The Secret Sister (27 page)

26

M
aisey cursed under her breath as she disconnected. What was her mother doing in Smuggler's Cove?

Keith must've told her about the pictures. What else would bring Josephine to this side of the island? If she wanted to see Maisey, she'd simply have Pippa call and invite her to dinner. Or she'd show up at the flower shop.

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit,” she muttered as she pulled off Rafe's shirt and scrambled to collect her clothes. She had to decide what she would and wouldn't reveal should Josephine question her about Annabelle.

If Keith had told Josephine about the pictures, had he also mentioned the letters Maisey had found in the attic? The pictures had been discovered by someone else and brought to her. That was innocent enough. But her mother would feel they should've been brought to her. And the letters wouldn't be viewed in the same light. She'd secretly taken them from Coldiron House, and she'd refused to let Keith destroy them. Josephine would feel betrayed that she hadn't acted to protect the family name...

Dropping onto the floor, Maisey searched for her bra and one missing boot, which had been kicked under the bed. What was she going to do? What was she going to say? Should she be ready to launch her own offensive? Take a stand and demand some answers?

That would start World War III...

She was in such a frantic hurry she
couldn'
t decide how far she'd go—not until she knew why her mother had come. That meant she had to walk into her bungalow feeling unprepared and defenseless.

She raked her fingers through her hair as she jogged next door. She preferred to present a dignified appearance. That kind of thing mattered to her mother; in her view, it showed self-respect. But, in this situation, dignified was pretty much impossible. It would be obvious that she'd spent the night with Rafe the second she walked in with her makeup smudged and her hair tangled. She could say she'd been out for a walk, but it wouldn't be very credible, especially since she had to be at work soon and hadn't even showered.

Bottom line, her mother would definitely suspect and lying might make matters worse.

Josephine wasn't waiting in the car or on the porch, but the Mercedes was there, parked in the drive. It wasn't until Maisey entered the house that she realized her mother had let herself in. How, Maisey didn't know. Either she'd inadvertently left the door unlocked, or her mother had a master key to the whole development. Or maybe Keith had reached through the cardboard covering the window they'd broken when they were fighting—because he was there, too. The second she spotted him, Maisey knew dating the “wrong” man would be minor in relation to everything else. Her brother had texted her an apology and left her several voice mails last night, pleading with her to understand why he'd behaved so terribly, but she hadn't responded. She'd been reeling, needed some time. And then she'd been so focused on Rafe... He was the only person who made her feel safe and whole. She almost wished he was here at this moment; he wouldn't allow the encounter to get out of hand.

But she couldn't rely on him to fight her battles. She didn't want him to witness what was about to happen, anyway. She was fairly certain Keith had reversed his apology and stabbed her in the back.

“What's going on?” Her whole body tingled with anxiety as they both scrutinized her.

“We need to have a talk, Maisey.”

It was Keith who'd spoken. The animosity between him and Josephine seemed to have disappeared. They were united now that they felt the family was in peril.

“Sit down.” Josephine gestured to the chair beside her. She had the pictures of Annabelle in her lap, as well as the letters. Keith must've gotten them from her bedroom, which meant he—and probably Josephine, too—had seen that her bed was perfectly made. Entering her house and bedroom without an invitation felt like an invasion of privacy, but she couldn't complain, not when she'd stolen the letters from Coldiron House in the first place.

Maisey perched on the edge of the chair her mother had indicated. “Did you know?” she asked as she watched Josephine look through the photographs.

Her mother lifted the top one. “About Annabelle? How could I not know?”

“About the blackmail,” she clarified.

“No. Your father kept that from me, which is a surprise. I never would've guessed he had it in him to be so deceptive. But then...he knew this woman probably wouldn't survive another day if she tried to blackmail
me
.”

Maisey clasped her hands in her lap. “It's comments like those that frighten me, Mother.”

“Because I won't allow someone to take advantage of me?”

“Because you seem willing to go to such lengths to stop it.”

