Secrets Everybody Knows Read online

  “Me showing up at the hospital would probably give him another heart attack. I’d better see what the lay of the land is from Sue first.”

  * * * *

  Johnny paced his room. It was only two and a half steps from one side to the other. Nowhere near enough space. He needed to run the track around the football field or something.

  The anxiety crashed down right about the time he walked through the kitchen door. With school out and warmer weather, meeting with Elaine was much easier. Much easier and much more dangerous. All winter long, not getting too hot and heavy had been easy because they’d been working around parkas. With summer came t-shirts and tank tops. Shorts, summer dresses. Tonight they had gone too far. He still smelled her on his body. If anyone found out, she’d be ruined and he’d go to jail. Jail he could take, but she’d never be able to show her face in town again. Everybody would be speculating. The way things were going, by the end of summer, they would be right.

  But he couldn’t keep away from her. Every time he tried to break it off, she begged him to stay and he didn’t have the willpower to resist. When she came over for dinner, he could barely eat and spent the whole meal aching to touch her. If he tried to stand her up, he found himself running through the woods to meet her, apologizing for being late. Every day he daydreamed about seeing her again. The friends he still spoke to were annoyed because he didn’t hang out with them, but he never told them what he was doing. When they volunteered to help with the Packard, he turned them down. He and Elaine had restored the whole thing together.

  The house was quiet. His mom and dad had been watching TV when he came in, but they had gone to bed. Sue should be in her room. The door had been shut when he came upstairs. She might have climbed out the window, but that wasn’t her style. He needed to get out of here before he did more damage.

  Stuffing some clothes into a duffel bag, he slipped out of the house. He tossed the bag into the Packard. Elaine couldn’t go with him, but he could take the car. Every time he slid into the driver’s seat he thought of her. The sound of the engine was thunderous, but no lights came on in the house. He drove without thinking until he got to the interstate. Just before the on ramp, he pulled into a parking lot and shut off the engine.

  Elaine would be destroyed when she found out he’d gone. His gut knotted at the thought of seeing her now, but he’d never be able to live with himself if he just disappeared on her. She’d walk into the barn and see the car gone and her beautiful heart would shatter.

  He parked the Packard on a gas well access road down the street from her house. Sneaking through the backyard, he felt like a thief, which seemed almost appropriate. He had stolen her innocence in every way but one, and if he didn’t leave he’d steal her future too. No matter what she accomplished, once they found out, she would always be the girl who was spoiled by Johnny McMannus.

  “Elaine,” he whispered through her open window.

  She twisted away from the window. Even asleep she was adorable.

  “Elaine!” he whispered.

  She sat up, eyes wide. “Johnny! What are you doing here?” She jumped out of bed and trotted across the room to the window.

  “Elaine, I have to leave.”

  “What? Wait a minute. I’ll come outside.”

  “No.” Johnny clenched his fists. If she came outside, he never go. She’d be able to use that luscious body of hers in combination with her brilliant brain and then he’d slink back home to keep tempting fate until this blew up in their faces. “No, don’t. I have to leave tonight. I’m not coming back.”

  “What do you mean? Why tonight? Was it what we did? I’m sorry. I’ll never let it happen again. Can we talk about this? I’ll meet you at the garage. I’ll tell my dad the car started making a funny noise. The fan belt is squeaking anyway. Please, just give me some time.”

  “No, baby.” He splayed his palm on the window screen and she pressed her hand against his. It reminded him of movies where people in prison tried to touch through the glass in visitation scenes. “I have to leave. There’s no other way.”

  “But why?” She sobbed. “What did I do?”

  “You didn’t do anything. You are perfect.” Johnny’s throat started to close. He almost wished he had kept driving. Her pain would have been the same, but he wouldn’t have had to witness it.

  “Then let me come with you.”

  “You can’t drop out of school. And what would happen if we got caught? They would make you wear a scarlet A and they’d throw me in jail.”

  “Johnny, this is not Puritan New England.”

  “No, but it’s just about as bad. Elaine, I love you. I don’t want to drag you down. I want you to have everything you want. I–” His throat convulsed.

  Fat tears streamed down her face. “If you love me, then why are you leaving?”

  “You’ll understand later.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me I’m too immature to understand,” she snapped.

  “I’m not. You’re more mature than I am. You’re more mature than anyone I know. It hurts now, but once you think about it you’ll know how much I could cost you.”

  “Where will you go? Florida to live with your grandparents?”

  “Baby, I’m not going to tell you. We need to make a clean break.”

  “You won’t write me? Or call? Nothing? What about next year, when I turn eighteen? I’ll be legal then. It would be okay. You wouldn’t get into trouble if I was legal.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about,” Johnny growled. “It’s you, baby. I’m a loser from a bad family. Trouble with a capital T.”

  “Can’t I be the judge of that?”

  Johnny sighed. She could always think circles around him. No matter what argument he came up with, she had an answer. The touch of her hand through the screen sank into his body. Every inch of his skin ached to feel her. He took a step back before he caved. “I love you. If you think of me in the future, I hope you remember me as a good part of your wild youth.”

  “Johnny, please. Give me another chance.”

