Page 30 of Our Little Secret
“I just think it’s time we got together. I haven’t seen you in ages and when I see pictures of Marilee online I hardly recognize her. She is my only niece.”
That much was true, but with everything else going on, Brooke wasn’t ready to entertain her sister. “Well, yeah. How about Christmas, then?” Brooke suggested, still wary. Right now she didn’t need Leah nosing around, not until she was certain Gideon was completely eradicated from her life. She had only to touch her chin or look in the mirror to remember how determined he’d been not to let her go.
Maybe he’d gotten the message.
But Brooke wasn’t depending on it.
Not yet.
“Christmas is what? Eight? Oh no, more like ten weeks away,” Leah said, her voice shrouded in disappointment.
“But time flies at this time of year,” Brooke insisted, trying to find some enthusiasm. “It’ll be fun. Maybe we can even go down to the island. Like we used to.” The second the words passed her lips she regretted them. Her last quick trip to Piper Island had been with Gideon just a few months earlier. They’d driven down in her SUV, the windows down, the sunroof open. Her heart was pounding with the thrill of it all as they tore down the twisting coast highway, cliffs on one side of the road, the ever-restless Pacific Ocean on the other. Her gut tightened. She didn’t need any reminders of her time with him. Not the good and certainly not the bad.
“Huh,” Leah said. “The island? I haven’t been out there since . . . oh, good Lord, maybe just after college? I can’t even remember. Oh. Wait. Now I do. Because I had Ryan with me. It was just after we were married. . . .”
Her voice trailed off, and Brooke didn’t want to traipse down that particular, dark memory lane with her sister. Leah’s first husband, Ryan Connolly, was a narcissistic prick, in Brooke’s estimation. That marriage was doomed before it started, fizzling out after a couple of years. The same was true of Leah’s second marriage. That union had been to a stuffy older man named Harrison Bell, and Leah had run herself ragged trying to make him happy. It hadn’t worked. Another mistake.
Then, of course, there was the guy who had left her days before they planned to marry. What was his name? Robert Something-or-other? Currently, Leah was certain the man she was married to for several years, Sean Moore, a flashy thirty-five-year-old who liked fast cars and had a penchant for online gambling, was “the one.” That was the way it was with Leah. When she fell she fell hard, and always with blinders securely fastened.
She never anticipated the down side of a relationship.
And hadn’t that been the reason that Leah’s first serious relationship failed? Well, there was more to it than that, Brooke thought guiltily. A lot. But still . . .
From the other end of the connection her sister sighed, and Brooke remembered Leah as she had once been, a gawky preteen, all long legs and wild imagination, her pale hair sleek from her love affair with a flat iron that had tamed her natural, wild curls.
Now Brooke imagined her sister blowing her bangs from her eyes as she had then, before their relationship developed a schism that seemed impossible to bridge.
But to her credit, Leah was trying.
Once more.
It was Brooke who had to step up. Ignore her reservations and give her little sister another chance.
“I think it would be good if I come now,” Leah was saying. “I’m kinda between jobs and I know you are too.”
“I’m looking, but how did you know that . . . don’t tell me. TikTok.”
“X, I think. Doesn’t matter.”
But it did matter. Brooke didn’t like her daughter sharing anything personal on social media.
“Anyway, don’t argue,” Leah insisted. “I’m coming to visit. I’ll be there Friday!”
“ThisFriday?” Brooke was dumbfounded.
“Yeah. I already have my ticket and you don’t have to worry about picking me up. I can Uber or Lyft or whatever.”
“So . . . wait. You already planned this?”
“Yeah,” she admitted, then added a little more soberly, “I really need to see you.”
And that was the end of any argument.
“Okay, look, I’ll pick you up,” Brooke said, accepting the fact that she needed to deal with Leah again. “Don’t bother with an Uber.”
“If you’re sure . . .”
“I am. Text me your flight information.”
