The Secret


    “You sure? You’re allfy and food is on the way,” Roberta says, taking a sip from my Diet Coke. I nce at my watch, knowing where Sutton is and what he’s up to, I realize this may not be a quick visit, and I don’t feel like sitting home alone with my thoughts. Sushi and Real Housewives only go so far.


    “Positive. Just let me change my clothes?” I walk backward toward the staircase while showcasing my jammies. “I know this is a look, but I think leggings and a sweatshirt could be better. I’ll grab the keys when I’m up there.”


    She waves me off, settling into the barstool, finishing my drink while focused on her phone. “Go, I’m just gonna tell the buyer we’re about twenty minutes out.”


    Upstairs, after locating the envelope in the safe with the extra set of keys, I toss it onto the bed and pull on a pair of leggings. Adding one of Sutton’s hoodies–which quite actually turns me on because I love his smell so much–I slip into some Birkenstocks, grab the envelope and head down.


    Roberta is still on her phone, this time, texting. She looks up when I flick off the light over the sink. “Ready?”


    She nods. “Yeah. They’re going to meet us at the house. They wanna make sure the keys work, and they have something for me.”


    “Sounds good. You wanna drive two cars? That way you don’t have toe back and drop me off when we’re done?”


    She tucks a long piece of dark hair back into her carefully styled updo, using one of her long, French manicured nails. “No way,e with me and I’ll drive you back. What else do I have to do?”


    I wiggle my brows. “No hot dates?”


    She pulls open the door, allowing me to exit to the back drive first. “I would take a regr date at this point. I’m not even asking for hot anymore. Just normal.”


    “A lot of weirdos out there?” I ask as we walk toward her car. She clicks her remote and the lights sh, the doors unlocking for us. I settle into the passenger seat as she walks around the front, then joins me inside.


    “Thest business executive I went out with turned out to be lying about being a business executive,” she says, twisting the key in the ignition. “I looked him up on LinkedIn. He told me he was corporate finance for Bank of America, but his LinkedIn said he was corporate marketing for Ikea. When I asked him, he admitted he sells hotdogs at the bodega on Mason Street.” She flips her blinker on as she pulls out of the private drive, onto the main road. “He borrowed the suit he wore to dinner from his grandpa. I’m not even kidding.”


    I can’t help butugh, and Roberta does, too. “That’s not even the worst of it,” she tells me, guiding the car into downtown traffic not more than two minutester. San Francisco is so strange that way—you can be tucked into a luxurious home on a hill one moment, and in the street next to businesses and city life another moment. I love it. The dichotomy of two beautiful and fulfilling lifestyles, one private and romantic, the other vibrant and loud.


    I think of Geo and Sutton, and how they’re that same dichotomy, and how the metaphor spans powerfully along many aspects of my life. I love the huge unstaged mansions, seeing their raw potential and exploring them when they’re bare and empty, at their lowest. And I love filling them with beautiful things, and revisiting them when they’ve changed from space to home. Both versions, to me, are beautiful.


    After hearing about a man who peed his pants during dinner, and another who couldn’t remember her name by the end of the date, we arrive at the property, a burgundy Rolls Royce parked on the curb.


    “Well, I’m sorry the dating scene is so harsh. Once you stop looking, you’ll find him,” I tell her, popping open my door.


    She opens her door, and we each have one leg out. “Says the woman married to Sutton Mercer.”


    I can’t help but smile just hearing his name in that context, where it’s passively suggested that he is simply the gold standard. “I wasn’t looking for anyone when I met him, though.”


    We get out and close our doors, and Roberta links her arm with mine, still wearing her heels. “Birks were smart,” she says, ncing down at the custom cobblestone drive.


    “Yeah, well, they don’t really go with your outfit.” She holds onto me as we make our way toward the front doors, finding them open, the clients having a conversation in the foyer.


    “Roberta, we’re so sorry,” the woman—wearing a fur coat, an actual fur coat—says, diamonds glittering from her wrist and ears. Roberta passes the envelope to the man she’s with–an older gentleman with abover, wearing a three-piece suit and shiny dress shoes. He reaches into the envelope and fishes the keys out, holding up one finger.


    Closing the door, he uses the key to lock and unlock it, proving that these are indeed the correct keys. “That’s perfect! Just great!” the man says to Roberta after opening the front door again. “Thank you so much. This is Kitty’s dream home.”<fne165> Discover more novels at Find_Novel(.</fne165>


    We exchange a few pleasantries before saying goodbye, and the couple–who insisted Roberta bring the spare keys tonight, after hours–gets into their fancy car and drives off.


    Roberta, arm still looped through mine, walks carefully on the cobblestones back to her car. “Millionaires are so illogical. You buy a multi-million dor home but then… don’t want to pay to get it rekeyed?”


