Sarah Morgan - How To Keep A Secret

The wind was biting and most of the islanders were longing for spring. Not Jenna. Spring meant buds on the trees and lambs playing in the fields. Everywhere you looked there was new life. This time last year she’d been sure that by now she’d be pushing a stroller along the streets. Instead she was back in her classroom teaching other people’s kids.

Of course it was still possible that spring might be lucky for her, too.

If she and Greg had nonstop sex over the next few weeks she could potentially be pregnant by April or May. That would mean a Christmas baby.

She allowed herself a moment of dreaming, and then snapped out of it.

All she thought about was babies.

Obsess: to worry neurotically or obsessively.

Her obsession had even entered the bedroom. When she and Greg made love she found herself thinking, Please let me get pregnant .

Maybe she’d cook a special meal tonight. Open a bottle of wine. Try to relax a little. She could greet him at the door wearing nothing but a smile and hope Mrs. Pardew across the road wasn’t looking out the window.

She reached the door of her classroom and winced at the noise that came from inside.

Bracing herself, she pushed open the door and the noise dimmed to a hum.

“Good morning, Mrs. Sullivan.” The chorus of voices lifted the cloud that had been hanging over her.

Maybe she didn’t have her own children, but she had them. She loved their spontaneity and their innocence, their bright eyes and smiles. She even loved the naughty kids. Like Billy Grant, who was currently standing on his desk, waiting for her reaction.

He was a rebel with a strong sense of adventure and a cavalier attitude to risk. Fortunately no one knew more about that instinct than Jenna.

“Billy, our classroom rule is that we don’t stand on desks.”

Billy folded his arms but didn’t move. “You’re not the boss of me.”

Jenna arched an eyebrow.

He lasted two seconds and then scrambled off the desk and plopped onto his chair.

Everyone knew that when Mrs. Sullivan gave you that look you did what you were supposed to do or you’d be in serious trouble. He made another attempt to deflect blame. “Bradley told me to do it.”

“If he told you to jump off a bridge would you do that?” She straightened her shoulders and addressed the whole class. “One of our classroom rules is that we don’t stand on the desks.”

“Rules are boring,” Bradley muttered. “Why do we have to have them?”

So we can break them.

“Bradley wants to know why we have rules,” she said. “Who can tell him the answer?”

A sea of hands shot into the air and she picked the girl in the front. Little Stacy Adams, whose dad had recently run off with another man, giving the island enough gossip to feast on for a decade.

“To keep us safe.”

“That’s right.” Jenna smiled. “Some rules are there to protect us.” And if you ignored the rules you could be left with a secret and a guilty conscience.

Maybe it was her fault that she wasn’t closer to her mother, she thought. She knew things she wasn’t supposed to know and that made things awkward.

Keeping that thought to herself, she moved to the front of the class. “Everyone sit in a circle.”

There was a mass scramble as they found their places on the floor.

“Will you tell us a story, Mrs. Sullivan?”

“One of your special made-up ones.”

As they sat round watching her expectantly, she felt a rush of pride and affection. Winter would soon give way to spring, and spring to summer and then this group of children would be leaving her classroom for the last time.

When they’d arrived in her class, they’d been a raggedy, unruly bunch but now they were a team. Friendships had formed. Some friendships might even last through to adulthood, as hers and Greg had. Some might fracture.

Not all relationships were easy.

She threw herself into her day, moving from story time to math. Unlike some of her colleagues, she loved teaching first graders. They were curious and enthusiastic. They loved coming to school and they loved her . From the moment she stepped into the classroom, she was wrapped in warmth and affection.

Most of all she enjoyed seeing the progress they made. They experienced so many firsts.

Usually she lingered in the classroom after the children had gone, tidying up and preparing for the following day, but today she drove straight to her mother’s house.

On a cold January day it was foggy and cold and the roads were quiet.

Her mother lived down-island in Edgartown. Ridiculously picturesque with its waterfront and harbor, Edgartown was one of the more populated areas of the island, which was one of the reasons Jenna had chosen to live up-island with its beautiful beaches and spectacular sunsets.

Even in winter when the town was quiet, Jenna preferred the wildness of her part of the island. Her drive took her past rolling farmland, stone fences and beaches. Wherever you were on the Vineyard, you were never far from the beach. And when you couldn’t see the sea, chances were that you could still smell it.

At this time of year she drove easily through Edgartown’s narrow streets.

The Captain’s House where her mother lived was set right on the waterfront, close to the harbor and the lighthouse. The house had been in her family forever, since Captain William Stewart had seen fit to build his home on what was arguably the best plot of land in the whole of Martha’s Vineyard. When her mother’s parents had died in an accident, leaving Nancy an orphan at the age of eight, she’d continued to live in the house with her grandmother.

Money had been tight and they’d rented out rooms to cover their costs.

The house was considered historic, and occasionally Nancy would give a private tour to students or history buffs, and talk about the Vineyard’s place in the whaling industry. Jenna’s father had been heard to say on many an occasion, usually when huddled in his coat in front of a blazing log fire, that because a person was interested in history didn’t mean they wanted to experience it firsthand. The antiquated heating system of The Captain’s House counted as history as far as Tom was concerned. In the middle of winter there had been many nights when Jenna had crawled into bed with her sister for warmth.

Two years previously the heating and wiring had been replaced as part of an upgrade and modernization.

Jenna had wondered at the time why her mother had waited until after her father had died to do it.

The door was open and Jenna walked through the entryway with its wood paneling and wide-planked floor. There were bookshelves stuffed with books, and more books piled next to them on the floor. Every surface was covered in the possessions and purchases of previous generations.

Her mother was a hoarder. Jenna had never seen her throw a single thing away.

There were items in the house that had belonged to her great-grandmother and were never used. Some of those things were ugly, but still Nancy wouldn’t hear of disposing of them.

She considered herself the custodian of the family’s heritage.

Jenna knew that an entire bedroom upstairs was filled with her father’s things. Trophies he’d won playing golf, his model boat collection, his clothes. Did her mother ever go in there? Did she cry over his things?

She found Nancy in the kitchen, opening mail. “Hi, Mom. I made cakes for your book group. Cute, don’t you think?” She removed the lid with a flourish.

“So pretty! Thank you.” Nancy took the tin from her and placed it on the table next to the papers. “How was your day?”

For a wild moment Jenna contemplated telling her the truth.