Free The Secrets Sisters Keep by Abby Drake

was a Lake Kasteel monster after all.
    Then again, three less would mean only six for supper. Surely six would be more manageable. Especially when at least one of them was not hungry.
    B abe waved to Wes and the boys as she emerged from the path and they emerged from the boathouse at the same time.
    “Any luck?” she shouted.
    “Tippy Canoe and Tyler, too!” Wes called back and Babe forced a laugh, but the boys didn’t seem to be in good humor. In fact they—and Wes—looked wet. He swaggered toward her with the stride of a man who had paraded in front of too many cameras over too many years, as if he’d forgotten how Wesley Jamison McCall had walked when he’d been, say, seventeen, as Ray Williams had been when Babe had met him. Wes had swaggered into her life at a vulnerable time, after husbands one then two were long gone, each only having wanted to be attached to her fame and her money. Wes liked the fact that, in many ways, she was his equal. He also liked that she was respectable arm candy, not so young that he could be called lecherous, old enough to understand that sex didn’t always matter. In short, she’d been around the block a couple of times and was no longer naïve.
    “That’s an old presidential campaign slogan,” Wes said now as he reached her. “For us, it simply means we capsized the damn canoe. Lost our paddles. Had to go ashore on an island and grab some pine boughs to paddle back. Christ, talk about embarrassing.”
    He gave her a hug, leaving behind a trace of gin. He must have packed a bottle when she hadn’t been looking. “As for your uncle Edward, I think he has rowed down to the Hudson and right about now he’s passing Forty-second Street and tipping his cap. Where were you? Hiding in the weeds?”
    It took Babe a second to realize he must have seen the direction from which she’d come. “I was looking for wildflowers,” she replied quickly. “The prettiest wildflowers always grew along the path.” She turned toward its entrance as if she expected the flowers would bow in confirmation.
    “Hmm,” Wes replied. “Seems to me there are enough goddamn flowers up at the house to open an arboretum.”
    Now and then Wes startled her by using a big word. More often than not, it was the wrong word. But, choosing her battles as Mother had instructed, Babe didn’t correct him.
    “How are the boys?” she asked, cupping her arm through Wes’s slightly damp forearm. “Are they snobs like Amanda?”
    “I think the younger one might have escaped her genetics. God. Where does that come from, anyway? Was your mother so . . . hoity-toity?”
    It wasn’t a big word, but it suited Amanda. Babe tried to recall if their mother had been like that. She’d been polished and proper, but she’d been the wife of a plumbing supply salesman who hadn’t done anything significant except have a mistress he’d entertained at the Algonquin.
    “And what’s the deal with Carleen? The boys told me she killed your parents. That she burned the house down when they were in it. Why didn’t you tell me?”
    In that single, unexpected moment, grief covered her heart the way a dark cloud can suddenly block the sun on a grand summer day.
    Babe averted his eyes. “Tabloid trash,” she said, then tugged his arm. “See why I didn’t want to come home?”
    “But . . .”
    She pressed a finger to her lips. “Sssh. No more talk.” She led him toward the house, deciding she needed to treat the weekend as if it were a film and she was an actor playing a part. The denouement , of course, was as yet unpredictable, but guaranteed to be over by seven thirty-three Sunday night when the plane would lift up from the runway and ferry her back toward the West, toward the place that now was her home.
    S upper was genial, considering the absence of the host and Amanda’s husband and the unspoken, looming concerns about Carleen’s intentions and Edward’s whereabouts. Henry had complained of a headache and