Written for Missy’s Mad Challenge #073.
The prompt appears below. Here’s my take.
“I didn’t mean to keep the secret, but once I had it,
it wouldn’t let me go.”
The day my brother died, I was compelled to visit the bedroom we shared as boys …. the room which was now his office in the old house where he lived with his wife. It was there that I found his journal wrapped in tin foil and wedged behind the radiator.
The entries were mundane at first …. work complaints, home repairs, sketches of birds. Then I reached the final pages, dated three weeks before the accident. He’d written about the brake lines, about the insurance money, about how sorry he was but how necessary it had become.
Necessary? Was he in that deep? Were things so bad, he couldn’t come to me for help? I would have done anything; he knew that.
I burned those pages in his workshop sink, watching his admission curl into ash.
At the funeral, friends spoke of tragedy and fate. His widow cried into my shoulder. His daughter asked me to say a few words. I stood at the podium and called him brave, loving, gone too soon.
The truth sits in my chest like a stone. Some mornings I wake up determined to confess what I know, but then I remember his children’s faces, his wife’s grief already so heavy.
The secret keeps me now …. not the other way around.
NAR©2026
#missysmadchallenge
This is “No One Knows” by Queens of the Stone Age
All text and graphics are copyright for Nancy Richy and are not to be used without permission. NAR©2017-present.
The Elephant's Trunk 
no point in more pain, the right thing…
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It’s a heavy weight to bear.
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the weight…
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Another great one
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A noble act to save the others. Can’t say the same for the deceased.
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This is not the way to help the ones left behind. Thanks, D.
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That is a secret well worth keeping. great story writing.
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Yes, to spare the family more pain, but a dark and heavy weight to carry around. Thank you, Jodi.
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If the insurance company found your brother’s death was a suicide and not an accident that would have denied his beneficiaries any money.
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It’s a huge secret to carry and a difficult one to hide from the insurance company. People who are planning their own deaths probably aren’t thinking along those lines. Thanks, Jim.
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Such a sad story, but it does happen. That would be a hard secret to keep.
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A terrible burden for sure. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and for the excellent prompt.
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So sad Nancy, but not surprising in some circumstances. A hard secret to keep.
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Sometimes it seems unfair to be burdened with such secrets; still, I would rather know than always wonder why a loved one took their own life. It’s a heavy weight to carry. Thanks, Di.
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So well written Nance – it’s so hard to think of the lengths people feel they have to go to in this world
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When the mind goes dark, Ange. It’s a sad situation. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
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Very tragic story
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Yes, and the real tragedy is, it happens.
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It is true my friend
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