“No one's ever going to get the best of me. That's all there is to it.” She paused as she studied another picture of Annabelle. Maisey wanted to know what she was feeling, if she was feeling anything for her missing daughter, but her face remained an emotionless mask.

“Would you rather Father let her tell the truth?” Maisey asked. “If he hadn't paid her, she might have, you know.”

“I'd rather she'd respected our agreement when I paid her to keep her mouth shut and leave. If she wasn't going to abide by those terms—if she was going to turn around and break the law—she deserves whatever she gets.”

“So it's true.” Maisey looked at Keith. Was he accepting responsibility for Annabelle's death?

“I don't remember it,” he said, his voice deadpan. “If I'd done something that terrible, you'd think I'd remember.”

“It was an accident, like I told you,” Josephine said, her voice matter-of-fact.

“So then...why the payoff?” Maisey understood she was pushing the line with her mother, but she had to ask.

Josephine's eyebrows slid up. “If you must know, your father and I didn't see any point in making Keith's life more difficult by having him grow up with that stigma. We didn't want you to grow up under the shadow of a tragedy like that, either. Didn't consider it wise to invite that kind of inspection of our lives. That's why we paid the staff to leave. Why should we all suffer the rest of our lives over an accident?”

Keith grimaced as he rubbed his temples. “What if it wasn't an accident? What if there's something fundamentally wrong with me? I mean, we've always known there
is
something wrong.”

“It
wasn't
intentional,” Josephine insisted.

As Maisey watched Keith pace in front of her empty fireplace, she couldn't help remembering how he'd behaved when he'd tried to burn the pictures. “Did you lock me in the attic?” she asked.

He stopped. “What?”

“Did you lock me in the attic that day when we were playing in there and you had to go to baseball practice?”

He seemed perplexed. “I don't recall the day you're talking about. When did we play in the attic?”

Maisey opened her mouth to explain, to remind him of that old trunk filled with clothes, but Josephine cut her off. “
I
locked the door.” Josephine piled the pictures and letters off to one side. “You'd been told not to go in there, and you disobeyed. You needed to learn a lesson.”

A flash of anger flared up. Was it necessary to go that far? She'd been so young and frightened... “You left me there for hours!”

“Maybe it seemed like hours to you, but it wasn't that long. I sent your father to get you before dinner.”

Maisey thought about what Dinah had told her. Her own mother obviously believed Gretchen Phillips's version of the story, except that Josephine was convinced Keith hadn't pushed Annabelle intentionally. She must be glad Annabelle's body was never discovered. It meant there was no burial, no headstone. And ridding the house of every reminder had made it easier for the living to forget and move on.

But was it the truth that Keith's hand was the one that pushed her? How would they ever know? He claimed he didn't remember the incident, and although Maisey was skeptical—he'd lied in the past to cover his drug use, to get money, whatever—he seemed genuinely bewildered and upset to think he might've been responsible for such a tragedy.

And Maisey had one other question. Why had Josephine come here, now, to address this? Was she hoping to disarm Maisey? To get her to back away for fear she might find it
was
intentional?

Maisey stared at the stack of pictures. “Why didn't you ever talk about her?”

Josephine's chin came up the way it always did when she felt as if she was being criticized. “Why would I?”

“Because you miss her as much as I miss Ellie?”

“You're too sentimental. Being that sensitive will only get you hurt. Missing Annabelle won't bring her back.” She stood. “I'm taking these letters and photos. They don't belong to you, anyway. And I don't ever want to speak of this again. Understood?”

Obviously, Josephine considered the situation handled. Her explanation made sense, tied it all up neatly. But what about Lindsay Greenberg's comments on Gretchen Phillips's behavior? Was there something more they didn't know?

“You're telling me to leave it alone.”

“There's no reason to pursue it.”

Keith
was the reason. What Lindsay had noticed could mean he wasn't the one who'd pushed Annabelle. Dinah had raised at least a small amount of suspicion that Gretchen might have used him—a little boy with a difficult temperament—to hide her own negligence. Maisey wanted to look into that. But with Gretchen dead, how would she figure out what had really happened?

