Free The Secrets Sisters Keep by Abby Drake Page A

hadn’t come to the table.
    Throughout the chicken salad and cold trout, the conversation was more like a question and answer period in which Chase interrogated Wes about his cinematic successes (“How did you make that building blow up?” “When those cars flew off the bridge, was anyone in them?”). No one seemed to mind. Chandler seemed committed to not speak to anyone, which might have annoyed his sister, who was seated next to him, except she was too busy fondling her boyfriend, who was seated on the other side of her. Which left the three sisters—Ellie, Amanda, and Babe—lined up like wooden dolls in a carnival booth at one of Edward’s famous parties, waiting for someone to take a chance for charity on three balls for a dollar and see who could be knocked off the bench for a Kewpie doll, or whatever the prizes were today, perhaps one of those handheld video games that irritated Amanda because they gave children the ability to detach from others, the way Amanda supposed all of them at the table, except Chase and Wes, were trying to detach from one another right now.
    Amanda checked her watch. It was after nine thirty. Whew. Almost time to bid everyone a pleasant goodnight.
    “Lemon meringue pie?” Ellie finally offered.
    The males all said yes, the ladies said no, a weight-related injustice in life, Amanda mused. She got up and helped clear the dishes, a pottery collection that looked French or Italian, another change her elder sister had wrought in the household. A sudden thought jumped into Amanda’s mind: What if Edward left Ellie the mansion and he put all his money into a fund to keep the place going as long as Ellie lived? What if he died but Amanda still wound up broke?
    She grew faint and light-headed; she blamed the trout. Why had she eaten cold fish that had been hooked by Uncle Edward? Was it part of his plan? Was he going to poison them all, or only her, because of her fiscal irresponsibility?
    Suddenly queasy, she clutched the edge of the table. The pottery platter with remnants of the suspect-tainted trout slid from her hand and crashed to the floor. Without stopping to clean up the evidence-mess, Amanda raced from the dining room toward the powder room that was now under the wide staircase and had once been a hiding place for the four young girls. . . .
    She slammed the door behind her, lifted the lid of the toilet, then tossed her cookies , as her mother would have delicately called it.
    Oh , Amanda thought as she crumpled to the floor, she should not have eaten, she should not have pretended that everything was fine.
    It was cold on the floor. Her stomach felt better; she reached up and flushed, then examined the tiles that surrounded the bowl. Some type of polished stone, she deduced. Not ordinary marble or locally bred limestone but something exotic, more than likely European.
    Resting her head against the base of the pedestal sink, she wondered why she was pondering tile when her entire future was at stake.
    She thought of her husband. She did not like him right then. How could she? Could she ever have sex with him again, or see him naked, for that matter, knowing the back-waxer had seen him naked, too, had probably touched him there, had probably . . . oh, her stomach rolled again.
    To get her mind off Jonathan, she thought of her children, and of the fact that Chase was the only one she presently liked. Amanda had never minded admitting that sort of thing to herself—whom did it hurt? Even though Chase was not her style or her likeness, he was an enjoyable boy with a curious, unaffected personality that would take him far. He was not as book smart as his brother, but he wouldn’t need to be. Chase had genuine charm, and if the bastards of the world didn’t get him, he would be fine.
    Chandler was an ass, just like she was. Amanda knew that. She also knew she didn’t much like herself right now, either, so it would figure she would not care for him.
    Heather made her shudder. She