    I shake my head,ughing. “Unnecessary expense,” I tease her, and she tips her head back, moonlight spilling over us as she steps out from beneath arge birch, a few feet from the car.


    “Oh yes,” sheughs, “why have it rekeyed when we can have the agent running all over town to bring a spare set we’ll never us–”


    Just a foot from Roberta’s car, her high heels lose the battle against the cobblestones, her heel wedging tightly between a filled spot in the ground. She loses her bnce, and her purse flies through the air, her piercing scream making my lungs seize.


    “Roberta!” I shout helplessly as she tips backward. At thest minute, I reach for her, and she does the same, only, I don’t prevent her from falling.


    I instead fall with her.


    And the front of my Birkenstock is the exact width of the gap between the stones underneath me, and my foot gets pinched immovably on the way down. I have just enough seconds to realize I’m about to st, so I brace my hands and close my eyes.


    It’s not the light tumble against the stone that hurts.


    It’s my foot.


    No, my ankle.


    Laughing, Roberta turns her head to face me, both of us on our backs on the ground, me with one leg bent, since I can’t move my foot. “Oh Jesus, I’m d no one was here to see that!” she says, her chest bouncing with herughter.


    Iugh a little until – “Oh my god!” I screech when out of nowhere, pain hits. So much pain. Twisty, achy, stabbing pain running loops around my ankle and my shin. “My ankle! Oh my god! My ankle!” I lift my head from the ground, but can’t see my foot from how I’m positioned. “Roberta, my foot is stuck. I think my ankle–”


    She sits up, nodding her head, eyes wide. “Let me just look, okay?” I watch her face as she twists her gaze, peering down at my foot. Expressionless, she simply says, “Something’s definitely not right.”


    “Oh no.”


    I dig my phone from my pocket, but discover that I must’vended on it. The screen is shattered and dark, and the button on the side to turn it on does not work. Roberta opens the passenger door of her car, and kicks off her heels for better footing as she loops her arms beneath my arm pits.


    “Okay, use your good foot if you can, I just need you to leverage your weight enough for me to get you two feet over, okay?” she says, then, on her count, she lifts me. We’re both grunting as she bears half my weight, me the other half, on one foot. She nudges me toward the open door and I hop twice before she’s helping me put my hurt foot into the car.


    “I can hardly move it,” I tell her, panic clinging to my voice. Pain sears up my leg and down my foot, and– “oh my god, Roberta, I can’t move my toes!”


    She tosses her purse into the backseat, eyes wide. “It’s fine. I’m sure that’s your body’s response to the injury. It’s shutting down to prevent further pain.”


    I shake my head, sweat bubbling up at my temples from the raw searing pain. “I think that’s your stomach with food poisoning.”


    We blink at one another for a split second before she shakes her head, waving off any of our knowledge. “We aren’t doctors, okay? Watching Grey’s and medical TikToks does not make us qualified to get you so freaked out. I’m gonna close the door and then I’m gonna take you to the ER. And people who have gone to school for years will decide if you’re gonna lose your toes, okay?”


    She closes the door and rushes around the front of the car. I never thought I was going to lose my toes, and I’m not prone to being a panicked person but all of the sudden, I’m hot and sweaty and overwhelmed with the urge to be sick.


    Roberta ms her door closed, and reaches behind her to dig out her phone.


    “Wh-what are you doing?” I ask her, rolling the window down now that the car is started. I suck in a lungful of bay air, letting it soothe me as much as I can. I reach into the center console and sip on a bottle of water that’s probably been there too long, but it’s better than nothing.


    “Calling Sutton back. He’s going to likely kill me for this,” she says, but I grab her phone from her hand.


    “Please just get us there. I’ll call him—” I start to promise I’ll contact him, but a biting pain grabs hold, and her phone falls to myp as my hands go to my knee. “Oh my god,” I breathe as she navigates out of the private neighborhood, toward Zuckerberg hospital, which is nearest.


    “What? What’s wrong?’ She asks, splitting her focus between me and the somewhat quiet city streets.


    “My knee,” I tell her, leaning toward the open sliver of the window. I rest my head on the door, and suck down the cool air, taking deep breaths, forcing my eyes to stay closed to help quiet my brain.


    It’s Monday, and it’s after eight. Not many people are out, and the drive to the ER is supposed to take about twelve minutes, ording to the map inside Roberta’s car. She talks the whole time—cursing her high heels, herself, apologizing, cursing the clients for making us go down there, cursing the man or woman who invented cobblestone, then cursing the person who decided cobblestone is best on a sloped driveway with no sidewalk. By the time we’re at the ER, I’ve been giggling andughing enough to be distracted from the pain a bit, and have calmed down almostpletely.


