Free The Art of Keeping Secrets by Patti Callahan Henry

wanted to protect this young woman from pain as much as she had the newborn and toddler Keeley once was. Even as her children changed, the need to guard them from the arrows of life remained the same. Anger rose at Knox for shooting this near-fatal arrow at their family, at their daughter.
    Keeley finished the article, handed the paper back. A single tear dangled at the edge of her right eye, and then fell. She stood and ran up the stairs, and the foyer chandelier shook with her slammed door. Annabelle swallowed around the lump in her throat and took the newspaper to the kitchen, poured herself a generous amount of Hendricks’ Gin, tossed a splash of white cranberry juice over it, cut a cucumber and placed a thin slice in the glass. She took long sips until it was gone, then made herself another.
    This had been their favorite drink on Friday afternoons—hers and Knox’s. They’d make a batch in a small glass pitcher, place thin slices of cucumber on top and take glasses to the porch to talk about their week. As she poured her second drink, she realized that she hadn’t pulled out this bottle of gin in two years.
    The bar stool wobbled where, years ago, their dog at the time had chewed on the back left leg, and Annabelle stabilized herself by bracing her thigh against the underside of the counter. Then she reread the full article.
    The printed words had more impact than they had had in an e-mail. It had always been this way with her: someone could tell her a sad story, but if she read it on paper, the story made more of an impression. The written word held a power she almost revered: to be able to write so as to influence the hearts and minds of other readers seemed nothing short of a miracle.
    She folded the paper into a neat pile, took another sip of her drink, tasted the cold liquid at the back of her mouth and ached for Knox in every part of her body, for his touch and his talk, for his brown eyes softening in understanding while she told him about her day.
    The deepest loneliness came from not knowing whom to call to share the mundane details of her life. With habitual motions, she opened the paper to her column before she remembered her smart-ass answer to Confused in Charleston.
    Annabelle held her breath as she read exactly what she’d written in her fury, thinking no one but Mrs. Thurgood would see it. She groaned just as the phone rang. She flicked open the front cover of the cell phone, and heard Mrs. Thurgood chastising her in rapid and formal words of rebuke.
    “Mrs. Thurgood . . . ma’am . . . ,” Annabelle said. “I can’t understand a single word you’re saying.”
    “What in the bloody hell were you thinking? Have you lost your ever-loving mind?”
    “Okay, okay. I know it was rash, but I thought only you would read it, then tell me no way were you going to publish it—it was a joke. I meant it as a sarcastic joke. I was in the middle of typing another, nicer answer when I got your e-mail about Knox’s article and I just . . . forgot.”
    “Belle, I haven’t felt the need to check your articles in over two years. I read them in the paper just like everyone else.”
    “Oh.” Annabelle bit her lower lip. “I didn’t know that.”
    “Damn, we are going to get so much flak about this.”
    “Maybe it was what Confused in Charleston needed to hear.”
    “It’s not about what the readers need to hear. It’s about what they want to hear, my dear. You know that.”
    “Hmmm . . . maybe that’s just half the problem—everyone is always telling everyone what they want to hear and not what they need to hear.”
    “Love makes the world go round, baby.” Mrs. Thurgood laughed her deep, husky laugh. “Listen, Annabelle, I can’t have you ruining the reputation of this column or my paper, so why don’t you take a week or two off, and we’ll figure this out later, okay?”
    “What am I going to do with a week or two? Wander aimlessly through South Carolina and ask everyone if they knew who