I Have a Secret (A Sloane Monroe Novel, Book Three) by Cheryl Bradshaw

“I’m the one who alerted your grandfather about your ahh, situation with your father.  Your grandfather was good friends with my own father, you know, before he retired and ran off to Park City.  I figured it was the least I could do to help your poor mother out.  It was obvious she wasn’t going to do anything seeing how she didn’t want anyone to know what was really going on, but when I saw you and your sister running up the street that day, I knew my tongue had been stilled long enough.  I wasn’t placed on this Earth to stand idly by like some kind of ninny.”
    I wanted to speak, but couldn’t find the words.  Why couldn’t I remember seeing her that day?  
    She frowned.  “Well, I suppose if I was in your shoes, I would have blocked my childhood out too.”
    I wanted to shrink down until I was small enough to fit inside my handbag.
    She cocked her head to the side and curled her lips into a snarly smile like we were playing war of the words with each other and she’d just won.  “Why else did you come here, Sloane?”
    Manipulation 101 at its finest.  I forced myself out of her head and back into mine.    “Why didn’t Doug go to college?”
    She shrugged.  “It wasn’t the path he was meant to take in life.”
    “But he had a scholarship—I’m curious about why he gave it up to get married.  Couldn’t he have completed school and then married?  Wasn’t that what you wanted for him?”
    She looked over her left shoulder for a moment like she wanted to be sure whoever was inside the house couldn’t hear and then she stepped out onto the porch and slid the door closed behind her. 
    “What did Trista tell you?”
    “It’s more of what she didn’t tell me that I’m interested in,” I said. 
    “Such as?”
    “Why’d Doug have a drinking problem?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “I know he was in AA.”
    She turned her palms up like ‘so what’ and said, “Lots of people go there.”
    “So you weren’t aware how big his problem was or how many years he’d been like that?”
    She averted her eyes and gazed out at an empty field overrun with wild poppies and sagebrush.  “I’m not comfortable with your questions.”
    It was nice to turn the tables for a change.
    “Something drove him to drink, Mrs. Ward, and I don’t believe it has anything to do with Trista.”
    She thrust her hand over her chest.  “I never said it did.”
    “What happened while he was in high school?  There was an event, something that caused Doug to give up his football scholarship, what was it?” 
    I stood back and waited to see if she had the courage to mention Alexa.  From the way her lips tightened into a circular ball, I’d hit on something big.  She braced her body against the door and stood like a statue for several seconds, and then folded one hand over the other and tried to act like I was a neighbor who came over to bum a cup of sugar. 
    “I’d like you to go now,” she said.  “All your questions have made me tired.”
    I glanced down at my phone and noticed the time.  “That’s all right,” I said.  “I’m late for dinner with Trista anyway.”
    She lifted a brow at me.  “Oh?”
    “Trista invited me over to meet Alexa—I guess she’s home from college for the weekend.”
    The look on her face before I turned to walk toward my car was something I never thought a woman such as Rosalind Ward was capable of: Fear.

 
    Since I was already in the area and still had three hours to kill, I thought I’d take a moment to visit my old friend Nate before going to Trista’s house for dinner.  Of the Rat Pack bunch, we had been the closest.  My junior year we’d even attended the Sadie Hawkins dance together.  My mom never had much money once she became a single parent, and since it was up to the girl to spring for matching shirts for the event, the most I’d been able to provide at the time was a pair of red sweaters on blue light special at the Kmart in Mojave.  The best