Regret10 min read
A Little Secret, a Lost Tooth, and the Boy Who Helped
ButterPicks42 views
I remember the first secret like it was a small stone in my pocket.
"My name is Emma," I said once, when I was five and too proud to cry for very long.
"Emma?" Grandma laughed and kissed my nose. "Such a neat name. Our little secret is safe."
"Secret?" I blinked. "What secret?"
"You're mommy and daddy's little secret," she said, very soft, like she was tucking a blanket over the word.
I never asked why after that. Secrets were like the rabbit I slept with—small, warm, and carrying the smell of soap. The rabbit had two soft ears I could twist and hide my worries in. "Don't tell," Grandma always said. "Some things stay secret."
"Emma," Grandma said, patting my back. "Go sit for dinner."
"Okay," I said, hugging my rabbit. "Can I have the soupy noodles?"
"Of course," she smiled, and I ate in small, perfect bites the way she taught me.
At school I learned other children had fathers who wore shiny shoes and mothers who sat in the front row at parent meetings.
"Where's your mom?" a woman with kind eyes asked once, holding my head like it must be small and fragile.
I kept my mouth closed. I had learned to press my lips together the way Grandma taught me when I wanted to hide the shape of a secret.
Later, a man with big steps came to our gate. He stood tall in the dusty lane and said, "Ma'am."
Grandma's face went still. She looked smaller than the man who said, "Emma?"
"Papa?" I asked, because the man looked like the word fit on his mouth.
His voice was low as if the name might break. "I'm Eaton Mitchell. I'm your father."
I peeked at Grandma. She smiled that tired smile she kept in a drawer for difficult days.
"Eaton," she said once, as if she knew what to do, then she left us, because dinner needed tending.
"Papa?" I wrapped my arms around his leg the way I wrapped my rabbit's ears. He smelled like clean shirts and something I couldn't name.
"Sit, Emma," he said, and for a long time I thought sitting still was an offering.
When it was time to go I clung to Grandma like a burr.
"Come on," Eaton said, patient and big. "You'll be with me now."
"Can I stay?" I asked, making my lip tremble. He didn't answer with a story, only rubbed the top of my head.
"Be good," he told me. "Be my girl and be kind."
"Okay," I whispered, and I let him carry me away.
The car smelled strange. Eaton talked on a little black box and I watched cities change like drawings. When he said "Kaori" on the phone—my mother—my heart tapped like a small bird.
"Is she at work?" I asked.
"She's acting," Eaton said. "She's busy."
"Will she be home?" I asked.
"Sometimes," Eaton said. He tried to be easy and warm in a way I didn't know. "Call your grandma later."
"Call Grandma," I said into Eaton's phone when he let me.
She answered in a voice like soap bubbles. "Hello, my secret."
"I miss you," I said.
"We're okay," she said. "Eat the noodles. Be wild if you want, but be safe."
"Okay, Grandma," I told her, and I hid my little cloth rabbit in my pocket like a promise.
They put me in a new house with a big gate. There was a man with a white beard who looked at me very closely. He said, "You must call me grandfather."
"Grandfather," I said, because my mouth learned words fast in new places.
At the big house, every little thing mattered.
"Call him Leonardo," my father told me one morning when my feet were still sticky from sleep.
"Leonardo?" I tried it. "Grandpa Leonardo?"
Leonardo Sanchez grunted like a kettle and folded his newspaper. He let me sit beside him when he did not like me much at all, and then pretended his face was as hard as a stone because good grandfathers do a little sternness.
"Be good for your elders," Aunt Giovanna said the first time she hugged me. "We will teach you."
I liked Aunt Giovanna because she laughed with her mouth open and made egg pancakes so soft they were like sleeping pillows.
That first week I met them—Gerry Rocha who was loud and a little bossy, Frank Bauer who teased like a wind, and Ellery Nielsen who smelled of soap and milk. They were my neighbors from the big courtyard.
"Gerry," someone called. "Go fix that stool!"
"Fine," Gerry shouted back. "Be right there."
"Emma," Ellery said, the first time, when I knocked over a small wooden stool in front of the little grocery.
"Sorry," I said, picking up the bits. He smiled and set the stool straight like a teacher made of sunlight.
"Sit," Ellery said later, sliding a meagre wooden stool across the room for me.
"Thank you," I said, because sometimes people put their hands where my hands could be safe.
"Do you want water?" Ellery asked, with a small pause like he checked a recipe.
"Yes," I whispered.
He taught me how to do sums. He had a way of saying things that made numbers feel like toy blocks rather than stones.
"One plus one is two," he said softly.
"Two," I repeated, because I liked the sound of the answer. He marked my paper.
"You are brave to try," he told me.
"Because I'm not alone," I answered, and I mean it.
When I was eight, a stranger in a suit said, "We need your name paperwork." He was sharp and wrote fast and pretended nothing was important except forms.
"Is this for the school?" I asked.
"Yes," Eaton said, but his voice sounded thin. "We will get you enrolled."
