Public Secrets

was in upheaval? There was this child slipping around the house like a shadow. There were workmen hammering and sawing hour after hour. And there was the press. It was as ugly as Brian had warned her it would be, with headlines screaming his name, and hers, and Jane’s. How she hated, how she detested, seeing her picture and Jane’s on the same page of a paper. How she loathed those nasty, gloating little stories about new wives and old lovers.
It didn’t fade quickly, as she had prayed it would. There was speculation and questions about the most personal areas of her life. She was Mrs. Brian McAvoy now, and public property. She had told herself countless times that because marrying Brian was what she wanted most, she would be able to tolerate the public dissections, the lack of freedom, the smirking headlines.
And she would. Somehow. But when he was away like this, thousands of miles away, she wondered how she could bear a lifetime of being photographed and hounded, of running away from microphones, of wearing wigs and sunglasses to do something as ordinary as buy shoes. She wondered if Brian would ever understand how humiliating it was for her to see something as intimate as her pregnancy splashed in headlines for strangers to read over their morning tea.
She couldn’t laugh at the stories when he wasn’t with her, and she couldn’t ignore them. So she rarely left the house when he was gone. In less than two weeks, the home she had envisioned for them with its cozy rooms and sunny windows had become a prison. One she shared with Brian’s child.
But she was enough her parents’ daughter to know her duty, and to execute it unwaveringly.

“Emma.” Bev fixed a bright smile on her face as Emma turned. “I thought you might be ready for your tea.”
There was nothing Emma recognized quicker or distrusted more than a fake smile. “I’m not hungry,” she said and gripped Charlie tighter.
“I guess I’m not, either.” If they were stuck there together, Bev decided, at least they could talk to each other. “It’s hard to have a nice tea with all the hammering going on.” Taking the step, she sat on the window seat beside Emma. “This is a nice spot. I think I should plant more roses, though. Don’t you?”
Emma’s lip poked out a little as she moved her shoulders.
“We had a lovely garden when I was a girl,” Bev continued desperately. “I used to love to go out in the summer with a book and listen to the bees hum. Sometimes I wouldn’t read at all, but just dream. It’s funny, the first time I heard Brian’s voice, I was in the garden.”
“Did he live with you?”
She had Emma’s attention now, Bev thought. It only took a mention of Brian’s name. “No. It was over the radio. It was their first single—’Shadowland.’ It went … ’At night, midnight, when shadows hug the moon.’” Bev started the tune in her soft lilt, then stopped when Emma picked it up in a clear, surprisingly strong alto.
“‘And the land is hot and still, breathless I wait for you.’”
“Yes, that’s the one.” Without realizing it, Bev reached out to stroke Emma’s hair. “I felt he was singing it just for me. I’m sure every girl did.”
Emma said nothing for a moment, remembering how her mother had played it over and over on the record player, drinking and weeping while the words had echoed around the flat. “Did you like him because he sang the song?”
“Yes. But after I met him, I liked him much more.”
“Why did he go away?”
“His music, his work.” Bev glanced down to see Emma’s big eyes shiny with tears. Here was kinship, where she hadn’t wanted or expected it. “Oh, Emma, I miss him too, but he’ll be home in a few weeks.”
“What if he doesn’t come back?”

It was foolish, but Bev sometimes woke with that same awful fear in the middle of the night. “Of course he will. A man like Brian needs people to listen to his music, and he needs to be there while they do. He’ll often go away, but he’ll always come back. He loves you, and he loves me.” As much for comfort as to comfort, she took Emma’s hand. “And there’s one more thing. Do you know where babies come from?”
“Men stick them in ladies, but then they don’t want them.”
Bev broke off an oath. She could cheerfully have throttled Jane at that moment. Although Bev’s own mother had always been reserved, unable to speak of intimacy in more than a vague fashion, Bev firmly believed in openness. “Men and