Best Kept Secret: A Novel

Four days after my appointment with Mr. Hines, I’m pacing the house. I want to call and talk to Charlie, but it’s early afternoon and he’s with Alice. She always lets my calls go to voicemail so there’s no point in trying. He was with me over the weekend, but it wasn’t enough. The muscles in my arms literally throb from wanting to hold him. I sit down at the kitchen table, edgy and uncomfortable. I try to work.

I revisit the idea of writing an essay about how adult friendships fade. There has to be a market for something like that—maybe I could query my old contact at Woman’s Day and see if she’d be interested. I think about my friendship with Susanne and why it doesn’t seem to be working anymore, but realize I’d have to write about my drinking problem in order for the essay to make any sense. Plus, if I was going to do a really thorough job, I would have to talk with Susanne to get her side of the experience in order to present a well-rounded picture of the situation. Scratch that idea. I run a couple of Google searches on random thoughts—switching careers in your thirties, how to lose ten pounds eating ice cream—but I can’t concentrate. All I can think about is Charlie. Shutting down my Internet window, I open Outlook and send Martin an e-mail, giving him the rundown on the pricing at Bouncy Land for Charlie’s party.

It’s not that expensive, and it includes pizza and juice for the kids. So all we’d have to do is bring the cake, which you know I will make. And some goody bags for the kids, which I’ll do, as well. Let me know what you think.

He sits at his computer all day for work so his answer only takes a few minutes to come back to me.

I think it’s better if we do it at my mom’s house. She wants to make the cake, too. If you want to do the goody bags or balloons or something, that would be fine. We’ll take care of the rest.

This is wrong. It just feels so incredibly wrong. I have always planned Charlie’s birthday parties. Not Martin. Me. He shows up, gives the other children airplane rides or fills up water balloons for them. Who the hell does he think he is? I screwed up, yes. But does that completely erase my worthiness as Charlie’s mother? Does that mean I don’t ever get a say in anything about his life ever again?

“God dammit,” I say out loud to an empty room. I make a strange growling noise and pound my fists on my desk.

I can’t stand this. I can’t do it. I feel wild. Unstable. I need to get away from myself. I decide to head over to my favorite neighborhood coffee shop, convinced that outside of going to a meeting, a white chocolate mocha is another perfectly legitimate motivation to leave the house.

The door at Wholly Grounds jingles as I step inside and a barista gives me a welcoming smile. I glance over to the corner opposite the fireplace where the owners have set up a twenty-foot-square, gated-off area filled with kids’ tables and toys. A large sectional couch sits right outside this enclosed play area so mothers can chat and sip coffee while keeping an eye on their children. There are four women sitting on the couch today and a handful of kids in the play area. My eyes flicker across them quickly, doing my best not to let my emotions get the better of me at seeing mothers with their children. I can’t keep melting down. There’ll be nothing of me left.

“Cadence!” a voice calls out. I stop in my tracks and look back to the sectional, only to realize that the women sitting there are Brittany, Renee, Susanne, and another woman I don’t recognize.

I give them a hesitant smile and a quick wave. I’m not in the mood to talk. I want to get my coffee and run back to my house. But Brittany beckons me over, so I take a deep breath and go to say hello. “Hey, everyone.” I smile at the woman I don’t know, feeling oddly unnerved. “I’m sorry. I don’t think we’ve met.”

“I’m Julia.” She motions over to the children, who all appear to be about Charlie’s age. “And that’s Cody over there, in the brown T-shirt. With the whipped cream on his face.”

I smile, but my chest feels tight. It’s hard to breathe. I feel like the specimen smeared on a glass slide under a microscope.

Brittany sits forward and sets her cup on the table in front of them. “I haven’t seen you in ages. How have you been?”

“I’m good. Busy with the writing, as always. How are things going for you?”

“I’m wonderful.” She beams, running her palm over her abdomen. “Pregnant again.”

“Really? That’s great.” It must be early in her first trimester; her stomach is completely flat. I swallow hard. I just want to get my coffee and go home. I look over to Susanne, who hasn’t said a word. “How’s Anya?” I ask.

“She’s fine.” She flashes a swift smile, then looks immediately away. What’s the deal with that? I know we haven’t been talking much, but I didn’t expect it to be this awkward between us.

“Where’s Charlie?” Renee asks, peering over the top of the couch, searching for my invisible child.

My arm reflexively reaches out behind me as though Charlie were standing right there. As though I could hold his hand. I read once about a man who lost a leg at the knee after an accident. He talked about reaching for his right foot to put on a shoe every day for years, even after the leg was gone. I imagine how I feel in this moment is a little bit like how he felt when he had to pull back from reaching to his foot.

My cheeks explode with heat as the other women watch me drop my arm back to my side with quizzical expressions on their faces. I scramble for the right explanation. “He’s spending some time with Martin today,” I say, finally settling for an abbreviated version of the truth. We’re only as sick as our secrets. “Father-son bonding time.”

I catch Susanne throwing a quick sidelong glance at Brittany, whose eyebrows lift almost imperceptibly. A sense of trepidation begins to coil in my belly.

“That’s important for them to do,” Renee says. “Rick spends every Tuesday night with Juan. They go to the park and then out to dinner so I can get some alone time.”

“Huh,” Julia says. “Alone time? What’s that? I couldn’t get Steve to spend an evening with his son if his life depended on it.”

“You don’t have to pick up Charlie any time soon, do you?” Brittany says. “You should join us. Get your coffee and come have a seat.”

“Oh. Okay. Great. Thanks.” What else could I say? I shuffle back from foot to foot, looking at Susanne for some kind of support, but she still doesn’t meet my gaze. I guess what Andi said was true—our friendship has shifted for good. Or maybe it wasn’t a friendship at all. At least not the kind that is good for me.

“Great.” Brittany smiles again. Susanne stares at her coffee cup, Renee looks over to the play area, checking on her son. My eyes follow hers, automatically searching the group of children for my son’s face. Though it shouldn’t, not seeing him there startles me. My heart jumps a beat in my chest before I remember he’s not here.

As I step away from them, the whispers start. It’s Renee, just barely loud enough for me to hear. “Does she think we don’t know?”

And then Brittany: “Martin told me she’s an absolute mess. He had to step in.”

“Of course he did,” Renee agrees, keeping her voice low. “I mean, really. Wouldn’t you?”

“What?” Julia asks. “Does she think we don’t know what?”

Susanne doesn’t say a word.

My throat seizes up. My stomach clamps down on itself and I freeze where I stand. They all know. It had to be Susanne. She told them. How could she do that? I can’t drink with her anymore, so she starts gossiping about me? What the hell? And I’m sure once Brittany got the scoop about my going to treatment, she must have talked to Martin at Charlie’s preschool and pumped him for all the details.

I want to run away. I want to pick up my feet and force them right out the door. But I don’t. Instead, I spin around to face them, my eyes bright. I swallow, trying to keep the tears at bay. I don’t want to give them the satisfaction. They stop talking and look up at me. They’re caught.

“You know what?” I say, staring straight at Susanne. “I actually need to work today. I don’t have time for coffee.”

Susanne drops her eyes to the floor again and Renee simply stares back at me. Julia looks confused.

“Oh,” Brittany says, the only one who doesn’t look away. “That’s too bad.”

Yeah, too bad. I want to defend myself. I want to ask each one of them if they’ve ever done anything shameful in their own lives. If they’ve ever hurt anyone they love; if they’ve behaved in a way they’d do anything in the world to erase. My blood feels like fire beneath my skin as I consider what they must think of me. I might as well be standing naked in front of these women.

I might as well still be drunk.