The Secret Keeper

by Kate Morton

Perhaps all children were held captive,

“Never discount the possibility of turning up an answer none of the current theories predicts.”

“I realised that day, as I watched a man reduced to nothing by uniformed officers that there are weak and there are powerful people in our society, and that goodness is not a factor in determining into which camp one falls.”

sobbing into his pillow and saying over and over to no one in particular that he just wished things could go back to how they’d been.

There were times, he realized, when a person stuck to their rigid ideas at their own risk.

the innocence of children, the willingness with which they trusted, and how little it took for them to put their small, soft hand in yours and presume you wouldn’t let them down.

One of the things I have come to know most surely in my work is that the belief system acquired in childhood is never fully escaped; it may submerge itself for a while, but it always returns in times of need to lay claim to the soul it shaped.

He was crying when he got back to his room, hot angry tears that he swiped away with the heel of his hand, because everything was wrong and he didn’t know how to begin setting it right.

After a time there came the sound of chairs scraping back beneath the table and footsteps in the hall, and Laurel could imagine the men shaking hands, and the women kissing one another’s cheeks as they said, “Good-bye,” and, “Oh! What a lovely night,” and made promises to do it all again. Car doors clunked, engines purred down the moonlit driveway, and finally, silence and stillness returned to Greenacres. Laurel