The Children's Secret Read online

  THE CHILDREN’S SECRET

  A NOVEL

  NINA MONROE

  For Willoughby Walden,

  my son born on American soil.

  Families & Characters

  The Days

  Eva, Will & Lily

  The Wrights

  Kaitlin, Ben & Bryar

  The Carvers

  Priscilla, Peter & Astrid

  Avery Cotton

  Abi & Cal Johnston

  The Bowens

  True, Skye, Phoenix & Wynn

  The Sayeds

  Ayaan, Yasmin, Hanif & Laila

  There is no them. There is only us.

  —Luis Alberto Urrea

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THANK YOU TO all the magical people who made this book possible. My faithful writing friend and first reader, Margaret Porter. Katharine Woodman-Maynard for the incredible map at the beginning of the UK edition. Michael Herrmann for your friendship, support and beautiful bookstore. Barb Higgins, for making it possible for us to stay in the US.

  Thank you to Lieutenant Sean Ford, Curtis Arsenault, Dan Feltes and Jim Murphy for helping an English girl understand guns in America.

  Thank you to the whole team at Little, Brown, for getting this book out on both sides of the Atlantic, in particular Rosanna Forte, Thalia Proctor, Kate Hibbert and Andy Hine. And to my US publishing team at Crooked Lane Press.

  Thank you, as always, to my family who put up with all the highs and lows of having a live-in writer: Mama, Tennessee Skye, Somerset Wilder, Willoughby Walden, Valentine, Septimus, and Sonnet. And of course, the biggest thank you of all to Hugh, my heel-ball-and-toe mate to the end.

  And finally thank you to the great, beautiful and complex continent that I now call home; one that I have grown to love deeply: America. Thank you for welcoming me, an immigrant, and my family, with such warmth and kindness. And thank you for sharing your incredible stories with me. I hope I’ve done you justice in this novel.

  DAY ONE

  Sunday, September 1

  PROLOGUE

  NO ONE SEES the girl standing on the edge of the field. Hair the color of wheat, a green dress, legs so pale they disappear against the white sky.

  The air is heavy with the heat of the day; the sun so low it’s blinding.

  The girl looks at the bounce house, lying in the backyard.

  She watches the magician walking back to his car, his black shoes squeaking with each step. He throws his props into the trunk, unclips his bow tie and wipes the sweat off his forehead.

  She sees a little boy running between the farmhouse and the stable, trying to keep up with the older children. His face is painted to look like a bear cub: the colors are melting into each other. A red balloon comes loose from his hand and floats into the high branches of a tree. He looks up, his eyes wide. The balloon pops.

  The boy opens his mouth: a high-pitched, single-toned wail.

  His older sister, a painted butterfly glittering on her cheek, scoops him up in her arms, dangles him upside down until he’s laughing, and carries him to the stable.

  The girl in the green dress knows that she should go back home. She’s dizzy from the heat; her skin is burning.

  It’s not safe, Astrid, that’s why I’m not letting you go.

  But she’s tired of being left out. And she’s tired of her mom telling her what to do.

  She looks up at the farmhouse. Through the front window, she sees the mothers. They lounge on chairs and sofas, their bodies cooling as the AC unit whirs.

  She watches a man, the only father at the party, coming out of the kitchen with a pitcher of iced tea in one hand and a bottle of gin in the other.

  She looks away from the adults to the stable. No one’s watching the kids, she thinks.

  She walks to the edge of the field. Soon, she’s standing outside the stable.

  There’s a boy sitting in a tree, looking down at her, but she doesn’t notice. Her heart’s hammering too loud, beating out the same words over and over:

  You shouldn’t be here.

  You shouldn’t be here.

  You shouldn’t be here.

  But she’s come too far to turn back now. She leans in closer to hear what the children are saying. The top of her sandal catches a rusty barrel; it echoes across the valley.

  She holds her breath, hoping that no one heard.

