Elena thought it couldn't get any worse when Jenna had found out about Isobel. After both she and Alaric had claimed that Elena's mother was dead, her appearance at the door had shocked Jenna to the core, and she had refused to even look at Elena for more than a few seconds at a time.
Elena had cried into her pillow that night. Elena was beginning to realize that protecting Jenna was harder than she'd first thought it would be. She knew that it would be better if Jenna not know—or, at least, it had been better—but now things were changing, and Elena wasn't sure.
But there had been so many lies. How could she just say the truth?
-x-
When Stefan called and told her that Jenna knew, Elena ran straight to the boarding house.
"How could you not tell me about them when there were so many in our town?" Jenna asked slowly when they had both calmed down. "I didn't know—I could have invited anybody in to the house…we could have all been in danger. How could you keep it a secret all this time, Elena?"
Elena didn't know what to say. Jenna, despite finding out so recently, was right. The one potentially fatal flaw in her excuse.
Elena sighed. "I thought—I guess at first I assumed that if you didn't know, you couldn't send me away or forbid me from seeing Stefan. Then things got dangerous and I felt it was just easier to keep it a secret. I couldn't stop what had already happened and we were already trying to prevent anything else—it was just easier to let everyone who didn't know stay unaware."
"I thought I was doing a good job as a guardian, I thought you and Jeremy were starting to be normal and happy and all this time there was so much….darkness."
Elena was crying at this point. "I'm sorry, Jenna," she whispers. Can you forgive me? The question was silent, but they both know it's there.
Jenna nodded, but didn't speak. She didn't know.