Secrets Read online

  “It’s just overnight. Two nights if we’re having a good time. I have the whole weekend off, and so do you. Please,” Brent said, reaching for Cassie’s hands.

  She hesitated. She felt like she should stay with Elsbeth. She’d told the child on Monday that she was leaving, and Elsbeth had hardly reacted. In fact, her silence had been almost eerie. But three hours later, she threw a plate across the room. Cassie had done everything to get Elsbeth to talk to her, but the child had just sat there with glazed eyes and stared.

  As for Thomas, she didn’t have to tell him. Somehow, he already knew. He didn’t say anything, but he looked at Cassie with eyes full of sadness. It seemed that every time she looked up, there was Thomas with his big, sorrowful eyes.

  Between Elsbeth and Thomas, Cassie had spent the week on the verge of tears.

  It was only Jeff who was unaffected by any of it. He was as oblivious to the turmoil inside the house as he was to Skylar’s spitefulness. Jeff left the house early, came home late, but when they saw him, he was cheerful and smiling. He didn’t say a word about Cassie’s leaving, and when she mentioned—four times—that she was going out with Brent again, Jeff said he hoped she had a good time.

  By Friday, Cassie didn’t know if she wanted to run out of the house and never return, or tell them she’d never leave. She did know that every time she thought of never seeing Elsbeth and Thomas again, she had to reach for a tissue.

  As for Jeff, she hoped he would fall into a vat of oil and be fried.

  “Please,” Brent said again. “I’ve seen the place, and it’s a very nice cabin.”

  “All right,” she said at last. Maybe it would strengthen her for the coming final week if she got away from the tears and guilt for two days. What she couldn’t understand was why Thomas and Elsbeth were upset with her . Why weren’t they lashing out at Jeff? “What should I take?”

  “Hiking clothes,” he said, grinning broadly as he stepped back from her and looked about the attic. “Don’t worry about anything else. There’s a grocery just down the road from the cabin. We’ll stop there and get everything we need. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. I was dreading going by myself.” He waited a moment, then said, “Is everything set then?” He looked anxious to leave the attic, and Cassie was glad for him to go. She wanted some time alone to think. After he left, she went back to cataloguing the contents of Althea’s attic.

  At noon, she called Dana and told her most of the story. “I thought I’d just go ahead and resign before I was fired. I’ve told them I’m leaving and that I’ve accepted Althea’s job. I’m going to get my own place, but for now I’m going to be living in her house.” She didn’t tell Dana how she’d told Elsbeth over and over that she’d be “just next door.” Her words hadn’t made a dent in the child’s cold anger. I’ve never betrayed anyone before, Cassie thought, and I start with a five-year-old.

  On the phone, Cassie could hear Dana’s breathing. This is what she’s waited for, Cassie thought. Jeff is going to marry Skylar, and Dana will get to take care of Elsbeth on a regular basis. Would she decorate one of the many bedrooms in her house for a fairy princess? If she did, Elsbeth would hate it.

  But that was no longer Cassie’s problem or concern. “Could you take care of Elsbeth this week?” she asked Dana. “I’m at Althea’s all the time, and I think she’d like to be alone with Thomas.”

  “Of course. I’d be happy to,” Dana said, and Cassie could hear that she was trying to keep the excitement out of her voice.

  “Unless you have other plans,” Cassie said, knowing she was being a brat. But the last week had been so bad that she couldn’t find it in herself to be nice to anyone.

  “No, nothing,” Dana said quickly. “I’ll see what’s going on in Colonial Williamsburg and maybe Elsbeth and I will go. No! Wait! Busch Gardens. Or maybe Presidential Park.”

  “Or Yorktown or Jamestown,” Cassie said tiredly, trying to stamp down her jealousy. She’d taken Elsbeth to all those places and many more and they’d always had a great time. Such a great time, that even the thought of going on a semi-romantic weekend with a man she liked wasn’t cheering her up.

  “Dana?” Cassie said.

  “Yes?” she asked cautiously.

  “Did you ever think about putting all the men in the world into a great big hole and covering it up?”

  Dana took a moment before answering, as though she were considering her response carefully. “My husband has a wife who gets seasick just looking at a boat, yet he bought a forty-footer and spends three weekends a month on it. What do you think?”

  “I think you’d make a great backhoe driver.”

  They laughed together, then set a time for Dana to pick up Elsbeth.

  It was Althea who brought Cassie back to life. Thomas had begged off from another week of going and doing with the indefatigable Althea, and Cassie knew that it was her fault. Her leaving had made Thomas too depressed to go out.

  Cassie tried to keep her mind on the cataloguing, but she couldn’t. She found a box of clippings from the murder of a starlet back in 1941, but Cassie wasn’t interested. She made a note about it on her list, then closed the box.

  Even when she found a big box containing photo albums of a very young Althea with her daughter, Cassie couldn’t work up any interest. The world had always been curious about Althea’s child and so was Cassie, but her own personal problems overrode everything else.

  On Monday Cassie reported to work at Althea’s with a packed bag containing the extras she’d accumulated in the last year. She’d spent the weekend alone in Jeff’s house. Jeff, Thomas, and Elsbeth had gone somewhere, and they didn’t tell Cassie where they were going or invite her to go with them. For the first time since she arrived, she was treated as an employee, not a member of the family. All weekend, she’d packed her belongings and tried to keep from crying as she told herself that she was just moving next door and she’d see all of them often.

  Althea met her at the door on Monday morning. “You look awful,” she said. “So what torture has Jefferson been putting you through?”

  “None,” Cassie mumbled. “They’ve all been very nice. Which room is to be mine?”

  “Any you want,” Althea said, shutting the door.

  Cassie started toward the stairs, but Althea caught her arm. “Let Brent take that upstairs. I want you to come with me.”

  Listlessly, Cassie followed Althea down the hall toward her bedroom and into a small room that she hadn’t seen before. It was long and narrow, and from the look of it, it was Althea’s private office. “I want to know everything that’s going on,” she said when they were seated. “I don’t want you to skip a word.”

  When Cassie didn’t answer right away, Althea pushed a full box of tissues toward her. “Now start!” she ordered, and Cassie obeyed as the words came tumbling out of her.

  Althea listened without comment until Cassie had finished. “Since you were twelve years old?” she said at last.

  “I know,” Cassie said, sniffing. “It’s stupid. How could anyone fall in love at twelve? Or if they do, they have the good sense to fall in love with a movie star. My mother once told me that when she was a girl, she was mad for James MacArthur. Did you know him?”

  A noncommittal “Mmmm” was all that Althea said as she leaned back in a leather chair that looked as though it had been made for her. “You can’t help love,” she said. “Try as you might, you can’t control it. I once lived with a man who was the perfect match for me, but I never could love him. The man I loved was the one I shouldn’t have, the forbidden man.”

  “Mr. Ridgeway?” Cassie asked as she blew her nose.

  Althea gave a snort of laughter. “I never came close to loving him. No, I loved the father of my daughter.”

  That statement made Cassie look up with wide eyes. Never in any interview had Althea talked of her daughter. When she was asked questions about her, she just smiled and said nothing. If it was done on live TV, it was called “dead a