Brenda Novak - The Secrets She Kept

Maybe Keith would’ve put his grandfather’s traits to better use if Henry had lived longer. Sadly, he’d died when Keith was only eight and that house hadn’t represented the same thing since. They’d moved in after his death and it had been the family home ever since. But going back wouldn’t be easy. For one thing, he’d be stepping out of his current routine, which kept him busy and focused on the right things. His schedule, the distance and his refusal to think about the past were what kept him safe from himself.

Still, he had to attend his mother’s funeral. Had to help lay her body to rest in the family cemetery behind the house, beneath the moss-draped trees. Common decency demanded he attend the service, even if he didn’t stay any longer.

After waiting a few minutes, he called Rocki. She’d just hung up with Maisey and was crying.

“You okay?” he asked.

“For the most part. Are you?”

“I don’t know.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Are you planning to attend the funeral?”

“Of course. We’ll fly to South Carolina as soon as we know when it is. We can’t come before that. With our financial situation, we can’t take much time off.”

“Things are that bad?”

“They’re not good.”

She hadn’t mentioned this to him before. She’d always said they were getting by.

“Is there something I can do to help? I’ll pay for your flights, give you a loan—”

“I appreciate the offer,” she broke in before he could list other options. “But we’d rather not accept that kind of help. I’m afraid it would make Landon feel...inept. Just between you and me, he’s already been dealing with some kind of midlife crisis. And even if we didn’t have the financial pressure, the kids are in school.” She sniffed and he pictured her wiping her face. “What about you? Will you go to the funeral?”

“Do I have any choice?”

“Sure you do. Don’t go if it’ll threaten your sobriety, Keith. Your first obligation is to remain drug-free and healthy. Do what you need to in order to avoid a relapse. That’s what the past five years have been about, right? If returning to Fairham could create a problem for you, Maisey and I will handle everything.”

He wouldn’t rely on his sisters to take care of burying their mother and dealing with the aftermath. What kind of brother would dump it all on them? “No, I’ll be there. You and Maisey have enough to worry about,” he said and opened the laptop on his desk to purchase a plane ticket to Charleston. He had to attend an important meeting tomorrow afternoon, so the earliest he could reach Fairham Island would be Tuesday.

He wasn’t convinced he was ready to gamble on the progress he’d made. But he had to go. If he couldn’t do his part when his family needed him, what was the point of changing at all?

2

THE SMELL HIT him the hardest—that familiar scent of the island, with its briny waves lapping up over the beaches, the soggy wood rotting around the dock and the damp wind sweeping over the fecund marshes to the southwest. As Keith drove his midsize rental car off the ferry, which ran every three hours between eight and eight since they’d added one more crossing at night, he couldn’t help taking a deep breath and feeling as nostalgic as he was apprehensive.

From what he could see, not much had changed in the past five years, but he lowered his head to get a better look as he entered Keys Crossing, the island’s only town. An elaborate display of exotic flowers adorned the windows of Love’s in Bloom, the flower shop that Josephine had purchased with some of the money she’d inherited, along with the house and everything else, from Grandpa Coldiron. The shop, or “shoppe” as she’d had it spelled on the sign, also sported a new coat of pale green paint.

With the sun setting behind the building, only those details could be seen in the dim glow of his headlights, but he assumed that the place looked as appealing as ever. Josephine had always had good taste.

Sitting back, Keith studied the Drift Inn on the other side of the street. Its marquee advertised a “winter special” of $99/night. The vacancy sign below glowed orange and would probably remain lit until the tourists came in spring to swell the ranks of the local population, which stood at about 2,500. There wasn’t a lot to do on Fairham during the winter, especially in damp, windy weather such as they were having now. He could see the dark outline of the palm trees up ahead, on the ocean side of the island where he was going, swaying as black clouds blocked what was left of the fading sun.

A storm approached. He felt like one of those black clouds rolling in—and he had no doubt many of Fairham’s residents would feel the same. He didn’t have a good reputation here. The locals would consider him bad news, the prodigal son returning. But he deserved it; he certainly hadn’t done anything to make anyone admire him back when he lived here.

He checked his watch. He’d taken the second-to-last ferry of the day; it was a little after five. He wondered what Maisey was doing. They’d spoken several times since that ominous call that’d disturbed his sleep. He’d spoken to Roxanne in Louisiana more than once, too. And yet he hadn’t told either one of his sisters that he was coming to the island today. He’d known Maisey would insist on meeting him the moment he got off the ferry, and he felt reluctant to face her so soon. He needed time to acclimate, to ease into the memories that were rising up and washing over him as if he’d been caught out at high tide.

Ease... He chuckled without mirth. Aside from the connection he felt to his grandfather, which sometimes made him homesick, and a general feeling that he belonged here, coming back was as difficult as he’d expected, especially when he thought about the reason for his visit. His mother was only sixty-three. She’d always been so healthy. At times, she’d seemed darn near indestructible.

What had gone wrong?

When Maisey called him yesterday, she’d said the coroner was expecting to rule their mother’s death a suicide. The police had found an empty bottle of sleeping pills on the marble floor of the bathroom, as if she’d tossed them back with a glass of wine.

But Keith couldn’t believe she’d do that. Having the police tramp through her house to find her naked in a bathtub would be humiliating to her. If she was going to commit suicide, she’d put on her most flattering dress and arrange herself on the bed.

Except that she wouldn’t commit suicide at all. Swallowing a bunch of pills and sinking beneath the water would smack too much of giving up, of admitting that her life wasn’t perfect. Josephine was all about appearances. Some of Keith’s worst beatings had been triggered by incidents he’d shared with other people that were unflattering to her—usually about the severe punishments she’d doled out to him.

And there was more than her pride to consider. She had spent almost every living moment protecting her beauty and trying to turn back the hands of time. Why would she fight aging so much if she’d had a desire to end it all?

Something else had to have happened. An accident. Or—he hated to acknowledge the possibility—murder wasn’t an entirely unreasonable conclusion. His mother had plenty of enemies. She hadn’t been the kindest person in the world. Most of the time, she hadn’t been kind at all.

But Fairham had almost no crime. Keith couldn’t believe that anyone here would harm her. He’d asked Maisey if anything had been stolen or if there was any sign of forced entry, and had been told there wasn’t. Even the five-carat, $90,000 diamond ring on Josephine’s finger hadn’t been removed.

Since Pippa, his mother’s housekeeper, typically went home at night—and worked only five days a week—his mother had been alone in the house, taking a bath with her pills and her wine. Barring some injury to her body, which the coroner presumably hadn’t found, Keith could see why the police had reached the conclusion they did.