The Children's Secret Read online

  “Dad doesn’t like bang, bang games,” Wynn says, as if he’s read her thoughts. And then he says: “I’m going to see Skye now,” and runs off. Before he gets to Skye, Wynn looks over his shoulder and calls out. “Let me know if you see a bear!”

  Lily laughs. “Okay!”

  Maybe she will get to see a bear one of these days. Or a moose. Or a coyote. Something cool she can tell her friends about back in London.

  Lily looks back up at the house and notices that the curtains behind Bryar’s window are drawn shut. As she walks up the porch steps, she catches a conversation between Kaitlin, Bryar’s mum, and True.

  “I was going to do the cake before the magic show. But we’re running out of time.” She panics. What if Bryar doesn’t come down?

  Bryar’s mum is always worrying about him.

  “I just don’t know what to do with him.” Kaitlin’s voice goes shaky.

  True puts an arm around her shoulder.

  “He’ll be fine, Kaitlin, the kid just needs to find his way.”

  Lily pushes past them into the house. She goes through to the kitchen and sees the cake—it’s so huge it could feed a whole army of kids. Lily’s stomach groans. She hopes they still do the cake, whether Bryar likes it or not.

  As she looks up the stairs to Bryar’s bedroom, Lily thinks about how sad it will make his mum if he stays in his bedroom for the whole party.

  She runs up and knocks on his door.

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Bryar?” she calls out.

  She hears a shuffling.

  “Is it okay if I come in?” She pushes at the door.

  He’s sitting on his bed surrounded by those rocks he’s always showing her.

  “You coming downstairs?” Lily asks. “Everyone’s here.”

  He takes a smooth, black rock and turns it between his fingers.

  “Your mum’s made this amazing cake. She’d be sad if you didn’t come to have a piece with everyone.”

  Bryar puts the rock down, scoots off his bed, goes to his window and pulls the curtains back a little.

  “There are too many people,” he says.

  “It’s a party—people are kind of the point.”

  He shrugs.

  “You know, you can ignore them if you like. They’re all busy doing their own thing, anyway. You could pop down for a slice of cake and a go on the water slide. Then you can come right back up.”

  “I think I’ll stay up here. No one will notice.”

  “I noticed.”

  He looks up at her. “Yeah, but you’re different.”

  She feels a rush of warmth in her cheeks.

  “I’m different because you know me. And because we’ve spent time together. If you got to know some of the others—”

  He shakes his head. “I’m fine here, thanks.”

  Lily feels exhausted by their conversation. She feels exhausted by everything these days.

  She turns to go. If he doesn’t want to come down, she can’t force him to.

  But then something makes her turn back round. He’s sitting at his desk now, his head bent low, a hollow between his shoulder blades. And she thinks about the kids that Mum’s worked with as a music therapist. How she said that the main thing was never to give up on them—because they’d had too many people give up on them already.

  “We can go down together,” Lily suggests.

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “Then it won’t be a big deal,” she adds.

  His spine shifts a little.

  “I mean, if you’re with me, it won’t be like you’ve been hiding away up here on your own—people will think that we’ve just been hanging out somewhere.”

  He’s sitting up straight now.

  Just turn around, she thinks. Please, just turn around.

  “I’d like you to come down,” she says. And then she wishes she hadn’t said it, because it sounds kind of lame and needy. And because she’s not even sure it’s true. Being at the party on her own was hard but being down there with Bryar is going to be even harder, especially if the last few minutes are anything to go by.

  But it works. Slowly, he turns to face her.

  His voice is quiet. “You really want to go with me?”

  Her breath catches in her throat. “Of course.”

  And this time she knows she means it. She doesn’t know why, but she does. She wants him to be down at the party, with her, even if it’s hard.

  She takes a step forward and holds out a hand. He stares at her and she thinks that maybe she should take her hand back again, because he’s probably never held a girl’s hand before.

  But then, he stretches out his arm and she wraps her fingers around his and pulls him to his feet.

  CHAPTER

  6

  4 p.m.

  SEVERAL FAMILIES HAVE gone home already, before even the cake or the magic show. It’s been a long afternoon. The heat’s gotten to them. Their children were starting to get tired.

  Don’t be disappointed, thinks Kaitlin as she carries the cake to the snack table. They came, that’s the main thing.

  She goes toward the group of children sitting cross-legged under the red maple. The magician walks around the circle, touching a head, a shoulder. And then he stops next to Bryar, cups his hand behind his ear, and pulls out a gold coin the size of a quarter.

  Kaitlin worries that Bryar’s going to crumple from having been singled out, but he’s smiling.

  She wishes Ben were here to see this: their little boy, happy at last, sitting among the other children, a lucky coin in his palm.

  The children clap.

  The magician had been a hit after all.

  When the show is over, the kids run to the cake table. Kaitlin checks her phone once more to see whether Ben’s answered at least one of her messages, but there’s nothing. She knows that the reception isn’t great on his bit of the border, but it makes her nervous that he’s still not here.