  Johnny ran. He darted across the street and down the row of trees beside the cornfield. The bottom of the cornfield came up to the access road where he’d left the car. He had to go. It was the only way to save her from the shame of being associated with him.

  It was the only way.

  Chapter 4

  Elaine walked into the diner and looked around. She felt like she’d already accomplished a lot by washing her hair, getting dressed and leaving the house. How much more did the universe expect from her? Yesterday she’d only managed a few phone calls.

  “Good morning, hon. How are you doing today?” Judy asked.

  Elaine decided it wasn’t a personal question and discarded the first answer she came up with. “I’m fine. How are you doing?”

  “Real good. Real good. You here to meet the others?”

  “If you mean Lily, yes.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Beth was taking this year off. You know, I saw her with Nonie and Jean and Nonie’s grandson just the other day. He’s a fine-looking young man. Did you know he was the one involved in that real estate corruption thing in Atlanta?”

  Judy kept talking, but Elaine stopped listening. She just didn’t have the patience to be that polite today. Before long, Judy was distracted by someone else walking through the door and Elaine escaped to the table Lily liked.

  Waiting there were Lily and George, both of them beaming. “Guess what!” Lily shrieked.

  “You’re getting married.” Elaine regretted the comment before Lily answered.

  “What? To George? No!” Lily laughed.

  George lost a couple of inches in height.

  “George fixed the steam tables.” Lily threw her arm over his shoulders. “He’s my personal hero.”

  George regained those inches.

  “That’s great, George,” Elaine said. One of these days Lily was going to find out about George’s not-so-secret crush and she was going to be mort
ified by the way she treated him. Elaine no longer cared to see it. The whole thing just seemed stupid. Lily’s unending search for the perfect man and George’s unrequited passion for her. All either one of them had to do was ask, and everything would resolve in a shower of rice or birdseed or whatever it was they threw at weddings these days.

  Elaine decided she needed to avoid the whole subject or she was going to tell them in very brutal terms that they were both being idiots. Instead, she addressed the topic of another stupid person in town. “I talked to Archie last night.” Talked? She had lectured him like he was one of her eighth graders for forty-five minutes. “He’s going to make sure everybody gets paid in a timely manner this year.” If it was possible to get a hangover from too much ice cream, she had one.

  “Great.” Lily scanned her list. “You were going to make some phone calls yesterday. How did you do?”

  Elaine took out her own list and worked through it. She couldn’t summon any enthusiasm, though. The whole festival felt like a pointless waste of energy. Maybe it was time to look into a new career. Teaching a bunch of kids who did their best to forget everything she said as soon as possible wasn’t what she wanted out of life. Right now she couldn’t think what she did want, but she hoped that would come later. Somewhere in the middle of the list, she ordered food. George’s phone rang once and he informed them that someone was looking at the buses. The food arrived and it was uncharacteristically bland. Elaine ate it because she couldn’t think of anything better to do while she listened to Lily rattle off a new to-do list. Beth wasn’t there to joke about being an executive assistant and George didn’t know the lines.

  She wanted to go home and crawl back in bed with Ben and Jerry.

  “Listen, as much fun as this has been, I should get going.” Elaine stood up. “I have a couple of errands to run before I tackle festival stuff.” More ice cream and alcohol of some sort. Wine always tasted like battery acid. She had to be picking the wrong stuff. Guinness was out. Just because she was feeling dark and bitter didn’t mean she wanted to drink dark and bitter. Her sister had loads of experience getting hammered. Kitty would be able to recommend something strong enough to forget how it tasted.

  “Ugh, me too.” Lily stood up. “I have to mow my lawn before I need to use a scythe.”

  “I can do that for you,” George offered.

  “No, I’m a home owner now. I have to learn to do these things myself.” Lily grinned.

  A year of being a home owner and Lily was still not over the novelty. When she did finally get married she was going to be calling herself a bride until her tenth wedding anniversary. It was disgusting. Elaine grabbed her check. She needed to get out of here before she let some of the poison brewing in her brain out.

  “Hey, Elaine,” Lily called.

  Elaine opened her car and stood waiting while the hot air escaped.

  “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” Lily asked.

  “I told you I wasn’t.”

  “You know the thing with John wasn’t your fault. I mean, you’ve got to snap out of this.”

  “It’s not about John. I’ve just been thinking about things.” Elaine shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Lily hugged her.

  Elaine forced herself not to groan. She tried not hugging back until it became clear that Lily needed some kind of response before she would let go. Elaine decided she was sick of doing things because other people needed it. Who took care of her? Who made sure she had what she needed? She hugged Lily back and pulled away as quickly as possible.

  “If you need me, you know where I am.” Lily sniffled. “You guys were so great when I first moved here. It just kills me when you’re upset.”

  Elaine searched herself for an emotional response to Lily’s tears. Just because Lily cried over everything didn’t mean she wasn’t sincere, but Elaine couldn’t summon the energy to care. “Don’t worry about me, Lily. It’s been very stressful lately. I’m just tired.”

  Lily nodded, wiping her eyes. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “I know.” Elaine got in her car and closed the door before Lily worked up to another outburst.

