Secrets Kept
by
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Author’s Note: This is from Diane Evans POV. It was also part of a school project, so it was knocked out fast and under pressure. No hate mail, please!
Rating: PG (Just barely)
It just hit me today. My kids are growing up so fast. Isabel just turned 18. My baby is an adult. And Max...he is too. Though, that one didn’t sneak up on me so fast, somehow. Max has always been calmer, more level-headed, more serious than his flighty sister.
This birthday party, it somehow hit me. I have very little control over my children’s lives now. They’re adults, they have their own lives to live, and to tell the truth, lives I see very little of. They’re both secretive people, and they always have been. If it weren’t for the late-night meetings with Michael Guerin that I’ve observed on many occasions over the years, I would think something was wrong. I worry anyway, sometimes, often not knowing where they are at all hours of the night.
Isabel is often a puzzle to me. She seems very much like one of those people who is a little too blunt for their own good, yet she hides something. There is a secret. Something she shares with Max, Michael, and maybe their friends.
That little clique that she and Max belong to, it’s tight. Tighter than any friends I ever had at her age. Max, Michael and Isabel, they’ve been joined at the hip since they were in third grade, but now they seem to have added new people to their clique. Maria, Liz, Alex...just thinking about Alex makes me cringe. Poor boy. He probably thinks I’m shocked. Not shocked. Highly amused, though. But, of course, I’m the mom, so I don’t get to show that I’m amused by ‘inappropriate behavior’. Sometimes being the responsible adult is a pain.
Anyway, back to where I was. Max and Isabel’s clique. There seem to be eight of them, though the Sheriff’s son, Kyle, and the new girl, Tess, seem to stay on the sidelines for the most part. The rest of them are so tight I’m amazed that they’re still breathing. I don’t think any of them move from one room to another without consulting the others first.
And Max and Liz. They think I don’t notice anything that goes on in my kids lives, but that is one relationship, or as it currently seems to be, non-relationship, that is hard to miss. I hate to say it, because it’s one more thing that makes me think my kids are grown up, but with those two, it’s true love. I have never seen a couple more devoted. But something happened.
Tess? Maybe. She was hanging all over Max for a while after she showed up. But she’s stopped now. Mostly. Occasionally, I’ll notice her hanging, and Liz sends this hurt look in Max’s direction, and then usually runs, and Max pushes Tess away, and follows Liz. I wish I knew what was going on.
I feel so out of the loop. Other parents tell me I’m just missing the ‘old days’. The childhood times when the kids tell Mommy everything. But the way they mean, there were no ‘old days’. Max and Isabel were always secretive. They’ve been hiding something from me since day one. And now they have their friends to help them. Their friends who obviously know something that I don’t.
Maybe, one day, they’ll feel secure enough that I’ll love them no matter what, that they’ll tell me. And maybe they won’t. But it doesn’t really matter. Because, from my body or not, they are my kids, and I love them. And Michael, like a second son, too. It’s hard not to, after he’s been hanging out in my kitchen chomping down the weirdest combinations of gunk for years.
The important thing is, I love them, and they love me. I wish they realized that nothing could stop that, and trust me with their secret. I think Isabel would. But Max seems to be their... leader?, and so she doesn’t. My son is so protective, I can only think he thinks he is doing what’s best either for their father and me, or for the group they hang out with. Either way, Max is doing it out of love, and that makes it better. Not okay, but better.