Our Little Secret

by Kiersten Modglin

It’s when you feel the safest that you’re the most vulnerable. We’d learned that before. In our complacency, we realized evil lurks in the safe places, too. The quiet places. The moments of comfort. The places you feel like nothing could ever harm you. It waits. It watches. And, eventually, like it or not, it comes for you.

What the police found at the bottom of our community’s private lake, Lake Guinevere, would reveal the secret capable of destroying everything I knew and loved.

What if they didn’t know I’d been lying? If that was the case, why didn’t they want the lake searched? What did they know? What were they hiding?

If I didn’t know any better, I’d believe she truly was grieving his loss. Of course, I did know better. I just had to wait it out until she was done with the charade.

Michelle traded in secrets, it was her currency, and I realized then, I needed to shop.

Nothing would ever be okay as long as I held on to the final secret left in me. And I would. I had no choice. It was the final brick in the prison Ted had carefully constructed before he left me to die in it.

I had a feeling all our secrets would soon be revealed.

People surprise you in the worst ways and, at the end of the day, we’re all capable of doing monstrous things if it means protecting the people or things we care about most.

What if we were all monsters deep down, after all?

The way I see it, we’re all part monster. Some of us just hide it better than others.