The Secrets Sisters Keep

The Secrets Sisters Keep

Abby Drake

Dedication

For Lucky

Contents

Dedication

Chapter One

U
ncle Edward had wandered off.

Ordinarily, it would have been little cause for alarm, as he often enjoyed an adventurous romp. But a grand celebration for his seventy-fifth birthday was scheduled this weekend, and the whole family was coming, maybe even Carleen, though no one knew that but Ellie, and Uncle Edward had sworn her to secrecy.

“I’ll try the boathouse,” Ellie shouted to Henry, Edward’s man-friend, whom she wanted to blame for the disappearance. After all, Henry and Edward were lovers, and Ellie suspected Henry had been pressuring him to commemorate the birthday by crossing the border into Connecticut and getting married, which no doubt would affect Edward’s will.

But that wasn’t the problem right now.

Dashing from the terrace past the caterers, who were erecting a white-and-gold tent in the south garden, power-waddling down the embankment that led to the water at Lake Kasteel, Ellie prayed nothing had happened, that Uncle Edward hadn’t slipped on the rocks and fallen and broken his damn neck. He claimed to know every obstacle on his land, every tree root and stone, every hollow and hill, but five acres was a lot of ground, and sometimes he could be forgetful.

Besides, wouldn’t tree roots and stones (unlike some ornery people) shift and change over time?

Edward had bought the place during his years as a producer, when all of Broadway had jostled and jockeyed for invitations to his Gatsbyish parties at this lavish summer playground north of New York City. Back then, Ellie, Amanda, Carleen, and Naomi (whom everyone simply called Babe) had hidden beneath the wide staircase in the mansion’s big foyer or in the fat, blue-blossomed hydrangea that cupped the slate terrace, and muted their giggles and gasps while they’d observed the comings and goings and in-betweens of this one and that, that one and this.

It had been an exhilarating atmosphere (complete with high drama and carnival acts), an education of a most notable, inappropriate kind for four young sisters who summered with their uncle while their parents were doing whatever they did when they were
sans kids
.

Ellie had no idea if the voyeurism had harmed them.

Amanda had gone on to become a Park Avenue socialite, having married an architect who, Amanda hinted, often worked with The Donald. They had three children who were pretty but spoiled in a prep-school, lacrosse-playing way. They’d honored Edward with their presence last Christmas: it was clear they had come for the gifts.

Babe had become a star in her own right, a strawberry blonde, voluptuous leading lady, now wed to yesterday’s top-box-office, action-flick man who was much older but looked a lot younger thanks to a face-lift, maybe two. Ellie hadn’t seen her youngest sister since Babe had left home, but she kept up on her life via e-mails and phone calls and
People
and
Us,
though the media attention had dwindled proportionately with each passing year.

Carleen, well, Uncle Edward had insisted on inviting her, and perhaps he was right, perhaps it was time.

As for Ellie, she’d had a quick marriage and a quicker divorce, thanks to Carleen. She’d moved from Manhattan back to Lake Kasteel, relinquishing her job as an Egyptologist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and settling into cloistered recuperation far from public view.

Edward had decided, by then, to live in the mansion year round. So Ellie had become a kind of caretaker and, over time, had morphed into a beleaguering (she supposed) caregiver for him. The truth was, she was happier at home than out in the big world. After all they’d been through, who wouldn’t have been?

But now it was many years later and guests had been invited, including her sisters, because Edward was seventy-five.

Seventy-five, but missing. It just wouldn’t do.

“Uncle Edward!” Ellie cried as she reached the creaky old boathouse. “Where on earth are you?” She opened the slatted wooden door to the cottagelike structure and peered into the small, dark room. Mute wicker chairs stood wearing faded sheets; the air smelled like dampness and mildew and charcoal embers reminiscent of days when the cozy fireplace brought welcome relief from an unexpected storm.

But it had been forever since those summers of boating and sunbathing and toasting marshmallows at the end of the day. Back then they’d all gotten along; they’d loved one another in spite of themselves.

