Our Secret

“Lunch?” She sighed and shook her head, a joyless smile twisted across her face. “Melanie, what do you want?”

“To apologize. To set things right.”

Mom reached for a cigarette and lit it, blowing the smoke in my face. “Should have kept you here.”

I relaxed a little. Was she making her own apology? She didn’t really need to, under the circumstances.

“Really?”

She nodded and looked up at the sky. It was due to rain any minute. “Yes, really.”

“Why?”

Mom looked back at me. “So that he’d stay. So that when he was bored, he could go to you. He left me a little while after I sent you away. He was furious with me, actually. Does that make you happy? That he was mad I took his toy away? That he was so mad at me he broke all of your grandmother’s plates? Almost tore off my head.”

My mouth had opened at her revelation and everything froze, but I shook my head after a minute. “Of course that doesn’t make me happy. But Mom, I saw the two of you at some restaurant together. Some—”

“It was taken a mo