My Secret Life Read online

  At her sisters’ comments, Katie could contain herself no longer. A broad smile broke across her face. “I am in love!”

  “That’s wonderful,” Joey said, and hugged Katie, too.

  Brooke splayed a hand over her heart. “Who is he?”

  Here was the hard part. Katie faced Brooke. “I hope you’re not going to be to upset with me, but it’s Liam James.”

  “Well, I am a bit surprised, but why would I be mad? Liam and I are just friends and he’s a wonderful guy. I’m so happy you two found each other.”

  “It’s been incredible.” Katie had to blink to keep tears of joy from welling up in her eyes.

  Joey scooped their mother’s keepsake box up off the floor. “This calls for a celebration. I’ll put on some tea. Brooke can break out that tin of cookies from Worthington’s. And you can tell us how you hooked up with Young Bostonian’s most eligible bachelor, while we go through the keepsake box.”

  “Mom would approve.” Brooke nodded.

  Katie followed her sisters through the house to the large kitchen where their mother had spent most of her time. Even though they’d had maids, unlike many Beacon Hill Brahmins, Daisy Winfield had preferred to make meals for her family rather than turn the chore over to a professional cook.

  Joey put the kettle on and Brooke got out the cookies. Katie took a seat at the kitchen table and opened up the keepsake box. A few minutes later her sisters joined her at the table, armed with cups of Earl Grey and a platter of Scottish shortbread.

  They listened while Katie told them about the Ladies League Ball and what had happened in the closet. When she got to the part about getting a letter from Lindsay Beckham about her Martinis and Bikinis group, Joey put down her cup of tea.

  “I got one of those,” Joey said. “I tossed it away.”

  “I got one, as well,” Brooke admitted. “I hung on to mine. I thought I might go next month.”

  “You can come with me,” Katie invited. “Because I gotta tell you, this dare stuff works. Although I have to admit there were times when I thought everything was coming unraveled.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Katie finished telling them all that had transpired with her three dares. From her tryst with Liam in the movie theatre, to their trip to Fiji, to the miscommunication that had almost torn them apart.

  “Wow,” Brooke said when she’d finished. “Maybe I will give this Martinis and Bikinis group a shot.”

  “It certainly sounds like you found your match with Liam,” Joey said. It might have been her imagination, but Katie could have sworn her older sister sounded a wee bit envious of her newfound happiness.

  Katie took a deep breath. “The Martini dares have certainly empowered me. If I hadn’t gone through all that, I don’t think I could be with you here today, going through Mom’s things.”

  At that, the three women turned their attention to the box in front of Katie.

  “We might as well dive in,” Brooke said.

  Katie took a deep breath and removed the lid from the box. On top were the Valentine’s Day cards they’d made for their mother when they were children. Red construction paper, crayon lettering, paper lace. Katie took them out and passed them around to her sisters. They looked at the cards one by one, reading I LOVE YOU MOMMY written in messy, childish print.

  Underneath the cards, Katie found locks of their hair from their first haircuts, graphed growth charts and their baby booties. There were report cards, school pictures and good-conduct medals for Joey and Brooke. And there was a faded Polaroid of Katie holding the first Duke with a happy, gap-toothed grin on her face.

  Tears slipped down their faces at the childhood treasures their mother had saved. Brooke passed out tissues. They laughed and cried and talked and remembered their mother’s life. They drank tea and scarfed cookies and bonded in a way they hadn’t in a long time.

  Then hours later, as they neared the bottom of the big wooden keepsake box, they discovered something curious.

  It was a large yellow envelope that was sealed. On the outside, in Daisy’s handwriting, they read, To be opened by my daughters, Brooke, Joey and Katie, on the event of my death.

  A sudden chill of dread ran down Katie’s spine.

  “What’s this?” Brooke frowned and reached for the envelope.

  “Go ahead and open it,” Joey said. “You’re the oldest.”

  Brooke broke the seal and dumped the contents out on the table.

  A second envelope and baby pictures. But not of Brooke or Joey or Katie. They flipped through the pictures, watching the little girl grow from a serious-faced baby to a serious-faced young girl.

  “Who’s this?” Brooke asked.

  “Maybe it’s one of Mom’s relatives that she never talked about.”

  “Flip the photos over and see if there’s a name on the back,” Joey suggested.

  Brooked turned over the picture she had in her hand. In one snapshot, the girl was about four, staring churlishly at the camera.

  “Lindsay, age four years, three months,” Brooke read aloud.

  “Hey,” Joey said, as she opened the second envelope, “these are legal papers.”

  The raised hairs on the nape of her neck made Katie afraid to ask, but she was compelled. The little girl looked strangely familiar and the name Lindsay struck a certain resonance inside her. “What kind of legal papers?”

  Joey raised her head from the paperwork to meet her sisters’ gazes. “Adoption papers.”

  “Mom and Dad adopted a kid we knew nothing about? What happened to her?”

  Joey’s face paled as she read on. “No, Mom had a child no one knew anything about. A child she gave up for adoption before she met Dad and now she wants us to find her.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Her name,” Joey said, “is Lindsay Beckham.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-0525-7

  MY SECRET LIFE

  Copyright © 2007 by Lori Vanzura.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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