“Uncle Edward, are you here?” Her tone escalated to exasperation. She opened the door to where the boats were. Water lap-lapped the sides of the canoe as it tipped back and forth, back and forth. But in the next bay, where the rowboat should have been harbored, there was nothing. The rowboat was gone. Just like Uncle Edward.

Chapter Two

A
manda Dalton Delaney gathered the suitcases and duffels of her knotty clan—two ungrateful sons, one princess of a daughter, and one besmirched husband, who, she’d recently learned, was having an affair with a Brazilian slut who waxed backs for a living.

She blotted the dampness from her brow. The last thing she wanted was to go to this god-awful party.

She was, however, bound by guilt. After all, her kids had Uncle Edward to thank for their educations, and she and Jonathan had Edward to thank for, well, a lot: Jonathan’s job at one of the top commercial architectural firms in Manhattan; the brownstone at Park Avenue and East Eighty-first Street that Amanda had required so her children could be raised in the city, not the country; the major gift Edward donated most years to the opera, rewarding Amanda and Jonathan with the finest seating at performances and special events. Edward had once commented that while he did not understand Amanda’s penchant for opera over Broadway, at least it was real art, not like film, and New York was a real city, not like Hollywood.

Babe might have taken exception, but she’d been long gone by then. Besides, Amanda had always assumed Edward was the one who’d ponied up the funding for Babe’s first starring role, which had ended up a commercial success, lucky Babe.

Tucking her crocheted handkerchief into her small purse, Amanda smoothed her white linen dress (which, with its touch of rayon, was guaranteed not to wrinkle) and toyed with the black Tahitian pearls at her throat. She mused at how unfortunate it was that Edward’s generosity was limited to occasional outbursts, though she’d never known if providing a roof over her sister Ellie’s head included an ongoing allowance.

Ellie, of course, was the most stable one of the bunch. If Amanda could arrange a few moments with her, she might reveal Jonathan’s indiscretion. Trying to handle this alone was like needing a root canal: one second all was quiet, you thought you could forget it; the next second it flared, white-hot, as if shot by a needle straight into a nerve.

Rock-solid Ellie-the-eldest was a good choice to confide in. She would know how to respond; she was the compassionate sister, the nonjudgmental aunt. It did not matter that Amanda’s children—while adoring Ellie in person—snickered off-camera at her organic cotton wardrobe of crop pants and shapeless cardigans that concealed a slightly round frame; at the fact that she used only scentless, all-natural lotions and soaps that hadn’t been tested on animals, at least not on the kind one petted and named.

Still, Amanda might regret airing her dirty laundry even to Ellie, because it was distasteful and might open herself up for later persecution, especially if Uncle Edward found out about Jonathan. When Amanda first met Jonathan, Edward hadn’t really liked him, had said he was
pusillanimous
(a word Amanda had needed to look up) in spite of having been raised in salt-of-the-earth Burlington, Vermont, in spite of having gone to Princeton. Of course, Edward was lactose intolerant and had never cared about the dairy products that once drove Vermont’s economy. Nor did he appreciate anything Ivy League, having graduated from the
School of Hard Knocks
,
Magna Cum Laude
.

Amanda had never been sure if Edward had changed his mind about her husband. God forbid they should discuss anything that might conjure emotion.

Peering out the side window of the foyer now, she looked for the private car that would drive her with the luggage to Mount Kasteel and its coveted lake. Jonathan and the boys—“Huey and Dewey” Uncle Edward called them, claiming difficulty remembering their real names, Chandler and Chase—would take the train up that night. Heather would drive in with her
boyfriend du jour,
whom Amanda hadn’t met but whose family had a home on Nantucket, where the couple had been sailing for most of the month.

So her kids would be there along with her husband and her long-lost celebrity-sister, Babe, with whom, for some reason, Amanda’s contact over the years had been limited to happy holiday greetings. Ellie was the one who’d stayed in touch with their youngest sister and often passed on the news to Amanda, which was fine. Amanda was far too busy for inane correspondence.

But now Babe would be at Uncle Edward’s, plus a couple of hundred other guests, according to Ellie.

Yes, it would be an interesting weekend. Secretly (only because Amanda dared not say it out loud and risk jinxing the possibility), she prayed Uncle Edward would choose this celebration to make a long-awaited announcement—a division of property, remuneration to his clan—now that he surely was nearing the end of his life.