  And then slips in through the back door of the stable.

  * * *

  On the porch, the mother places her hand above her brow to block out the glare of the sun. She heard a sound coming from the stable, a metal clang, and thought she should come out and check on the children.

  She scans the front yard but there’s no one.

  Wiping the sweat from her top lip, she leans her head against one of the posts holding up the porch and sighs.

  No one had prepared her for this heat.

  A wave of nausea sweeps over her. She misses home.

  She turns her gaze to the stable. The children are fine, she thinks. There’s nothing to worry about: they’re just playing.

  But it’s hard, at this age, to let go of their hands when their palms are still soft and fleshy from childhood.

  The screen door opens behind her.

  Why don’t you come and join us inside? the man asks. He gives her a tumbler of iced tea. A little cocktail. He smiles. For surviving the party.

  She takes the tumbler, even though she won’t drink it.

  The glass feels cool in her hot palm.

  She looks over again at the stable.

  The father follows her gaze.

  Don’t worry, he says. My eldest is in charge, she’ll keep them in line. He hooks his arm under hers. Come inside, it’s cooler.

  He guides her into the farmhouse, where she settles into a chair. A blast of cold air hits her from the AC. She leans back and closes her eyes.

  Better? the father asks.

  Yes, better.

  He sits beside her, takes off his hat and balances it on his knee.

  Looks like the kids had fun today, she hears him say, but his voice blends into the chatter from the other parents in the room. Already, she’s drifting off.

  Darkness falls behind her eyelids. And she sleeps. Perhaps for a minute. Or an hour. She’s not sure—the heat, the nausea, the tiredness, they make her lose track of time.

  But she’s sure of this.

  The cells of her body know, a moment before it happens.

  Her eyes fly open.

  She cries out at the room: No!

  And a second later—perhaps less—a gunshot rings out from the stable.

  CHAPTER

  1

  2 p.m., three hours earlier

  KAITLIN LICKS THE frosting off her thumb and stands back to look at the cake: it’s not straight. She pulls a spatula out of a drawer and pushes the back of it against the uneven layers. The cake straightens but now there’s a dent on one side.

  Just leave it be, she whispers to herself.

  She’s always making things worse by fussing at them.

  The recipe is easy, the blog had promised. But then Kaitlin found out that she needed six cake pans, one for each layer of the rainbow. She didn’t have six cake pans. So she had to make it in stages, cooling and washing up the pans in between. And then the decorating. Kaitlin had gotten to bed just before 1 a.m., hot and frazzled, with a sugar headache from licking the frosting off her fingers so many times.

  Do we really need a cake? Ben had asked, watching her disappearing under a cloud of confectioner’s sugar. I mean, it’s not his birthday, Katie.

  No, it wasn’t Bryar’s birthday. It was much more important than that.

  Officially, it was a Back to School party. That’s what the invitati
ons said. A chance for the new middle schoolers to get together before term started.

  Unofficially, it was a help-Bryar-make-friends-so-that-middle-school-wouldn’t-be-a-total-disaster party.

  A cake will make it feel special, Kaitlin had answered. It’ll be something for the kids to gather around.

  Okay, my love, okay, Ben had said, kissing her cheek.

  And despite the crazy, middle-of-the-night baking, Kaitlin was proud of it: her big, lopsided rainbow cake. The kids will love it, she tells herself.

  She takes off her apron, steps out of the house, and looks around the front yard. Her heart gives a little skip. So what if the party was beyond their budget? She’d give a few more riding lessons in the fall; they’d pay off the debt soon enough. It would be worth it in the end.

  To the side of the house, on a patch of dry grass, the bounce house sways in its yellow, red, and black skin. Next to it, the water slide. She’d gone through the safety precautions with the rental company. In case any families turned up with infants or toddlers, she’d child-proofed the whole property—the stable and the house and the front yard and the outbuildings. She’d checked with Angela, the face-painting lady, that her paints were allergen-free. She’d gone to Target and bought extra bottles of sunscreen, in case anyone forgot. And she’d set up coolers full of ice with juice boxes and water bottles next to each of the attractions.