  At least the cake is a success. The children like the rainbow layers. She’s glad she went to all that trouble.

  After the cake, a few more kids go home with their parents. There are only a handful of families left now.

  The remaining children run off in different directions around the property. The magician and the face-painting lady pack away their things.

  And the grown-ups begin to relax.

  Yes. Things are going to be better from now on. Better for her little boy. Better for all of them.

  * * *

  Eva comes out of the bathroom, walks through the living room and out onto the porch. A breeze sweeps through the wind chimes hanging from the porch. Gray clouds are sweeping over the sun. They could do with a good thunderstorm. And rain. God, she’d love some rain.

  She gulps down some air. She’s been hiding in the airconditioned house for so long, dry heaving over the toilet bowl, that she hadn’t realized the party was winding down.

  She spots Lily running intently around the back of the house with Bryar, like they’re off to find something. Today was good for Lily, she thinks. Making new friends. Good for both her and Bryar. She’s glad that so many people came. It will make a difference to the children, having had this time together before school starts.

  Eva sits down on the porch steps. As she looks out across the fields, she thinks she sees a child running through the corn and wonders whether she should let someone know that one of the children has gone too far. But it’s probably just the Bowen boy, the one who likes to climb trees and go off by himself.

  She leans back and closes her eyes. No, there’s nothing to worry about.

  * * *

  Sunburn pulls across Astrid’s cheeks and the backs of her calves. Her throat is dry too. She’d forgotten how long the walk was from her house to Woodwind Stables.

  Keeping close to the wall of the stable, she pokes her head around the corner.

  From the top of the fields, it had looked as though the party was still in full swing, but there’
s hardly anyone left. The grown-ups are disappearing into the house. Some of the kids are running around in the front yard. Others are heading toward the stable.

  Looking at her watch, she works out that, if she runs back home now, she might make it before Mom gets back from the office. No one would ever know that she’d come all this way on her own.

  But her legs are tired. And she’s got a headache.

  And anyway, Astrid hasn’t seen Bryar yet, the boy who used to be her friend. The boy who, three years ago, Mom said she could never talk to again. She’s not going to leave without letting him know that she came to his party.

  CHAPTER

  7

  4.30 p.m.

  BY THE TIME the grown-ups have gathered inside the house, the few children who remain at the party have gone to the stable. Wynn said he wanted to pet the horses and the others followed.

  Only Phoenix is off somewhere on his own. He’s found a high tree from which he can see the girl with the green dress, the one who shouldn’t be here, standing outside the stable. He knows why she came. Those places where you don’t belong—the ones where you’re not meant to go—they pull hardest on kids like them.

  Inside the stable, Bryar guides the old mare out of her stall. Lucy is the horse Mom uses when a kid first comes for riding lessons. She’s good with children. She’ll be gentle with Wynn.

  Bryar takes Wynn’s hand and guides his open palm in a long, smooth stroke across the side of Lucy’s neck. The old mare dips her head and leans in toward the four-year-old boy.

  “She likes me.” Wynn smiles, stroking the top of the horse’s nose now.

  “Yes, she does,” says Bryar.

  The other children stand around the old mare, watching.

  “You can pet her too,” Bryar says, looking around at the twins and the foster kids and the English girl who he likes even more, after today, than he did before. He’s glad she persuaded him to come down from his room.

  One by one, the children step forward and touch the mare. Lucy stands still, only her tail swishing lightly.

  Bryar likes this feeling. Of sharing his world. Of not being so alone. Maybe Mom was right. Maybe this party wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

  As the younger children gather around the horse, Cal, the older of the two foster kids, goes over to Skye, the girl with the butterfly on her face. He has something he wants to show her, he says. She smiles and, when they think no one’s watching, they reach for each other’s hands and slip out through the stable door.

  All summer, Cal and Skye have been stealing moments together. They like to talk. She tells him about her life in the woods with her dad and her brothers—and about her mom not being there any more. And then he tells her about the world he came from. His mom, who left him and his sister alone so often that she may as well not have been there at all. He tells her about the police sirens blaring outside his bedroom window through the night. And how when those sirens stopped by their house, the night his mom was taken away for good, they knew their lives would never be the same again.

  As they walk out through the front of the stable, Astrid, the girl in the green dress, the one with the pale hair and skin and the sunburn, slips in through the back door.

  It takes a while for the children to notice her.

  It’s the mare that gives her away, jerking her head up so suddenly that the little boy tumbles backward into the straw.

  Now the children stare at her. They’ve all seen her, at one time or another. Walking through town with her mom. At church. In the back of the shiny white car. At the library or the general store. She has a way of looking at them that makes them feel small, like they don’t have a right to be in the same place as her. But none of them really know her, not except Bryar, and that was a long time ago.

  She whips out her phone. “Smile, everyone,” she says, taking a picture. “Got to have a memory of your party, right, Bryar?”

  Bryar’s face flushes red.

  “Now, how about we have some real fun?”

  CHAPTER

  8

  5 p.m.

