirts, I loved them; now that they're material, they look broken and faded and frayed. Another plan awry.

I love you. I miss you. Every time I think I couldn't get lonelier, I do.

E xxxx

This time, Blake had taken the precaution of calling ahead to make sure that Rufus wasn't around. He hadn't asked directly, of course, but Richenda had said, “Rufus is off seeing a client today, so it will be just Kate and me if that's OK,” and Blake had said, “That will be perfect,” in a way that he thought afterward was a little too warm for the work he was about to do.

Richenda serves coffee in bowls today. “It's a habit we picked up when we lived in France for a while,” she says and thinks as she says it of the lifestyle that that sentence implies: happy, carefree, part of a history of interesting adventures. Well, the adventure part could possibly be considered true, but their French year-and-a-bit she remembers as lonely and puzzling. She thinks of it now as the time when she could have, should have, gotten out; less than two years married, the certain knowledge of the great mistake she'd made becoming clearer every day. But then the thought of facing up to her disapproving mother and her disappointed father, a few uncomfortable months of living at home again and finding a new place in the world, had seemed worse than the prospect of muddling through another day with Rufus. So she'd stayed, and then there had been Kate, and then there was no point in regretting anything or wishing things were different.

“Richenda?” Blake's voice is gentle.

She shakes her head. “Miles away,” she says. “I'm sorry. I assume this isn't a social call?”

“Afraid not,” and he explains, probably in more detail than he needs to, certainly with more feeling than he realizes, what's happened.

“So, Elizabeth would like to see one of Kate's photographs of her with Michael?”

“Yes”—Blake's eyes say,
I'm floundering here
—“I think it might help her to accept things.”

Richenda thinks of all the photographs of Caroline on Rufus's phone, his password so easy to guess that it's almost as though he wants her to look. “It will probably hurt her very much.”

“Everything is hurting her at the moment.” And Blake looks so bleak that as Richenda passes him to call Kate downstairs, she rests her hand on his shoulder. He sits very still, as though some rare and precious bird has come so close.

Kate comes slowly down the stairs. “I was in the rocking chair,” she says. “I think if I rock Kayla in it when she's on the inside, then it will soothe her to be there once she's on the outside. It works on me. I was nearly asleep myself.”

Blake stands. “Hello, Kate.”

Kate half smiles, wary. “I still don't remember anything, you know. About the accident. When Mike died.”

“It's not that, Kate,” Richenda says and looks at Blake to see whether he will make the request or she should.

“Elizabeth is having a hard time accepting that your baby is Michael's,” Blake begins.

“I'm not lying about it,” Kate says. “Why would I lie?”

Blake thinks of Elizabeth's list of reasons. “I don't think you're lying,” he says. “I'm just telling you what's happening for Elizabeth.”

“Elizabeth,” Kate says, although she doesn't like to speak the name aloud, as it makes her remember how Michael used to say it, each syllable as soft and equal as the next, with the comfort and quality of a word said often. “I don't want to talk about Elizabeth. I'm just thinking about me and Kayla now.”

Richenda looks at him.
Forgive her
, her eyes say.
She's young and she has no idea what she's saying.

“Of course,” Blake says. “I do understand that. I understand that Elizabeth trying to come to terms with this is not the most important thing for you now. But maybe for Michael? She was important to him for a long time, Kate, whatever happened in the end.”

Blake can see by Richenda's face what a gamble he's just taken.

He waits.

The ball scuttles: red, black, red, black, red. Kate remembers that Blake is the only person who congratulated her on her pregnancy. She remembers how Mike said he was someone he would trust with his life. Cautiously, Kate says, “What do you want?”

“I'd like you to text me one of your photos of you and Michael. Then I can show it to Elizabeth. Then I'll delete it. That's all.”

Blake is searching his pockets for his card with his cell phone number on it, so her “no” catches him off guard.

When he looks at her, she's sitting up very straight, hands on her stomach, eyes on his. “I don't have to prove anything to her. She doesn't have any right to see anything of mine. I don't belong to her; my photos don't belong to her just because her husband's in them.”

“OK,” Blake says, “but, Kate, she's really struggling. This might help her.”

“Why do I have to help her?”

Richenda says, “Kate—” just as Blake says, “You don't.” Richenda leans back in her seat, knowing that all the things she's on the brink of saying, about marriage and death and grace and life being about more than just you and what you want, aren't the right things to be said.

“You don't have to help her. But if we only helped when we had to, where would we be? You have your baby. Elizabeth has nothing left of Mike except the fact that he's not the man she thought he was.” To Kate, he sounds a bit like Mike. It's not that his voice is the same, but it's the sort of thing that Mike would say. She remembers standing in Elizabeth's garden; the pleading, the conviction that Elizabeth was the only person entitled to grieve for Mike as she was grieving.

“All right,” Kate says. “She can see the photos. But she has to see me too. I'll show them to her. She's not pretending that I don't exist anymore. You can tell her that and see what she says.”

• • •

Elizabeth says yes. Well, she says, “Bloody little cow. All right. Get her around here. She can sit in Mike's house and my house and see how she likes that,” which Blake translates into “Yes” and passes on to Richenda in a conversation where both express their misgivings.

Richenda says, “I think it best that we keep things as calm as possible,” with a question mark at the end, and Blake, whose translation skills are coming into their own at the moment, realizes that she doesn't plan to tell Rufus until this is over and says, “Yes, I agree.”

And so, on a sunny day in the middle of August, Richenda and Kate walk up to Elizabeth and Michael's front door, and Kate rings the bell. Her face could be made of wax. Mel opens the door.

“You're a bit early,” she says, not unpleasantly, “but ten minutes isn't going to make this any easier for anyone, I suppose.” And she steps back, and Kate walks into the house that she's walked past and wondered about so many times.