Maisey checked the time on her phone. “I'd better get ready for work,” she said. “Nancy's expecting me.”

Josephine, regal as ever, bowed her head. “Then we'll get out of your way.”

Her mother gestured for Keith to precede her, but he didn't. He walked over to Maisey. “I'm sorry about how I behaved the other night. I...I wasn't myself.”

“I got your messages. Thank you.”

His frown suggested he could tell she wasn't ready to forgive him. He'd rushed right back to Coldiron House, and he'd drawn Josephine into this, even though they'd both believed, at the time, that their mother might've been responsible for Annabelle's death. Had that been the case...

Maisey refused to follow that thought to its conclusion. Now she knew it couldn't have been Josephine, it didn't matter. It was probably punishment enough for him to learn that
he
was responsible. That revelation couldn't have been easy to hear, and wouldn't be easy to live with.

Swallowing her indignation, Maisey forced herself to hug him. “We'll be able to put it behind us.”

“There is one more thing,” Josephine said, her hand on the door.

Maisey looked past her brother. “What's that?”

“It's time you took your life a little more seriously.”

A chill ran down Maisey's spine; she'd seen that determined glint in her mother's eyes before. “And what does that mean?”

“I presume you were next door?”

Despite all the reasons she probably wouldn't be believed, Maisey was tempted to lie. She didn't want to stand against the gale-force wind that was her mother's disapproval, especially when she'd just been found out—and chastised—for removing those letters from the attic of Coldiron House. But she didn't think that would be fair to Rafe. If she was going to continue to see him, she had to acknowledge the relationship, even if it meant defying her mother once again. “Yes.”

“As I thought. Then, let this serve as a warning. If you continue to see Raphael, you won't inherit Smuggler's Cove. You won't inherit anything,” she said, and walked out.

* * *

Nancy was quiet at the flower shop. Maisey considered asking her what had happened with Keith, but decided against it. She could tell Nancy was upset, and she wanted to give the poor woman some solitude, if that was what Nancy needed. Besides, Maisey could guess where things stood. Nancy had probably pushed him for some kind of commitment, or told him she loved him, and he'd backed off.

“I was wondering if you could make a delivery on your way home tonight,” Nancy said as Maisey was getting ready to leave.

“A delivery?” She'd never been asked to handle that side of the business before.

The first smile of the day appeared on Nancy's face. “Sort of.”

“I'm on a scooter, so a delivery might be hard—unless the flowers are going somewhere close and I drive
really
slow. Is it an emergency?”

“No, never mind.” She pretended to hit herself in the head in disgust. “I forgot about the moped. I'll call one of our delivery people.”

“Where do they need to go?”

Nancy's smile broadened. “To your place.”

“
My
place?”

Her thighs rubbed together—she was wearing her usual too-tight pants—as she walked over and brought Maisey a card. “This goes with it.”

I can't quit thinking about you. —Rafe.

“He called in an order?”

“An hour ago,” Nancy said. “See that big arrangement of hydrangeas over there?”

“The one you spent the last hour on?”

“I wanted it to be perfect, because it's for you.”

“That's so nice! Of both of you. But...how'd he know hydrangeas are my favorite?”

“He asked me what you'd like best. It was so sweet. I got the feeling it was the first time he'd ever sent flowers.”

“I didn't realize you knew which flowers I liked.”

She winked. “I've seen the way you favor them.”

Because she paid attention, noticed those subtleties about other people...

Maisey waited as Nancy carried the arrangement over to her. She'd done a fantastic job; it was gorgeous. But there was no way she'd be able to carry something of that size home on her scooter, not without ruining it. She wasn't even sure she dared to accept it. Was she willing to gamble her inheritance—Smuggler's Cove, the only connection she had left to her father—on what she was feeling for Rafe? Was it even possible to fall in love in her current situation? What if their fling—or relationship or whatever it was—didn't last? She couldn't support herself on what she was making at the flower shop, especially if her mother threw her out of the bungalow... And, at the moment, she couldn't count on reviving her writing career.