  Kaitlin Wright wasn’t going to leave anything to chance.

  She heads toward the magician setting up under the small gazebo she’s rented for the day. The pictures of him online looked more impressive than the man who had showed up in a faded black suit and a clip-on tie. As Kaitlin walks toward him, she can smell it: sweat on nylon.

  She panics, suddenly. Kids these days are smart. What if the old gold-coin-behind-the-ear and rabbit-from-a-hat doesn’t cut it? What if they’re disappointed?

  A disappointed child could bring down a whole party.

  Stop worrying, she tells herself. It’s going to be fine.

  “Have you seen my son, Bryar?” she asks the magician. “I told him to come down and help you set up.”

  “The birthday boy?”

  “He’s not the birthday boy—it’s not …” She’d explained it to him. “Oh, never mind.”

  She really should have gone for the more expensive magician.

  “He came for a bit and then left,” he says, pulling out a black and white wand that looks like it came from a kid’s magic set.

  “Left? Where?”

  “I don’t know. He said he was hot.”

  Of course the party had to take place in the middle of a heatwave. And of course Bryar would find it too hot. His Irish coloring—red hair and pale, freckled skin, like hers—wasn’t made for this climate. She suspects that life would have been easier if he’d inherited Ben’s dark hair and olive skin.

  Kaitlin looks up to her son’s bedroom window. The curtains are drawn. She must not have heard him go back upstairs.

  She sighs. They’d had a chat this morning about how important today was—that sneaking away to his bedroom to play with his rocks wasn’t okay; not until all the guests had left.

  She runs inside, straight up the stairs, and knocks lightly on Bryar’s bedroom door.

  She hears a faint “Come in.”

  He’s sitting at his desk, looking through a magnifying glass. A lamp casts a hot light over his stooped shoulders. His ears glow; the hairs on the back of his neck are lit up.

  She goes over and picks up a piece of granite that sparkles like silver. They drive her crazy, sometimes, these rocks cluttering up his bedroom—and all that time he spends digging them up and then polishing and classifying them. But they’re beautiful, in their way.

  “Your friends will be here soon,” she says, putting the rock down.

  “They’re not my friends, Mom.”

  She feels a stab in her chest.

  “Well, they could be,” she says. “Remember what Eva said? When people spend time together, it helps them see how much they have in common; how they’re more alike than they realized. That’s how friendships start, Bry.”

  Kaitlin had taken Bryar to more therapists than she could count. None of them had gotten through to him. They wanted to give Bryar a label; she’d wanted someone who understood him for the amazing little boy he was. And then Eva, a music therapist, showed up with her soft English accent and, in only a few sessions, sitting beside Bryar at Ben’s old piano downstairs, she’d won him over. As had her daughter, eleven-year-old Lily who was going to be in the same class as Bryar.

  In fact, it was Eva who’d suggested having a few of Bryar’s classmates over before school started. An opportunity for the kids to have some fun on the long Labor Day weekend, and a chance for the parents to get to know each other too.

  Kaitlin had jumped on the idea. Anything to help ease the transition for Bryar. She’d sent out an invitation to every middle-school-aged kid in town. They could bring siblings too, she’d said. She’d even invited the Bowen kids, who don’t go to school because their dad teaches them at home. No one was going to be left out of this party.

  She pulls up a chair and sits beside Bryar. “It’s your party, Bry. It would be nice to welcome them.”

  “It’s not my party.”

  Another stab.

  Willing herself to stay positive, she ruffles his hair and laughs. “Well, whose party is it, then?”

  He places a different rock under the magnifying glass and leans over intently.

  “It’s your party, Mom.”

  His words hang between them for a moment.