  THERE ARE DAYS, especially in late summer, when the air is so thick with heat that time slows right down.

  Sometimes, when the conditions are right, time stops altogether. For a moment, everything is suspended.

  And in that gap, no one notices the shadows moving in.

  The adults, who have lived through many cycles of the earth spinning around the sun, adults who should know better than to trust this trick of time, choose to forget that it’s their job to watch over their children. They allow their bodies and their minds to go slack. They sink into themselves. They don’t even see the boy with the red hair, tiptoeing down the stairs to the basement.

  They don’t see because they believe the trick: that for a second, the world will take care of itself.

  As the boy’s father pulls up the driveway in his truck, late from his shift on the border, he looks at the welcome banner flapping in the wind: one of its sides has come loose. He feels it—that something’s not quite right. He’s trained to notice these things. It’s too quiet. Where are the children? And their parents? He asks himself all the questions but he’s too late: he can’t make a difference now.

  Perhaps the only ones who notice in time are the horses, who kick their hooves against the stalls; and the dark, oil-slicked crows who sit in the trees, watching; and the clouds that are thickening overhead, preparing for a thunderstorm.

  But they’re not allowed to intervene in the human world.

  All they can do is wait.

  And watch.

  And listen.

  For the gunshot.

  For the thud of a small body falling into the straw.

  CHAPTER

  9

  5.15 p.m.

  PRISCILLA PULLS INTO the driveway, looks at the cottage, and takes a deep breath. She always feels the need to brace herself before going back to Astrid. She’d stayed at her office later than she’d planned to, working on a lecture series for the fall. And then she’d got talking to Will Day, the new law professor from England. These days, she feels more at home at the university than here, in the cottage she spent years renovating with Peter.

  She steps out of the car and looks down the valley. The sun casts long shadows across the fields. The heat of the day still hangs in the air. Clouds are gathering; it’s been building up to a thunderstorm for days.

  “Astrid?” she calls out as she comes through the door.

  The couch is empty. Maybe she’s gone up to her room.

  Priscilla climbs the stairs and knocks on her bedroom door. “Astrid?”

  She walks in. It’s empty.

  She goes down to the basement, the coolest part of the house. Always too cold for her but Astrid likes it down there. Goosebumps flare along her arms.

  “Astrid!” she calls out again, louder this time.

  But she’s not here either.

  If Astrid were a different sort of child, Priscilla would assume that maybe she’d cycled off to see a friend in town. But the truth is that Astrid doesn’t have any friends. She prefers her own company. And she has a way of rubbing other kids up the wrong way. Maybe that will change with her going to the local school.

  She goes back outside and walks around the house to the vegetable patch that Astrid and Peter planted together last summer. It’s overgrown with weeds now. When Peter left, Astrid lost interest.

  She feels an ache in the back of her neck.

  There’s nothing wrong, she tells herself. Astrid will be around here somewhere.

  “Astrid?” she calls out again.

  Astrid is unpredictable. And angry—mainly at Priscilla. For Peter leaving. For Priscilla failing to be the mother Astrid wants her to be. But she wouldn’t just take off, would she?

  Where the hell are you, Astrid?

  Her cell starts ringing. She grabs it out of her bag, relieved, for once, that Astrid has a cell too. But when Priscilla looks at the screen, she doesn’t r
ecognize the number.

  “Hello?” she says.

  “Mrs. Carver?”

  “Dr. Carver—yes.”

  There’s a pause.

  “This is Lieutenant Mesenberg. I’m calling about your daughter.”

  CHAPTER

  10

  5.30 p.m.

  “I NEED TO ASK you a few questions, Mrs. Wright,” Lieutenant Mesenberg says.

  Shortly after the ambulance tore up the drive, the police arrived. Two officers who secured the scene. A minute or two later, a senior lieutenant. A short, solid woman with frizzy gray hair.

  She made her way straight to Kaitlin.

  Kaitlin recognizes her from the papers and from TV reports. Ben has worked with her a few times: in this part of the world, law enforcement help each other out. Ben was one of the first they called: hard-working, reliable, ready to go the extra mile.

  “You’re the owner of this property?”

  Kaitlin looks over to Ben. He’s speaking to one of the other detectives. The front of his border patrol uniform is covered in blood.

  “Mrs. Wright?”

  She looks back at the lieutenant. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  “Please could you tell me, as simply as possible, what happened?”

  There’s a pounding at the back of Kaitlin’s skull.

  “Mrs. Wright?”

  “I … I don’t know.”

  “A child was shot,” the lieutenant prompts.

  “Yes …”

  “And another badly injured.”

  She nods.

  “Did you see what happened, Mrs. Wright?”

  “No. We … the adults … the parents. We were in the house.”

  “So, the children were on their own?”

  Kaitlin closes her eyes. How could she have let this happen? She’d been so careful with everything.

  “I know this is difficult, Mrs. Wright. But I need you to answer as clearly as you can.”

  “Yes. They were playing in the stable. My son—”