by Abby Drake
Amanda bolted up and blocked the camera with her hand. The others fled as if they’d shoplifted a pile of Nora Roberts’s latest books. Safely outside on the street, they laughed and laughed like mischievous conspirators.
As they headed for the parking garage where they’d left Edward’s clunky Range Rover, Ellie said, “Hey, remember that summer when Mrs. McGuire arrived without a boyfriend and drank too much champagne and peed in the hydrangeas?” And they laughed again because at the time they’d just left their hiding place in the hydrangeas and had averted near disaster.
Then Amanda remembered a funny tale, then Carleen did, then Babe, and they reached the garage still chattering and laughing, a family, once again.
Epilogue
Ellie found a white dress in her wardrobe that suited Carleen. Then the photograph was taken and—click, click—they were gone.
Babe went to Ray’s with true love in her heart, corny as it sounded. She said it was the one role she’d been meant to play. She also said she planned to look into finding a surrogate; she and Ray had decided to try and have a baby together, after all.
Amanda headed back to the city with her family, knowing she’d soon have the money to pay off her debtors, but feeling more enthusiastic about the new life that lay ahead. One son was excited, the other one was grumbling. Her daughter seemed happy just to tuck her wild red hair under a helmet and wrap her arms around her boyfriend’s waist as they boarded his motorcycle. Amanda said that before they left for Vermont, she would look up Martina and offer a real apology.
Carleen rode with Amanda and Jonathan back to Port Authority, where she would catch a bus to Belchertown. She promised to bring her husband and girls to the family party they would hold before final sale of Kamp Kasteel.
Ellie briefly thought she could use her share of the proceeds as a down payment, then get a mortgage, buy the house from Edward, and renovate it as a bed-and-breakfast. The people who owned the castle at the far end of the lake had done that, and business apparently was booming. Then she realized she truly was done being a recluse. She would cruise Museum Mile in the morning and see if she could find a real job, with real people, in the real world.
Before going to bed that Sunday night, she took out the brass box that held her travel dreams—and the things that had belonged to her mother. Slowly, Ellie removed the pink ribbon from her hair and placed it inside.
“That’s lovely,” Edward said from where he stood in the doorway. She hadn’t heard him approach; it was so rare that he ventured upstairs.
“They were Mother’s things. She left them here in a drawer.”
He stepped closer, looked into the box. “Deodorant? You saved her deodorant?” He smiled. “Oh, my, we’ve all been in pain for a long, long time.” Then he poked around in the box and noticed the brochures. “Egypt?” he asked. “Do you still want to go?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Edward. It was only a dream.”
“I never dreamed I’d be having chemo, but look at me now.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Nor does it make sense for you to put off your dreams any longer.”
She picked up a brochure, studied the pictures on the cover, the golden image of King Tut, the Valley of the Kings, the desert in mystic repose. “Well,” she said. “Well.” Then she noticed the travel agency’s address and wondered if they were still in business.
Edward kissed the top of her head and left the room. He tottered back toward the stairs and toward his own memories. He had, after all, a few things of his own—pictures from London, a lock of Mazie’s hair, the fork she’d used to nibble on her favorite English scones. But he would keep these for himself. He would put a note with them and ask the girls’ forgiveness. But when he was gone—in a year or twenty-five—they would find his meager treasures and know how very deeply their mother had been loved.
a+ Author Insights, Extras & More...from Abby Drake and Avon A
On Writing The Secrets Sisters Keep
I’ve heard it said that inspiration often comes at the oddest times in the oddest ways. For me, that’s true. I’ve had that clichéd lightbulb go off over my head at a party, in the supermarket, in the middle of the night–even once while driving down the MassPike. Such situations, of course, are not always convenient for making notes.
The idea, however, for The Secrets Sisters Keep came from a phone call. Or rather, from the lack of a phone call.
Do you have one of those friends who never answers the phone? Someone who is always busy doing something more productive or entertaining? You know she’s home, or at least in cell phone range. So what’s she doing that’s more important?
Watching Dancing with the Stars?
Updating her Facebook page?
Changing the baby’s diaper? (Well, okay, that one is acceptable.)
