Story for the Week
Benjamin Franklin is pretty well-known for the quote in the headline. Another one that I read while I searched for quotes about keeping secrets was from an Italian essayist, scholar, and poet, and it made me chuckle. Fausto Cercignani said, “A secret remains a secret until you make someone promise never to reveal it.”
When I was a kid, if a friend and I made a pact, we would “pinky swear.” We would link our right pinkies and pinky swear to whatever secret we were planning to take to the grave. I have no idea what any of those pinky swears were. I was a child, after all. So I guess, in that respect, I am taking those secrets to my grave. (My daughter tells me that she remembers making “pinky pacts” in grade school, but she doesn’t remember anything she promised not to reveal either.)
As adults, we’ve all heard the phrase “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” I’ve never been to Vegas. The closest I’ve gotten is catching a connecting flight in Reno, so I don’t have any fun secrets that Vegas needs to keep. (Pinky swear. 😉) But I was hanging out recently with some friends in my backyard gazebo. Now there’s been quite a bit of alcohol ingested in that gazebo since it went up. Some fun conversations, naps, serious conversations, naps, sad conversations, naps. There have been naps…a lot of naps. On one particular evening, though, we decided unanimously that my gazebo is our Vegas. What is said in the gazebo stays in the gazebo. I can totally get behind that.
That begs the question, though, why do some people feel the need to reveal secrets? I was speaking with my mother-in-law recently when she called after a text to my sister-in-law Denise about something that we had kept quiet for probably a month. Her first words to me were, “My gosh, Nancy, how you can keep a secret.” I told her that it hadn’t been my secret to tell.
When Dennis was first diagnosed with cancer in 2019, we were selective about who we told. Close family, a few friends, and eventually, as expected, word got around, and we heard from relatives we hadn’t spoken to in a while. Corinne told a handful of friends, and when I picked her up at a graduation party for her best friend Alexus one evening, I chatted with Alexus’s mom while I waited. I said, “Alexus told you about Corinne’s dad, right?” Now, Alexus’s mom works with home healthcare nurses who take care of hospice patients, so it would not have surprised me in the least that she would confide in her mom. In fact, I fully expected it! Her mom had no idea what I was talking about and said, “Alexus is a vault.” I can totally get behind that too.
On the flip side, I was talking with my sister-in-law Stephanie just this week about her upcoming wedding. She decided to show me something she had ordered for gifts because, in her words, she was excited about it and she can’t keep a secret. As I silently reminded myself never to tell her anything I need kept quiet 🤫😉, I told her that Dennis had been exactly the same way. He hounded me relentlessly about birthday and Christmas gifts. I would have his list, and he would ask, “Am I getting…” whatever it was he wanted. The first few times, I would tell him it was none of his business. Eventually I would get annoyed and ask him why he was trying to spoil his gifts. His response would be that he was not trying to spoil it but that he wanted to buy it himself if I wasn’t buying it for him. Because yeah, that makes total sense. 🙄
An author I have highlighted before penned a novel about a trio of friends who promised to take a secret to their graves. You read the headline, right? Two of them weren’t dead, and that was the problem. Enjoy!
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐½
3.5 Stars for The Promise by Teresa Driscoll
313 pages
Publisher: Thomas Mercer
Publication Date: February 7, 2019
I originally received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer.
Publisher’s Description
It was their darkest secret. Three schoolgirls made a promise―to take the horrible truth of what they did to the grave.
Thirty years later, Beth and Sally have tried to put the trauma behind them. Though Carol has distanced herself from her former friends, the three are adamant that the truth must never come to light, even if the memory still haunts them.
But when some shocking news threatens to unearth their dark secret, Beth enlists the help of private investigator Matthew Hill to help her and Sally reconnect with estranged Carol―before the terrible act they committed as teenagers is revealed.
Beth wishes she could take back the vow they made.
But somebody is watching and will stop at nothing to ensure the secret stays buried. Now, with her beloved family in peril, can Beth still keep the promise?
************
The Promise by Teresa Driscoll tells the story of three friends from Catholic boarding school who share a secret from when they were 14 that they promised never to tell. We know from the Prologue that the secret revolves around a dead girl, but we don’t know until about halfway through the book who she is or how she died.
Beth is happily married to Adam. They have two kids, and she works for a sensationalist talk show. Sally is divorced from her cheating husband after having a miscarriage. Carol is estranged from both of them. Her husband Ned has tried over the years to encourage her to see Beth and Sally to no avail. When Beth and Sally find out that the boarding school they attended has been sold and will be torn down, they begin to panic about the body that may be found and are determined to find Carol to discuss whether to finally break their promise to one another and reveal their secret.
The story is told mostly from Beth’s point of view with a handful of chapters thrown in from Carol as diary entries and from Matthew, a former cop turned private investigator who Beth and Sally hire to help them find Carol. I think the story could have been written without him since Beth does most of the investigating herself. He seemed to be in the story only to be a love interest for Sally so she would have a nice little wrap-up at the end of the book. (Sally and Matthew do appear in Driscoll’s I Will Make You Pay, so having read that one since I first read this, Matthew’s appearance here makes a little more sense. See that five-star review in Do You Stick to a Schedule?)
This was a really slow building story and could have moved faster, but I don’t think it could have been a full-length book that way. I was a bit disappointed with the secret because it’s something that the girls would have been able to reveal. I can see how they would want to keep the secret as 14-year-old girls, but as adults, they should have been able to see that it wouldn’t destroy their lives as they kept saying.
All in all, I’d it’s a decent book with some flaws, but still a good read. As a fan of Teresa Driscoll, I recommend picking this one up.
***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS***
There is a storyline with Carol and a Ouija board that doesn’t seem to fit. She clearly has a number of mental health issues that manifest over time, but there were several references to the Ouija board incident, and it seemed a bit much. We find out at the end of the book that her relationship with her husband is not what it seems, but at one point, she is suddenly portrayed as seeming completely fine, and I found myself thinking, “What the heck?!” Once you realize that she IS still a bit disturbed, it makes sense, but it took me a few minutes to reconcile.
At another point, Beth and Sally get into an argument about Matthew and stop speaking. Beth falls into this deep depression, and Sally doesn’t bother coming to see her to make amends. These two seem to be as close as sisters—not a friendship that would end over a disagreement over a boyfriend without a serious conversation. They’ve been friends for 20+ years. Their unwillingness to talk it through doesn’t seem realistic.
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