Free House Of Secrets by Tracie Peterson Page A

to put your eyes on Jesus.”
    I wasn’t about to sit and listen to this rhetoric. “I’m not interested in that.” I looked at him without a shred of compassion. “I want to know why you’ve never been honest with us about Mom.”
    He paled and looked more than a little disturbed. “I don’t know what it is you expect me to say.”
    “For one, you might like to explain to us about mom’s mental illness. Didn’t you suppose we had a right to know?”
    “How did you hear about that?” he asked.
    I shook my head. “That’s all that concerns you? How I found out? Not that I should have been told years ago? Not that we all should have been put into therapy after our mother’s death? What about the fact that maybe with a counselor or psychiatrist seeing us on a regular basis, we wouldn’t have all of these secrets between us . . . that maybe I wouldn’t lay awake at night, wondering if one of us might follow in our mother’s footsteps.”
    Dad was clearly disturbed—shocked even. It seemed only fair after his little announcement of remarrying, yet I suddenly felt very guilty for having ruined his happiness.
    “I never wanted you to know,” he finally said. He sounded so tired.
    “But why not?” I asked. “We have a right to know the risks to our own health. We have a right to know a lot of other things too.”
    He looked at me and nodded. “I suppose you do.”

Chapter 6

    A nswers weren’t forthcoming that night. Geena and Piper were nowhere to be found, and I definitely didn’t want to hold a conversation about Mom’s death on my own. By the time my sisters returned and found me in my bedroom, it was nearly ten and Dad had already gone to bed.
    I suggested to my sisters that we do likewise, but Piper wanted no part of that. “How can we just go to bed? I couldn’t sleep if I had to. He’s remarried, just like that? Frankly, the fact that he never even told us he was considering it makes it all very suspicious.”
    “Suspicious?” I questioned. “Of what?”
    Piper waved her arms as if to emphasize the importance. “Of everything. How could he be carrying on with Judith all this time and not let us know it was getting serious? How could he just remarry without talking to us about it? What if he plans to repeat the past?”
    My mind whirled. She was right. How could he be carrying on with Judith all this time and not let us know it was getting serious? How could he just remarry without talking to us about it? What if he has some sort of mental disorder? I’d never considered that he could be just as troubled as Momma. “You mean as in overdosing Judith?”
    “Exactly,” Piper replied, flipping her bobbed brown hair as she snapped her head toward Geena. “We both think it’s possible, and why not. He did it once.”
    I shook my head. “I don’t think that even makes sense. There was a strong reason for doing what he did. He did it for us.”
    “What about insurance money?” Geena asked. “Did Mom have a lot of it? Did Dad stand to gain financially?”
    I tried to remember if I’d ever seen any life insurance policies. “I have no idea. You are making him really sinister, Geena. I figured he was doing what he did to save us.”
    “Save us from what?” Piper asked.
    “Our mother and . . .” I let the words fade. I wasn’t ready yet to talk about her problems. I really wanted to talk to Dad about it first. I wanted him to tell us the truth in his own words—from his firsthand knowledge. He would have been the one the doctors talked to. He would have received all of the intricate details of mom’s condition.
    “That’s why I want him to come clean about the past,” Geena threw out, “even if it means he has to face punishment for what he did.”
    “I’m starting to feel the same way,” Piper said, surprising me.
    “You two really want to see Dad go to jail?”
    “No,” Geena replied. “I want to see this family set free of the past. If it takes that—then we’ll