Free Secret Language by Monica Wood Page B

your sister …
    She has carried the two letters back and forth to Paris three times now. The thought of another sister, another blood tie, is a cruel temptation, one that bares the pitiful ties she already has.
    My mother was a dancer in a show called “Silver Moon.”
    Connie stares out the window, chin in hand. Faith’s neighborhood looks solid, the houses and trees heavy and safe. Connie’s condominium complex, though not far from here, has a temporary, antiseptic feel, its slim, well-formed trees no more than decoration. Faith’s house is old and settling. What would it would be like to belong to a place like this? Connie’s sense of belonging is more mobile: for years she has expected to find her true place in life at the other end of the next flight.
    When the boys and Joe return, clattering through the door, the house begins to breathe. They gather at the sink to dip their hands in soap and sugar, their voices rising amiably over the running water. Arguing about what might be wrong with the car, they assemble at the table, Chris with an optimistic smear of grease across the front of his T-shirt.
    “How long will it take to fix the car?” Connie asks him.
    The three of them chuckle, a conspiracy of men. “Only all his life,” Joe says.
    Faith doesn’t seem to hear anything. She stands with her back to them, tossing a salad at the counter.
    “Everything okay here?” Joe asks, looking from one sister to the other.
    “Just fine,” Faith calls out.
    Joe stacks plates and begins to serve from the stove. Connie gets up to help, grateful for the chance to move.
    “I’ve been talking to Faith about meeting Isadora James,” she says.
    “Who’s Isadora James?” Chris asks.
    Faith shoots Connie a look: the surprise of betrayal, the look she gave every time Connie tried to make Billy and Delle behave kindly.
    “Sorry,” Connie says. “I assumed you’d mentioned it.” She carries over the last plate and sits down, steeped in a miserable silence, her place at her sister’s table ready, good food steaming into her face. She senses the boys’ held breath, their fierce interest. Their mother’s discomfort has not been lost on them.
    “Is this any of my business?” Joe says. His voice breaks the spell and again everyone moves, taking up forks, reaching for bread and salad.
    “Connie got a letter from somebody in Brooklyn, that’s all,” Faith says, as if that explained anything.
    Joe stops chewing. “So?”
    “She thinks she’s our sister,” Connie says.
    “
Half
sister,” Faith adds. “She thinks Billy was her father.”
    Joe lets out a long whistle, and the boys wait, their mouths parted.
    “What does she want?” Joe asks.
    “Nothing,” Connie says.
    Faith lays down her fork. “She probably thinks we have money.”
    “She says she wants to share our memories,” Connie says. The thought is a cold hand on her shoulder.
    “Another Spaulding sister,” Joe says. “I’ll be damned.” His eyes darken with interest. “Why did she wait till now?”
    “She didn’t know. Her mother finally told her a few months ago, just before she died.” Saying this, Connie already believes it. “She grew up thinking her mother’s husband was her father. He’s dead, too.”
    “How old is she?”
    Joe’s questions are a comfort; they anchor Connie to Isadora James’s story in a way that makes it true.
    “Let’s see, they left
Silver Moon
in the spring of … she must be about twenty-six. I would’ve been ten when she was born. Faith, you were almost twelve.”
    Faith is taking tiny mouthfuls of food, one after another. The boys are vigilant, eating mechanically, suspended on the next word.
    “I don’t know why we’re even talking about this,” Faith says. Shecollects her plate, scrapes most of her dinner into the sink. “She probably works for a tabloid. ‘Dead Crooners Speak from the Grave,’ something like that.”
    “Crooners,” Ben says, and he and Chris laugh. Their habit is to