And, God, she needed money, even more than she needed advice about Jonathan’s back-waxer.

Amanda had no idea how large her uncle’s fortune was, how much would come her way. Or if—after dutiful gifts to his servants and the man that he slept with—the bulk would be divided four ways or three, depending on whether Carleen was omitted, which of course she would be.

Wouldn’t she?

Tipping back her head, Amanda let out a short laugh, surprised she’d entertained an absurd notion otherwise.

She quickly dismissed thoughts of Carleen and reeled her focus back to the prize.

The timing, of course, could not have been better. In addition to erasing her mounting debt (which would give new meaning to the word
bailout
), the inheritance would give her power. Power over the current adulterous situation. Power to finally show her pusillanimous husband a thing or two about the importance of money and status and being faithful.

She twiddled her pearls again and wondered if, instead of all the nonsense, she should use that new power to step off her treadmill-of-a-life and just run away.

“M
aybe he ran away,” Henry said as he darted around the tent people and scampered ahead of Ellie down toward the boathouse. She’d gone up to the mansion and recruited his help: paddling a canoe was never easy for one person, especially when she was that person—a forty-seven-year-old, unathletic, twenty-pounds-overweight recluse. At least Henry was lean (“as thin as a campaign promise,” Edward often described him) and still nimble at age fifty-nine, which he credited to having developed an addiction to Ping-Pong in college.

“Why on earth would Edward run away?” Ellie barked. “He’s been looking forward to this weekend.”

“Maybe he realized he’s too old for a comeback.”

Henry tried to be funny whenever he spoke. Edward called it endearing; right now, Ellie found it irritating.

“The party was his idea,” she retorted.

Henry opened the door without further comment, plodding into the darkness in his lime green Crocs, his boney knees nearly knocking beneath the hem of his madras Bermudas. He moved into the room, then into the bays where one boat sat, one did not. Ellie followed; her heart was beating quickly. She brushed back a few cobwebs, selected two paddles from the half-dozen that dangled from rusty wall hooks, and handed one to Henry. “You get in first,” she said, “and steady the canoe.”

Henry obeyed. Ellie, after all, was the keeper of the house. Edward often deferred to her, his eldest niece, as if she were the one who owned the big place, as if she had a sizable booty in her own name. Henry had been “with” Edward a couple of decades, yet despite the things he and Edward might or might not do behind Edward’s closed bedroom door, Ellie knew she had more clout. Quite probably, Henry knew that, too.

He stabilized the canoe while Ellie stepped in and sat down facing the lake. The narrow seat was damp and probably dirty. She smoothed her beige cotton pants and palest-pink shirt, then adjusted the chinstrap of her straw gardening hat. She hoped she’d remember to change her clothes before the others arrived, especially Amanda, who tended to have a stroke when she saw her sister un-ironed.

Sliding the paddle into the water, she swiped it toward the back.

Henry responded with swift, wordless motion, as if they one-two paddled every afternoon.

The boat glided from its garage without argument.

“Let’s try the island,” Ellie yelled back, though there was no need to shout: neither powerboats nor spray-spritzing Jet Skis were allowed on Lake Kasteel, much to the dismay of unsuspecting vacationers who paid a New York fortune to rent four bedrooms on the waterfront and wound up with nothing noisy to do with the kids. “Maybe he decided to read.” When the girls had been young and there was too much commotion, Edward frequently escaped to the uninhabited island (“Squirrels only,” he’d remark) with a flask full of schnapps and a decent book. Dickens. Hemingway. Someone like that.

“He should know better than to go boating alone,” Henry said, his jaw clearly clenched.

“If his intention was to go to the island to read, he wouldn’t have considered it boating.”

The reply sounded like
harrumph
.

“Besides, the boat has a life preserver,” Ellie added, because she didn’t want Henry to worry about that. He did, she supposed, really care about Edward. Why else would he have stayed long after the lights had gone out on Edward’s career?

Extinguished,
Edward had once called it matter-of-factly.
Like a last gasp before death.

Ellie shivered a little and pushed on the paddle again.