Read I Have a Secret (A Sloane Monroe Novel, Book Three) for Free Online Page A

Jack, are six, and my daughter, Alexa, just turned twenty.  She’s at Stanford.  Top of her class.  She wants to be a doctor.  In a lot of ways she’s living the life I never had.”
    “Do you see her much?”
    She shook her head.  “It’s been about a month now, but she’ll be home this weekend.  You’ll have to come for dinner so you can meet her.”
    The age difference between the girl and the two boys shocked me, but I tried to keep a straight face.  I looked at the photo of the girl again.  Blond hair and blues eyes which were odd considering both Trista and Doug had brown hair and brown eyes, the same hair and eye color as their two sons.
    Trista forced a smile.  “Why don’t we sit at the table?”
    I pulled out a chair and started to lower myself into it until Trista said, “Hold on!  Don’t sit there.”
    A soggy, partially-wet substance was stuck to the slats of the chair and appeared to be the remnants of some type of fruity oatmeal left over from that morning.  Trista snatched a rag from the counter and wiped it down.  When she finished, she threw the rag into the sink and grasped the sides of the kitchen counter with both hands.  She closed her eyes and stood there, breathing deeply to calm herself.
    I sat in the chair and tried to think of what I could say to make it all better, even though I knew nothing I said could change anything.  “You have beautiful children.  I’ve always wanted kids.”
    She opened her eyes and spun around.  “Why don’t you have any?”  And then her hand flew over her mouth.  “I’m sorry, how rude.  I didn’t mean to be so intrusive.”
    I shook my head.  “It’s okay.  I mean, it’s not something I talk about much, but I wasn’t ever able to get pregnant.”
    She sat in the chair beside me.  “It took almost fifteen years to conceive my twins.”
    “You mean after you had your daughter?”
    She stiffened.  “Umm, yeah.  After Alexa was born, getting pregnant wasn’t easy like I thought it would be.”  
    I’d done the math in my head and figured out that their daughter had to of been born right after they graduated high school—an obvious reason to get married.  I wondered if that led to their sudden change in plans, but I sensed there was a lot more to it. 
    Trista studied my face for a moment like she knew I was milling the possibilities over in my mind.  “It’s a long story.  Let’s save it for another time, okay?”
    I nodded.  “You know what I don’t understand?  Why didn’t Doug go into the family business?  His parents are the richest people in town.”
    “Yeah, but they don’t get along very well.  They nose into our lives enough as it is, trying to throw their money at us and influence every decision we make, but Doug made sure we always had a degree of separation.  If not for that, we never would have survived here.”
    It made sense.
    “Tell me more about what happened last night with Rusty.”
    She folded her arms and leaned back in her chair.  “All I know is he’d gone to the gym like he does almost every night.  When he was finished working out, he went out to the parking lot and someone had moved his bike.”
    “His bike ?”  
    “Harley-Davidson.”
    “How do you know someone moved it?”
    “My neighbor’s husband was there and said they’d finished their workout at the same time and walked out together.  That’s when Rusty noticed his bike wasn’t where he parked it.  My neighbor was in a hurry to get home, so he left.  About twenty minutes later Rusty was found in a grassy area next to the side of the building, dead.”
    “And his bike?”
    She shrugged.  “Sorry, that’s all I know.”
    I reached into my bag, pulled out a bottled water, unscrewed the lid and took a sip.  Trista’s eyes shifted to a calendar hanging on the wall next to her.  She gazed at it like she wished she would have taken it down before I got there.  The top portion had a picture of a waterfall.