Three steps and she's in a living room that feels like a home. Above the fireplace there's a framed wedding photo. Mike has a white shirt on, and he's laughing. He looks younger. So does she: younger, prettier, longer hair. Kate looks at the shelf of travel books, the lamp with the twisted wooden base she thinks must be from Australia, the alcove where the Christmas tree goes.

She wishes she hadn't come.

Blake is already here. He's standing, to the side of the fireplace. Mel indicates the sofa, and Richenda sits at one end, Kate in the middle.

Blake smiles bravery toward Richenda, smiles it again to Mel, who says, “I'm dispensing with the traditional offer of tea. I hope that's OK.”

Richenda nods.

And then Elizabeth comes down the stairs and into the room. Her hair is damp and she wears jeans and a white shirt with a hole in the elbow. Her feet are bare. So is her face. She nods to Richenda, who nods back.

Mel opens her mouth to say something, but Elizabeth says, “It's fine, Mel.”

The room holds its breath.

And then Elizabeth looks at Kate.

And Kate looks at Elizabeth.

Elizabeth sees blossom. She sees bloom. Everything about Kate is rounding, orbing outward as though the baby she carries is filling every space in her with its presence and intention.
I'm coming, and when I come, I'll change your life.
Her hair is glossy and her eyes are bright, and even the sharpness she is holding in them can't contain the cornered, afraid child she is.

Kate sees tiredness. She sees sadness. She sees the contents of her own heart—love, grief, loss—carved onto someone else's body. Elizabeth's toenails are unpainted and her hands don't rest. There's a cut on her fingertip. She works her wedding ring around and around on her finger, with her thumb. Her engagement ring, a diamond solitaire clasped in yellow gold, sags from her finger a little. Kate finds herself wondering whether Mike chose it or whether they had bought it together. She sees the ring on Elizabeth's thumb, too big too. Recognizes it. Remembers the time she tried to take it off, half playful, and he'd pulled his hand from hers and said, no. Just that one word.

The room needs to breathe.

Elizabeth says, “Thank you for coming, Kate. I hope you're well.” She sits down, next to Kate but careful to be far enough away to make sure that their bodies can't accidentally touch. At eight months pregnant, Kate is taking up a lot of room. Elizabeth holds on to the arm of the sofa with her left hand, to keep her anchored at a safe distance.

Kate, scrabbling for purchase as she realizes that Mike is smiling out from every picture frame in the room, says, “Do you?”

Richenda says, “Kate.”

Elizabeth says, “It's much easier to think unkind thoughts about someone when they're not sitting next to you. And there's no way your baby is Mike's child. So yes, I hope you're well. My husband died because you're walking around, so it would be a shame if you weren't well.”

Kate can't work out if Elizabeth is being bitchy or not, decides that she isn't, that she doesn't have the right sort of eyes. And her mother, who is now holding her hand so very tightly, has promised to step in if need be.

But then Richenda says, “Kate, you don't have to do this if you don't want to.”

Mel opens her mouth, but Elizabeth, who seems to be watching herself from out of her own wedding photograph on the wall, says, “I'm sure you appreciate that this is difficult for me.”

“Yes,” Richenda says in the voice Kate recognizes as the one reserved for people in shops who are rude and Dad when he comes home too late and too flushed. “It's actually rather difficult for everyone, so let's get on with it, shall we?”

And Kate takes her phone from her pocket.

Mel is next to Elizabeth, perched on the arm of the sofa, her hand on her sister's shoulder.

Kate passes the phone to Elizabeth.

She isn't as shocked as she thought she was going to be. She is hurt, more hurt than she has been since she sat in the funeral home and thought about how Mike had left her when he promised he never would. But not shocked. The sound of Mel crying is more shocking than the photograph, which just makes Elizabeth think,
Well, there's Mike. What's he doing with his arm around that girl?

Elizabeth starts to scroll forward through the photographs. He looks uncomfortable. They both look cold. Really cold. In most of the photos they're both looking straight at the camera, but in one Mike's head is turned toward Kate, his mouth caught in the blur of a word.

Elizabeth, hungry for detail, asks Kate, “What's he saying?”

Kate leans over, half smiles, and says, “He was saying that Pepper doesn't like the flash.”

And that's when it happens. The others watch and see the darkness dawning. Inside, Elizabeth is bellowing, wailing, clawing. Screaming. Screaming, “You know my dog. You fucked my husband, and you call my dog—our dog—by his name, as though you have the right to. As though you're part of the family. Which you're not, and you never will be.”

But her body has turned to marble and her heart to the kind of sharp, hot dust that whirls in every passing gust and scratches its way across your eyes.

She says, “Blake, will you let Pepper out, please? I think he wants to go into the garden.” And Blake obeys, even though Pepper is passed out in his basket. And then Elizabeth musters her best shot, which isn't much of one, and says to Kate, “Those pictures were all taken in one go. You could have been leaving a party. He could have been humoring you. They prove nothing.”

Elizabeth is twisting the ring around her finger again. Kate has taken her phone back, has her eyes down, face hidden by her hair.

Richenda and Mel are both looking at Blake, who says gently, “Elizabeth, I know this is hard, but we agreed that Kate would come here and show you the pictures, and that's what she's doing.” He catches Mel looking glistening daggers at him. “Mel, we can't go on like this.”

“I agree,” Mel says, “but that's not to say we should be trying to make things worse.”

Richenda makes to stand, but Kate resists. She hands her phone back to Elizabeth, who finds herself looking at a text message from Mike's number, from the previous July. “Dog walking tonight.” She scrolls past what seems like hundreds of messages that say “Dog walking” or “Running” or occasionally “No dog walking,” which is somehow worse. Elizabeth's face goes from pale to paler to peaked, and she starts to shake.