The Last Secret You'll Ever Keep by Laurie Stolarz (summer reads txt) 📕

twenty-foot chain and taut quadriceps for scaling the driest of dirt walls.

The brain is a muscle too, at least that’s what I believe. I paint mine purple, perched on a nest of letters that spell out the words work in progress—because that’s what I am, with my paper heart and my phantom scars.

I paint the heart red, smudged with my thumbprint, scattered about the ear-shaped leaves. You have to look closely to see the heart; otherwise, the prints look like flowers: bunches of them blooming like roses, sprinkled about the tree limbs—a heart in pieces like petals.

Plus, tiny tree buds that spell out the word trust.

And fallen twigs with shadows that resemble old vices. Extinguishers, knives, starry doorknobs, and bottles of maple syrup … None of these vices is gone completely. I’m human, so sometimes I creep back into the darkness to find them, but I do so far less, preferring to get my power elsewhere. My art—the paint; my canvases; every marker, pencil, and brush—has become my home, the one place where I can truly express who I am. And so, I spend time here, whenever I can, basking in its natural glow.

NOW

57

After the dust has somewhat settled from the Storm of Peyton and its dirty aftermath, Aunt Dessa sits me down on the living room sofa and takes my hands, just like after I got back from the well. “I’m sorry,” she says.

I bite my lip, not quite sure what the apology is for. Because I got taken again? Because she didn’t believe me the first time it happened?

“There’s something I want to give you.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a long tan box. She snaps the cover open, revealing a gold necklace.

“What’s that?”

She lifts it out, letting the pendant charms dangle into her palm. The necklace is just like hers, except with the initials M and T.

“Years ago, when I couldn’t find your mom’s necklace in the debris, I hired someone to search for it.” she says. “Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to locate all of it, but he did manage to salvage the M for Maeve. I had a jeweler refurbish it and create a T for Terra. Then I chose a chain just like mine and your mom’s.” She hands it to me.

I hold the necklace up, my pulse racing. The ropy links glisten in the light.

“You don’t have to wear it,” she says. “I just thought—”

“I want to wear it.” I fasten the clasp around my neck.

“Once upon a time, your mother never took that off. Neither of us did.”

“And I won’t either.” I hold the M over my heart. “Thank you.”

Tears well up in her eyes. “I’m sorry it took so long for me to get to this place.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s something you should know—the reason your mom and I grew apart … It was my fault.”

“What was?”

“Your mother’s attack … I’ve always blamed myself for it. I was supposed to be watching her at that party. But I’d gone off with a boy.” She grabs a pillow and hugs it into her middle the way Mom used to do. “I didn’t even drive her home that night. She ended up running out, bolting from the party. Some guy—a stranger, someone whose identity we were never able to figure out—spotted her walking along the side of the road with torn clothes and crying. He gave her a ride, no questions asked. Even he was better than I was.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was my mother on the sofa, only inches from me now, all rolled up like a hedgehog, unable to look me in the eyes.

“You shouldn’t blame yourself,” I tell her. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Aunt Dessa snuggles the pillow tighter. “Everyone felt it was, including your grandparents. Including me. Your mother and I grew distant after it happened. Then, flash-forward twenty years, and all of that happened to you after the sorority party … I wanted to make it up to my sister somehow, to do things right and protect you the way I should’ve protected her. But then when I thought it was a lie, I couldn’t really handle it—couldn’t relate to someone who would make up something so horrific. In my mind, you simply had to be sick.”

“And what about after the fire? Why didn’t you want to protect me then?” The questions form a lump in my throat.

“By taking you in, I felt I was protecting you, at least on some level. It’s complicated.” She sighs. “But when my sister died, so did the possibility that she and I would one day be close again. It really has nothing to do with you.”

For the past several years, I’ve felt it had everything to do with me. After the fire, investigators were able to determine how the initial spark had started. They tried to ask me questions: if I’d noticed the stove was on prior to going to bed that night; if my parents had ever forgotten to close the stove door; if there had been a rug, rather than a flame-protective pad, in front of the hearth … But I couldn’t answer a single question. Because the breath in my lungs had ceased. And I dissolved to a pile of dust. My knees gave way, and I collapsed to the floor, trying to process what the news of the fire meant: that I’d made a mistake, that I hadn’t followed my parents’ rules.

And that my mistake had caused the flames.

And that my mistake had caused the flames.

And that my mistake had caused the flames.

My aunt was there too, with the fire marshal. But after that day, neither of us would ever speak a word about the fire’s origins. “Just tell people it was an electrical thing,” was the last thing she’d said about it, which somehow made things worse. More shameful. Far more horrific.

“Terra?” Aunt Dessa asks. She’s still balled up on the sofa, still snuggling a pillow close. “I’m sorry if I projected any of