Devlin's Secret

An Idea

Rebecca - Present Day

We had been assigned the task of going through all Mum's stuff. She hadn't ever written a will, probably thinking that she would live a lot longer than she actually did. Mum had never liked to have a full plan for things. She would often make important decisions at the last minute because, according to her, it didn't matter when things were done as long as they were actually done. 

And that was just one of many things that didn't make sense about all of this. There was no note. In fact, as far as Hugo and I knew, there was nothing at all. I think Hugo still believed, just a little bit, that she was still alive. 

"It's just weird that she would do it like this," he said as we folded her clothes into boxes. "She always told us everything."

I agreed. She always had told us everything, sometimes going against the wishes of Mama to do so. I was pretty sure we knew things about her that Mama was unaware we'd been told. At this point, it had become hard to tell what was supposed to be a secret. But now, seemingly, everything was.

Mama's voice drifted up from the kitchen, exasperated, saying something in an accusatory tone. This was a sound we were both used to hearing, even before Mum died. Hugo shut the door.

"I think she might have been the only one who told us anything," I said. A silence fell.

Hugo and I were comfortable in silence together. Even after having arguments, we would prefer to stay in the same room rather than walk away from each other. We didn't need to talk to communicate. Over the years, we had gotten to know each other very well.

We were not biological siblings. Hugo had been adopted when he was three. I was seven at the time, and I only vaguely remember him not being there before that. Hugo, of course, doesn't remember having not lived with us. A few months after Mum and Mama told him, he admitted to me that he would have preferred to never have known. He put his paranoia down to that, saying that it created the idea in his head that he was always being lied to by adults about important things. 

That was when we really started becoming close. I, being the only other child in the house, was the only one he completely trusted. He would often come to me for confirmation after being told something he deemed important, and even then we'd sometimes end up in an argument about whether or not I was lying when I didn't know. These arguments grew more frequent as I got into my mid teens. He said he remembered looking at me one day and realising I was more grown up than he was. He thought there was some big secret about being an adult that we were all keeping from him, and he couldn't shake the feeling that I'd betrayed him until he was fifteen.

"Do you think we're something to do with it?" He said now, quietly, because Mama's shouting had stopped. 

I tried not to look surprised as I left a pause to finish folding a dress. "I don't know."

"Becky."

"Alright, fine. I hadn't considered it."

"But...?"

"What?"

"It makes sense, right?" His eyes were alight with the acceptance of a new idea. "They don't want us to know because we'll feel bad or something like that. Becky."

I sighed. "Yeah, I guess it makes sense."

But why? If she was always so open with us, why now would anyone be worried about something like that?