  That wasn’t entirely fair. Lily didn’t cry all the time. She was emotional, and she cared a lot about everyone. Good qualities in a friend, but at times like these, when Elaine wanted to step back, it exhausted her. In the grocery store parking lot, she called Kitty.

  “Well, to what do I owe the honor?” Kitty asked.

  “I have a question for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I wanted to buy some liquor, but I don’t know what to get.”

  “Liquor? For you?” The phone was muffled. “My sister is buying alcohol.”

  Elaine rolled her eyes. “Kitty, I just want to get something to have around the house. For guests.” Sometimes the only thing that worked was a bald-faced lie. She’d learned that from Johnny, God rot his soul.

  “For guests. Male guests or female guests?”

  “Just guests. Anybody who happened to stop by. What do you think I would like?”

  “Oh, that you would like.”

  Elaine looked at the grocery store. She might have been better off to get a recommendation inside. “Kitty, just name something.”

  “Well, you would probably do well with something sweet. Maybe Bailey’s. They make a caramel version. You like caramel. You can mix it into coffee so no one knows you’re drinking.”

  “Thanks, Kitty.”

  “Are you having that new guy in town over?”

  “What new guy?”

  “Mrs. Bennetti’s grandson. He’s adorable.”

  “Kitty, leave Nonie’s grandson alone. He’s only in town to visit.”

  “Then maybe he’ll pack me up in his suitcase when he goes back to Atlanta.”

  “What exactly is keeping you in this little town you hate so much? Oh, that’s right, you have no job and no prospects and you live with Mom.”

  “God, you are a bitch today.”

  “The truth hurts. Leave the poor guy alone. I think Beth is interested in him.” Elaine thought back to the way Beth had reacted yesterday when Nonie’s grandson came up. What she had been able to notice through her own misery led her to believe Beth was carrying a torch. Damn, she’d dropped the ball on that one. Beth had such rare opportunities to meet anyone cooped up in that house with those old women. Elaine should have helped her out more.

  “If she doesn’t move fast enough, she’s going to find herself scooped.”

  “No scooping, Kitty. Just leave him alone.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do, Elaine.”

  Elaine gripped her phone. When they were kids, she’d dreamed of the day when she and her sister were adults so they could have a relationship that wasn’t a constant power struggle. She still dreamed about it. Maybe when they were the same age as Miss Forrester and Mrs. Bennetti and one of them was senile. “Dammit, Kitty, when are you going to grow up? Do you really need to sleep with every man you meet?”

  “Just because you’re still a virgin.”

  Elaine smacked the steering wheel so hard her hand stung. If Kitty had been in range she would have had a big red handprint on her face. “That has nothing to do with it.”

  “Why don’t you pick yourself out a girlfriend already? Or are you and Beth a secret item? You were roomies in college. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

  “You are a nasty little creature.”

  “Just trying to be like my perfect big sister.” Kitty disconnected.

  Elaine assumed there was a snapped phone and a gesture that went along with the disconnection, but one of the joys of cellphones was her sister could no longer slam the phone down on her. Elaine went inside and located the Bailey’s Kitty recommended. She bought a couple of other things as cover.

  “Alcohol?” Teri Boyd asked at the checkout. Her middle son was going to be in Elaine’s class next year, so she took a vested interest in everything Elaine ate–as if th
e occasional frozen dinner would make her a bad teacher. Elaine wondered if she should start getting her groceries in the next town over.

  “It’s for my sister.”

  Teri nodded. She had nothing against the new carton of ice cream even if Elaine had just bought a quart yesterday. Elaine hurried out, eager to drown her sorrows away from prying eyes.

  * * * *

  Johnny pulled out of the service station wishing he had anyplace to go that wasn’t home. The garage was on the brink of disaster. His dad had screwed things up so badly Johnny wasn’t sure he could keep his parents from bankruptcy. Dad hadn’t even bothered to file income taxes last year. When Johnny called the accountant his dad had always used, the man let loose with a torrent of expletives before hanging up the phone. Johnny hadn’t realized accountants used those kinds of words. The small parts inventory was a jumble with things piled in random groupings and sometimes mismarked. Tools were missing or damaged. The lift didn’t work, and the block and tackle was jammed. His dad coached a Little League team and they had a game tomorrow. Johnny never played Little League and might be the only man in America who didn’t understand baseball, but he had to fill in for that too. The two guys who worked at the garage were sullen, but competent. At least something about the family business wasn’t a hopeless mess.

  Home was, if anything, worse. His mother was so shriveled and gray she looked like a mummy. The only spot of color on her face was the tip of her nose, which gave her a family resemblance to W. C. Fields. She divided her time evenly between the hospital and her bedroom, where, he assumed, she still did most of her drinking. Sue had moved out of the house proper and into the apartment over the garage where she ran a nail salon. She hadn’t said much to him since he arrived, but he supposed he deserved that too.

  He’d made exactly one trip to the hospital and stayed out of his dad’s sight for fear of causing the old man to keel over. The doctors were all amazed that his dad was even still alive. In addition to the heart attack, he had cirrhosis and something called polyneuropathy.