    A man in green scrubs helps me into a wheelchair, and rolls me from the front doors back into a triage area. After she parks, Roberta meets me in the triage area, and gets out her phone to call Sutton.


    “Mrs. Mercer,” a woman says, pushing past the cart of supplies and pinned-back curtain to enter the small space. I sit on a table wrapped in white paper, and Roberta sits in the rolling little doctor’s chair, but jumps to her feet the moment the woman enters.


    “Wow,” she says, lips turned down in surprise. “She’s getting seen already?”


    The doctor looks between Roberta and myself. “Mondays are slow at this hospital.”


    I nce at the name sewn into her coat. Dr. Richards. She touches my foot while a nurse bustles in, taking my blood pressure and temperature, asking to copy my insurance card and what my date of birth is. It’s decided rtively quickly that I need an X-ray, but before that, she orders a blood draw. The nurse who takes my blood disappears, and reappears with another wheelchair.


    “Alright honey, getting you up to X-ray.”


    Roberta gets to her feet. “Where can I wait?”


    The nurse doesn’t even look at her. “The waiting room.”


    Roberta pushes my hair back, and gives me a timid smile. “I’m so sorry about all this, Avery. I’m gonna call Sutton now, okay?”


    I wiggle my toes and nod to them. “Look, I can move my toes. Don’t feel bad.”


    The nurse locks the wheel on the wheelchair before helping me into it. I say goodbye to Roberta, handing her all my belongings to keep until Sutton arrives. The hospital is cool and somewhat dark, and Dr. Richards was right–hardly anyone is here.


    The nurse uses her badge to get us into a series of hallways and doors, and though the pain is easing a little bit, and I know my toes are still working, I find myself suddenly feeling a rush of sickness from the pain.


    I grip the arms of the wheelchair and close my eyes, hoping the X-ray is somewhere near us so I don’t get motion sickness and puke everywhere.


    The nurse lets us into a room, where the X-ray technician looks to be cleaning down some of their machines. The two of them talk, and I watch them through the thick, noise-proof ss. Their heads turn to face me, and then my nurse holds up a finger. She moves across the room to theputer on wheels, and starts to type. The technician nods, and continues wiping the machine.


    A momentter, the nurse reappears, grinning. “Okay, we’re all ready for you.”


    The technician reappears with arge lead apron. He sets it aside as they help me on the gurney, and when I’m lying t, he pulls the apron over my abdomen and chest. “That okay?”


    I nod. “If it’s just my foot–”


    He smiles. “They want your hips and knees, too, sweetie. Gotta make sure nothing got twisted beyond that ankle. Normally you’d just stand up against our screen there,” he says, pointing to the X-ray area with ces marked on the floor for feet. “But you can’t stand, so we’re improvising.”


    I nod. “I guess that makes sense.”


    “And this lead nket is to keep you and the baby safe. But don’t worry, non-abdominal X-rays are safe. Now just lie back and try really, really hard not to move. I’m going to take a picture, check my screen, and repeat that about five times, okay?”


    He gets to work, angling the portable X-ray above me toward my hips first. He does what he says, moving the machine then going back to hisputer. I don’t know how long he moves around or does what he does because… I’m pregnant.<hr>


    The X-rays don’t take much time at all, and when the nurse rolls me back into a room to wait for Dr. Richards toe take a look, she asks if I’d like Roberta to wait with me.


    When Robertaes back, she’s brought me a coffee and tells me that Sutton and Geo are on the way. The nurse wraps my ankle and foot in a crepe bandage, meant to keep the injury tight andpressed for the first week. I watch the woman work on my foot, but can’t take my mind off of Sutton and his dad.


    I smooth my hand over my head, hoping that they got the chance to finish their talk before this call came in. After all, I hadn’t heard from Sutton since he left. I assumed that meant they were in the thick of it, and now that I know that I’m pregnant, I can’t seem to care about my knee or foot or whatever else is hurt.


    I hardly feel the pain at all anymore.


    I just want them to have their talk, so we can make things right with us. It’s more important than ever before.


    “You okay?” Roberta asks after I’ve stared at the surface of the coffee for too long.


    I look up at her. “You know what they told me?”


    She shrugs.


    “I’m pregnant.”


    Her eyes widen. “Avery Mercer!” she squeals. “I didn’t know you guys were trying!” She looks at her watch, as if to do reverse math. “Wait. The wedding was just?—”


    “Four weeks. You’re about four weeks along,” Dr. Richards says, clicking the small door closed behind her. She turns on the light boxes and shoves a few of my X-rays in them, narrowing her eyes at the cloudy images before her. “What I thought.” She clicks the light box off and shoves the images into a man folder. Her stern face focuses on me. “No break. Hips, knees and ankles all look good. Just a bad sprain.”


