The Circle

know how much I value my position here and your faith in me. And
     I want to honor that. I’ll do anything to make this up to you. Seriously, I’ll take
     on any extra work, I’ll do anything. Just tell me.”
    Bailey’s face broke into a highly amused grin. “Mae, your job isn’t in jeopardy. You’re
     here for good. Annie’s here for good. Sorry if you believed otherwise, for even a
     second. We don’t want either of you to ever leave.”
    “That’s very good to hear. Thank you,” Mae said, though her heart was hammering harder
     now.
    He smiled, nodding, as if happy and relieved to have all that settled. “But this whole
     episode gives us a very important teachable moment, don’t you think?” The question
     seemed rhetorical, but Mae nodded anyway. “Mae,” he said, “when is a secret a good
     thing?”
    Mae took a few seconds on this. “When it can protect someone’s feelings.”
    “For example?”
    “Well,” she fumbled. “Let’s say you know your friend’s boyfriend is cheating on her
     but—”
    “But what? You don’t tell your friend?”
    “Okay. That’s not a good example.”
    “Mae, are you ever happy when a friend keeps a secret from you?”
    Mae thought about the many small lies she’d told to Annie recently. Lies that she’d
     not only
spoken
but
typed
, lies made permanent and undeniable.
    “No. But I understand when they have to.”
    “That’s interesting. Can you think of a time when you were happy one of your friends
     kept something from you?”
    Mae could not. “Not at the moment.” She felt sick.
    “Okay,” Bailey said, “for now, we can’t think of good secrets between friends. Let’s
     move on to families. In a family, is a secret a good thing? Theoretically, do you
     ever think,
You know what would be great to keep from my family? A secret
.”
    Mae thought of the many things her parents were likely keeping from her—the various
     indignities her father’s illness caused them. “No,” she said.
    “No secrets within a family?”
    “Actually,” Mae said. “I don’t know. There are definitely things you don’t want your
     parents to know.”
    “Would your parents
want
to know these things?”
    “Maybe.”
    “So you’re depriving your parents of something they want. This is good?”
    “No. But maybe better for all.”
    “Better for you. Better for the keeper of the secret. Some dark secret is better kept
     from the parents. Is this a secret about some wonderful thing you’ve done? Perhaps
     knowing about it would bring just too much joy to your parents?”
    Mae laughed. “No. Clearly a secret is something you don’t want them to know about
     because you’re ashamed or you want to spare them from knowing you screwed up.”
    “But we agree they would
like
to know.”
    “Yes.”
    “And are they entitled to know?”
    “I guess.”
    “Okay. So can we agree that we’re talking about a situation where, in a perfect world,
     you’re not doing anything you’d be ashamed of telling your parents?”
    “Sure. But there are other things they might not understand.”
    “Because they weren’t ever sons or daughters themselves?”
    “No. But—”
    “Mae, do you have any gay relatives or friends?”
    “Sure.”
    “Do you know how different the world was for gays before and after people began coming
     out?”
    “I have an idea of it.”
    Bailey stood and attended to the tea set. He poured more for himself and for Mae,
     and sat down again.
    “I don’t know if you do. I was from the generation that struggled greatly with coming
     out. My brother is gay, and he was twenty-four before he admitted it to my family.
     And until then, it nearly killed him. It was a tumor festering inside him, and it
     was growing everyday. But why did he think it would be better kept inside? When he told our parents,
     they barely blinked. He had created all this drama in his mind—all this mystery and
     weight around his big secret. And part of the problem, historically, was with other
     people keeping similar things secret. Coming out was so difficult until millions of
     other men and women came out. Then it got a lot easier, don’t you agree? When millions
     of men and women came out of the closet, it made homosexuality not some mysterious
     so-called deviance but a mainstream life path. You follow?”
    “Yes. But—”
    “And I would argue that any place in the world where gays are still persecuted, you
     could instantly achieve great progress if