  “What?” She shakes her head. “No. This is for you, Bryar. That’s why your dad and I have gone to so much trouble—”

  He looks up at her, his pale eyebrows scrunched up.

  “Where’s Dad, then?” he asks.

  “Sorry?”

  “If it’s such a special party, why’s Dad not here?”

  Kaitlin checks her watch. He’s right. Ben really should be here already.

  When they lived in Texas, he had an excuse to be late. He worked a difficult border; was always dealing with a crisis. That’s why they’d moved here: to raise a family somewhere safe and peaceful. The Canadian border had its occasional incidents, usually drug-related, but it wasn’t anything like El Paso.

  They had it all planned. Their dream life in cozy, safe New Hampshire: a short drive to the border; regular hours for Ben; a stable where she could give riding lessons. A friendly small town in which to raise their little boy. A real community.

  “He’s probably handing over at the station. He’ll be here.” She gives him a nudge. “You know your dad—he’d never miss a party.”

  Ben Wright, her sociable, easy-going husband who breezed through life. How could their little boy have turned out so very different from him?

  Bryar takes a small brush and works away a bit of dirt on the surface of a rock.

  “Bryar?”

  He stops brushing and looks up at her. “I just want to finish this. I’ll come down soon, okay, Mom?”

  She puts her hands on his shoulders and kisses the top of his head. “Okay, okay.”

  And then she leaves the room and closes the door behind her.

  * * *

  Kaitlin stands on the landing, her back against the wall, her eyes closed, trying to muster some energy.

  Maybe the party was a mistake. Maybe she should find an excuse to cancel. Or maybe it won’t matter because no one will come. People had been slow to respond. Some hadn’t answered at all.

  Before heading back downstairs, Kaitlin looks out through the window on the landing, across the valley to the next hill where Priscilla Carver lives with her daughter, Astrid, a girl Bryar’s age. They even look alike: the same pale skin and hair, the transparent blue eyes. Despite everything that happened with Priscilla, Kaitlin had invited Astrid to the party. She’d thought that maybe Priscilla would let go of the past: they lived in the same town; they saw each other in
church every Sunday, bumped into each other at the general store and the library. Surely, after three years, Priscilla could forgive them for what happened.

  And she feels sorry for Priscilla, her husband walking out on her like that. Kaitlin doesn’t know how she’d cope without Ben. She wanted to show her that she cared.

  Don’t get your hopes up, Katie, Ben had said when he saw her writing the invitation for Astrid Carver.

  And Kaitlin had tried not to get her hopes up, but when Priscilla had been the first to reply, her heart had lifted right out of her chest. Maybe it was a sign that she was keen to come, she’d thought as she tore open the envelope. But then, as she’d pulled out the typed message on headed notepaper, Priscilla’s name followed by a list of academic qualifications and her position at the Daniel Webster Law School embossed across the top, her heart had sunk right back down again.

  Thank you for the invitation, the note read. I’m afraid we will not be able to attend. Priscilla Carver.

  Kaitlin can’t help but think that if Bryar and Astrid had been allowed to remain friends, things might have turned out better for Bryar. It would have helped, having a smart, confident girl like her at his side.

  She looks back over at Bryar’s door. It’ll take a miracle to get him out of his room.

  CHAPTER

  2

  2.15 p.m.

  “YOU SURE YOU’LL be okay on your own?”

  Priscilla looks at her daughter sprawled over the sofa, her green dress hitched up to reveal her pale legs. Astrid doesn’t take her eyes off her phone, a gift from Peter before he left for his new life in California. So we can do FaceTime, he announced, as if a fancy phone was a replacement for a flesh-and-blood, sit-at-the-breakfast-table parent.

  “Astrid?” Priscilla says.

  “I’ll be fine,” Astrid says, not looking up from her screen.

  “I won’t be long,” Priscilla says.

  Astrid doesn’t answer.

  “If you don’t want to be on your own, I could call someone—a babysitter …”