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Like Mack and the rest of the people at the funeral, Jenna wanted to know the answer to the key question.
Lauren hadn’t spoken a word since they’d left the funeral.
Jenna wanted to call Greg for advice, but since when had she needed Greg’s advice on how to talk to her sister, someone she knew almost as well as she knew herself?
She removed two perfect matching mugs from the cabinet, boiled water and made hot tea.
That was what the British did in a crisis, wasn’t it? They drank tea. Lauren had lived here for sixteen years, which made her as close to British as it was possible to be without being born here. “Was Mack telling the truth?” She pushed aside a stack of papers and put the two mugs on the table.
Lauren stared at the tea but didn’t touch it. “Yes.”
Jenna sat down next to her and took her hand. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t tell anyone.”
I’m not anyone. I’m your sister. “Since when do we not talk to each other?”
“I wanted to protect my daughter. I always planned to tell her, but I was waiting until I was sure she was old enough to understand. I wanted her to grow up in a secure, stable home knowing she was loved. I didn’t want her to have doubts or fears. I didn’t want her to be—” She lifted bruised, exhausted eyes to Jenna. An ocean of memories flowed between them.
“You didn’t want her to be like us.”
Lauren’s eyes glistened. “You’re probably the only person who can understand.”
Jenna felt sweat prickle at the back of her neck. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Please don’t let her want to talk about it.
“No. It’s not relevant.”
It was funny, Jenna thought, how they’d both managed to ignore the past. It was like being in the room with a wild animal and hoping that if you didn’t look at it, it wouldn’t bite you.
“If it’s impacting the choices you make, then it’s relevant.”
“Didn’t it impact yours?”
Jenna felt her cheeks grow hot. “This is about you, not me. You kept a major secret from your husband and daughter.”
“No, I didn’t. Ed agreed we should wait until Mack was older. We were planning on sitting her down and talking to her soon.”
“Wait—you’re saying Ed knew?”
“From the beginning.”
“And he married you in spite of that?”
“He married me because of that.” Lauren let go of Jenna’s hand and reached for her tea. “It’s complicated.”
No kidding.
Jenna was still getting her head round the fact there was a huge part of her sister’s life she knew nothing about. “Did you tell him everything? He also knew about—”
“No. Not that. Just about Mack. And she’s all that matters now. She’s lost her dad, and she can’t even grieve properly because she’s so confused.” Lauren’s voice wobbled and she glanced toward the door that Mack had slammed between them the moment they’d arrived back at the house. “Is she going to be okay? I need you to tell me she’s going to be okay.”
“She’s going to be okay,” Jenna said, hoping it was true. “It will take time of course, but she’ll figure it out and so will you. And you have each other.”
“Right now I don’t think she finds that a comfort. She’s so mad at me.” Lauren blew her nose. “She’s obviously known Ed wasn’t her father for a while. It explains so much. She’s been difficult lately. Moody. I thought there might be something she wasn’t telling me—” She glanced at Jenna, who shrugged.
“No one is better qualified to recognize the signs of secret keeping than the Stewart sisters, right? Do you know how she found out?”
“She was doing an ancestry project at school as part of her history coursework. I guess it must have been to do with that. I haven’t worked out the details yet. But why didn’t she talk to me? Why not ask me?”
“Er—did we ever talk to Mom about things?”
“No, but we didn’t talk to Mom about anything. Mack and I talked about everything.”
Not quite everything, Jenna thought.
“Did Ed adopt Mack?”
Lauren stared at her tea. “No. We talked about it, but at the beginning it would have meant—” she drew in a breath “—contacting the father, and neither of us wanted to do that. Later it would have meant visits from social workers and they would have insisted we tell her right away. We always planned to tell her, but we wanted to do it when we felt she was able to handle it. And I didn’t want that to be when she was young. Also, there was Ed’s Mom.”
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