    She scribbles on a pad and hands it to me. “Because you’re pregnant, use these sparingly, only when absolutely necessary. Otherwise, Tylenol should do the trick. RICE therapy. Rest, ice,pression and elevation. Stay off it for a few days. It’s a bad sprain, but just a sprain.”


    “Thank you so much,” I say, then reach for Roberta.


    The doctor stops me. “Hospital policy. You’re going out in the wheelchair.” She ces a hand on my shoulder to ease me back down. On her way out, she stops, peering down at Roberta’s satin pumps. She points at them, but looks at me. “Were you wearing shoes like that when this happened?”


    I wiggle my good foot with the Birkenstock on it. “Nope, just a klutz.”


    She smiles, and the nurse rolls me to a payment station in the hallway, where I swipe my card for the services, and Roberta taps away at her phone. When we’re done, the nurse passes the reins to Roberta, and she rolls me out.


    Sutton and Geo are the first people I see when we turn the corner to the lobby, and my stomach flutters at the sight of them. I search their faces for any traces of what may have been discussed or concluded, but instead only find concern. So much concern.


    Sutton sees me, and rushes toward me, dropping to a knee at my feet. “What happened? Are you okay? Who did you see?” He looks down to my foot, his handsing to hold it sensitively, cautiously, like he doesn’t want to break me. Geo is by his side in a matter of seconds, his soft eyes on mine.


    He hasn’t spoken, but stands stiffly by Sutt’s side, assessing.


    “It’s my fault. We were at the house in the Haight and I slipped on the cobblestone, and took her down with me. Only, she got hurt and I didn’t.” Roberta ces her palm across her forehead, guilt leaving heavy bags beneath her eyes. “I’m so sorry again, Avery.”


    I squeeze her hand and release it, then pay my attention to Sutton and Geo.


    “It’s a sprain. They did an X-ray and nothing is broken or out of ce. It just hurts a lot and I need to stay off it for a week but otherwise, I’m okay. I guess rushing down here was kind of a false rm. I just… thought it was broken because it hurt so bad.”


    Roberta passes Sutton a card. “Dr. Richards, and yes I got her card because I figured you’d want it.” She hands him the prescription and medical paperwork, too. “And here’s her discharge paperwork.”


    “You’re okay?” Geo finally says, his voice hoarse and thin.


    Sutt weaves his fingers with mine and kisses my knuckles, eyes on me as he replies. “She’s okay, everything is going to be okay. Just a slip.”


    “Your phone wasn’t working. We–” Geo stops and restarts. “Sutton couldn’t get a hold of you.”


    I fish the broken phone from my purse and show them. “Inded on it. It’s toast.”


    Geo nods his head, and Sutton nces back at him. “She’s okay. It’s okay.”


    Roberta’s browse together. “Sutton Mercer, are you actually calm and collected? I thought for sure you’d have my ass for letting Avery get hurt. Marriage has softened you,” she teases.


    “You didn’t let me get hurt,” I tell her.


    Sutton looks up at Roberta, and his words leave my chest hollow. “I had to be collected.” He tips his head toward Geo. “He was freaking out.”


    I caution a quick nce at Roberta, who watches Geo as he bends, pushes my hair from my cheek, then kisses me. His lips drag to my ear, where he kisses me again, then below it, for a third kiss.


    One kiss on the cheek is already pushing it where a father-inw is concerned, but three kisses? Two of those being on the neck? It’s so private, giving so much insight (or confusion) into us. Sutton, my husband, doesn’t even like kissing me that way in public.


    But Geo is not Sutton, and that’s kind of the whole fucking point.


    “I’m d you’re okay, sweetheart,” Geo says, then boldly presses his mouth to mine.


    When the kiss ends, I look at Sutton, shocked at his dad’s actions, but when I find his eyes soft and a gentle smile curving his lips, I realize that their talk was good.


    Things must have led in a good direction.


    Still, Geo just kissed me in front of Roberta and I do not know what to say or do. Sutton, realizing why my eyes are hysterically stered against him, gets to his feet, standing squarely between Geo and Roberta.


    “Roberta, listen–”


    She stops him with a hand leveled horizontally between us. “Nope. Don’t feel like you have to share something you’re not ready to share just because we ended up at the hospital tonight.”


    Sutton strokes a hand over his head, tousling his hair, and exhaling. “Thank you.”


    She smiles. “Call me tomorrow, let me know how you’re doing.”


    “I will,” I tell her, knowing full well that my foot will be thest thing we talk about. And when we get home, I have a feeling my foot and this injury is thest thing toe up.