Or . . . maybe you’re the one who leaves the phone jangling in dead air.
The truth is, I think, many of us don’t pick up today. Caller ID is just so darned handy.
“It’s Betty Ann! Well, I can call her later.”
Or . . . “Oh, it’s Bob. He’ll want to know about Saturday, and I haven’t decided yet.”
Or . . . “It’s Sally. Ugh. Not her again.”
But I digress.
I have a friend—let’s call him Edward—who is often otherwise occupied when you call. I have no idea what he is doing. (Actually I have a few ideas, but I won’t get into them now.) He lives out west, far from me, and I don’t see him very often.
One day, I returned a call from Edward that I had missed. (I suspect a day will come when no one answers a telephone anymore. Oh, wait. I think they call that e-mailing. Or texting.) Anyway, Edward didn’t pick up. I left a message.
Three days later, he hadn’t called me back. Where the heck was he? Herding cattle across Wyoming? Rappelling in the Rocky Mountains? Perhaps he’d been abducted by alien space beings somewhere outside of Reno.
I called again. He didn’t answer. He did not return the call.
You get the picture. No matter. I was working on my last book, Perfect Little Ladies, so I really was too busy to talk to him, anyway.
I went back to my keyboard.
But then, the strangest thing happened. A few words floated into my mind that had nothing to do with Elinor, Alice, Poppy, and CJ (the ladies from the aforementioned PLL).
Uncle Edward had wandered off.
The sentence was crystal clear. I tried and tried but couldn’t shake it. Quite simply, it beckoned.
That’s when I knew the next book was knocking on my brain looking for attention.
Uncle Edward had wandered off.
I wrote it on a Post-it. I stuck it to my bookcase. I went back to PLL.
A day, a week, who knows how much later, I stared at the Post-it. I guess because PLL takes place in the fictitious town of Mount Kasteel, New York, I thought it would be fun to set Edward’s book there, too. After all, I’d been living there in my mind for several months by then and knew the area quite well.
There was a lake. Lake Kasteel. As with the town, it had been named by the original Dutch settlers because of the castle someone had built on the south side of the water. In my mind, of course.
Always having been a sucker for Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, I suddenly envisioned a Gatsbyish house not on Long Island’s North Shore but on my imagined lake, where music and laughter—party sounds—drifted across the water to curious onlookers who were not unlike Nick Carraway. Like Nick, I’ve often wondered what happens in the grand homes where privileged folks live. Surely those people have delicious lives, fabulous friends, and quirky, yet lovable, families.
Of course, there must be at least one eccentric in the bunch. There must be one Uncle Edward . . . who now has wandered off.
So that’s how The Secrets Sisters Keep began: an unanswered phone call. A fantasy lake. And a little Gatsby inspiration.
As for Edward . . . well, he finally called. You would not believe what he’d b
een doing.
But wait—there goes my cell. Oh. It’s just the dentist’s office. I’ll get back to them later.
Reading Group Questions
1. Which of Edward Dalton’s nieces would you like to have for your sister?
2. Which of the sisters’ lives would you most like to have . . . knowing you could make it better?
3. Why do you think Carleen really stayed away from her sisters for so long? Why did Babe?
4. Have you ever “forgotten” to show a trinket, a bauble—something decadent you purchased—to your husband? If you showed him, were you honest about the price?
5. Like Ellie, have you ever tucked a dream away in a small box in a closet?
6. If you were Edward, would you have wandered off?
7. Name one secret you never told your sister, brother, mother, or father. Surely there is at least one!
About the Author
A graduate of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, ABBY DRAKE is a Mayflower descendant (with papers to prove it!). She has one sister, Joan Elizabeth, with whom she loved keeping secrets from the very proper, guarded world in which they grew up. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, but enjoys wandering off from time to time. To learn a few of the secrets she shared with her sister—and for more about Abby Drake—visit her Web site www.abbydrake.com.
By Abby Drake
The Secrets Sisters Keep
Perfect Little Ladies
Good Little Wives
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Credits
Cover photograph © Turbo/Corbis
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE SECRETS SISTERS KEEP. Copyright © 2010 by Abby Drake. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition October 2010 ISBN: 9780062015471
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