I was glad but frightened. Grandmother's voice was far on the phone. "Be safe," she said.
"I will," I told her.
School was noisy and full of people who believed in letters and neat desks. One day, a boy named Tian wrote mean things and shoved my elbow.
"You're slow," he said. "You're silly."
"Stop," I said, but my heart bumped like a trapped bird.
Ellery watched and frowned. "Don't let them say that," he said later.
"I'm used to it," I said, because I had learned to hold my sadness like I held my rabbit.
"Then let's make it easier," Ellery answered, and he sat down. "Give me your test."
"I got forty-six." I showed him, and the paper looked like a sliced moon.
"Forty-six?" he exclaimed, then smiled in the way people smile when they want to fix things. "We will do this together."
"Why do you care?" I asked.
"Because you asked me to," he said simply. "Because you are Emma."
"It was hard at the start," Ellery told me as we worked. "But you tried."
"It's too hard," I said once, the words falling like pebbles. "Why do people make shapes out of paper and call it hard?"
"Because it's practice," he said. "Because practice is like building a bridge. You can't see it quick."
"Then build with me," I said, and he smiled that lazy, lazy smile like someone who presses a warm palm over a cold one.
We practiced until the sun melted like wax behind the trees.
"Again," Ellery said. "One more time."
"Okay," I said. I wrote the numbers like I was drawing the outline of a balloon.
When I finished, he looked over my paper.
"Try again," he said, and then the time he gave me made the forty-six grow into eighty-nine.
"Really?" I couldn't help but say.
"Really," he smiled. "You did it."
At night, when I couldn't sleep, I would find him out on the balcony sometimes.
"Why do you stay?" I asked one evening.
"To be a little less empty," he said. "I came here too."
"How?" I asked.
"By being brave," was all he said, which sounded like a grown-up riddle.
I missed my grandmother like the sky misses the sea. She had a way of wiping my cheeks with a towel, patting them dry, and saying, "We are a secret that makes the world better."
When she died, it was suddenly winter without any warning. Elliot—no, excuse me—when the night my grandmother stopped breathing arrived, the house felt very hollow.
"Grandma?" I whispered into the phone that day when the old dog wouldn't bark, and the voice on the other end said things I did not want to hear.
"Be Emma," Aunt Giovanna said, squeezing my hand. "Remember your secret."
"It hurts," I told her.
"I know it does," she said, and for once she did not try to fix it with food. She just let me hold the silence.
We buried Grandma in a little hill behind the yard. I carried the rabbit to the grave and whispered the secret—"seven o'clock"—the time she said I was born. "It was seven o'clock, Grandma," I told her. "You said I came out like the news anchors at seven."
"Like a drumbeat," she said once, and now I said it all alone into the dark.
"I am your secret," I told the earth. "I will be your secret."
Grandfather Leonardo cried for the first time that I saw. He never cried in front of many people, but the house felt softer because of it.
"Don't be afraid of the quiet," he told me as I set the small rabbit on his lap. "Keep her safe. You are the morning light."
Time moved like a slow animal after that. The house had more people in it.
"Eaton," Grandmother Raffaella—no, Ma'am—Leonardo's wife—Raffaella Peters—she had a way of smashing a scolding and a soft smile together. "Get the children to bed."
"I will," Eaton replied. He was busy at work and sometimes he would forget to be small enough for hugs.
The day my mother Kaori Alvarado came, I leaned the rabbit's ear against her hand to see if she smelled like the soaps she used in the films.
"Emma," she said like a title. "You're bigger."
"You're home?" I asked.
"Sometimes," she said, the word like a coin bouncing in a jar. She couldn't be home all the time because the lights and cameras needed her.
When she stayed, she was like someone who had learned to speak slowly to stop time from slipping off the table.
"Emma," Kaori asked once, tucking a string of hair behind my ear. "Do you forgive me?"
"Maybe," I said slowly. "But I like you now."
"Then we will try," she promised. And she was gentle, in the way that only people who have been apart long enough can be.
We ate egg crepes that were thin like the papers you fold.
"Do you like these?" Aunt Giovanna asked.
"I love them," I said. "Grandma used to make them like this."
"She taught me," Aunt Giovanna said. "I can make them thin like hers."
In the summer, Kaori had twins—a boy and a girl. They were small, like two berries. "You are an older sister now," Kaori said one night.
"I can be," I answered, and my chest felt like it had been painted.
"Emma," Kaori said. "Do you like the twins?"
"I like them very much," I answered without thinking. "But I like Ellery too."
"Who is Ellery?" Kaori smiled—curious and cautious.
"A friend," I said, and she nodded as if that solved everything.
I watched them grow. The boy, named Leonardo—no wait, we had enough Leonardos—Eaton and Kaori chose names like songs. My own name stayed the same, and that felt like a small safe place.
People came and left. My father sometimes went away to meetings and returned with strange faces in dark suits.
"Be careful about who you trust," Grandfather Leonardo told him one evening.
Eaton just sighed and drank his tea. He tried to love, made mistakes and said sorry with his whole body. People made mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes meant papers signed or doors slammed.
There were small fights. Grandfather banged his cane and said mean things about strangers and about the past.
"Leave it here," Aunt Giovanna said, taking my small hands and putting them in hot water.
"Don't let the anger grow," she told me, and I thought the best way to not let anger grow was to smile at it and go make tea.
At school I learned that getting older means being brave enough to say no to a boy who writes bad notes.
"Stop sending those," I told him the day he left a folded note on my desk.
"Why not?" his voice had an edge like a broken toy.
"Because I'm not your game," I told him. "And games break friends."
"Fine," he said, and his face looked empty like a page from a book. He kept the note anyway.
Ellery said one thing that makes me remember him like a small warm cup of cocoa:
"People are not broken because they hurt you. They are wrong because they lie."
"Is that why Kaori left?" I asked once under the winter sun.
"Maybe," Ellery said. "But people can learn to be better if they want to."
When I turned ten, a tooth came loose.
"Your baby tooth?" Ellery asked.
"Yes," I said, worried that losing a tooth meant losing more than milk teeth.
"That's normal," he said. "Let's make a hole and bury it—like a tiny treasure."
"Where do we find a big hole?" I asked, eyes wide.
"By grandpa's flowerbed," he said. "We'll dig it together."
So we did. He gave me an old trowel. I dug carefully, a small hole under the jasmine where the petals drooped like soft flags.
"Lower," I told him. "Make it deeper."
"Okay," he said. "There."
I put the tooth in. I laid a white jasmine petal over it like a small flag.
"Done," I whispered.
"Done," he agreed.
There were many small good things like that—an egg pancake at dawn, a math sum solved with a crooked grin, a rabbit held tight.
People sometimes said things that hurt, but then diluted them by bringing soup and saying sorry later.
"Why do you bother?" I asked Ellery once after my father and mother argued.
"Because stories need people to mend them," he said. "And because you're my friend."
"I am your secret," I told him.
He smiled. "And you're mine."
Once, at the big house, a party tried to make things calm. Someone in a suit laughed too loudly. Someone else kept a secret tucked in his pocket like a coin.
There were times I watched grown people play complicated games with words, and I wished they would play a kind game instead.
In the end, they cried like children too, and a few apologies tasted real.
I kept my rabbit with me. I kept my little drawings tucked into a corner of the bookshelf. I kept the tooth under the jasmine, even though I visited it like a secret shrine.
One evening, as the sun slipped and stained the sky like spilled tea, I walked to the old kitchen where the rabbit had been left under a plate.
"Emma," Aunt Giovanna called. "Come help me wash."
"Okay," I said. But I stopped and wiped the rabbit's face with a small towel.
"Don't forget to keep the secret safe," I whispered.
"It will be safe," the rabbit seemed to say.
Ellery stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets, watching the light on the rabbit's ear.
"You'll remember the secret?" he asked me.
"I always will," I said. "Seven o'clock, the rabbit, Grandma's laugh—it's mine."
"Promise?" he asked, like a little boy and a big one at once.
"Promise," I said.
We grew like that, thin as winter branches and strong like them too.
"Do you think I'll ever stop wanting to go home?" I asked one night, pressing my hand to the small scar on my knee where I'd fallen again.
"Home is where the people who love you are," Ellery answered, steady as a lamp. "You are home in many places, Emma."
"Then I'm lucky," I said.
Years later, when everyone was busy and the house had more rooms and more noises, I would still hide small things in pockets and whisper them like prayers.
"Don't forget the rabbit," Aunt Giovanna said once when she packed a small bag for me.
"I won't," I answered.
At the end of one long day, I stood at the gate where once I had clung to my grandmother's apron.
"Are you coming?" Kaori asked, smiling with tired eyes.
"Yes," I said. "But first, I need to tell Grandma something."
"Tell her what?"
"That I kept the secret," I said, pressing the rabbit's ear to my lips. "That I learned to be brave and to forgive. That the tooth is buried under jasmine and that I am not a secret any longer."
Kaori nodded and squeezed my hand.
"Then let's go," she said.
I walked to the little wooden box where I kept my rabbit and the first piece of paper on which I'd drawn my family. The paper was soft with folds. I tucked the rabbit inside, closed the lid, and whispered the secret into the wood like it was a pocket that listened.
"Seven o'clock," I said.
"Tick," Ellery said, making a small sound like a watch.
"Tick," I repeated, and the room felt like it belonged to me in a way that had nothing to do with doors or papers.
"Good night," I told the rabbit.
"Good night," Ellery answered back, and for a long while the house hummed like a sleeping thing.
I would go on to make mistakes and say sorry, to leave and to return. But that little secret stayed in my pocket so I could always find my way—back to a rabbit, to a buried tooth, to a boy who learned sums with me, and to the slow, sure sound of seven o'clock.
The End
— Thank you for reading —