The Secrets She Kept. Brenda Novak

But it’s not the drugs I’m worried about as much as...”

      He kissed her forehead. “As?”

      “All this talk about suicide. What if Mom really did kill herself? What if he decides the battle he fights every day isn’t worth it and he follows her lead? He’s tried before. I can’t lose my mother and my brother.”

      Rafe sat up, pulling her with him so he could look into her face. “Keith’s changed. He can weather this.”

      She didn’t have the chance to argue. Laney called out, “Mom! He did it! I heard it plop. Come wipe Bry’s bum!”

      Bryson squealed and clapped, obviously as excited by his accomplishment as Laney was.

      “I’ll take this one.” Rafe laughed as he got up, but Maisey hurried to circumvent him.

      “No, I want to be there to praise him.”

      “Maybe we should all stand in the doorway and clap,” Rafe teased.

      She paused long enough to slip her arms around his waist and hold him close. “God, I love you.”

      * * *

      That night Keith tried to reach Pippa Strong, his mother’s housekeeper. He figured if anyone could shed some light on his mother’s frame of mind in the days and weeks leading up to her death, Pippa could. The two were fairly close—or as close as an employee could get to Josephine.

      She didn’t answer, though. When he had to settle for leaving a message on her voice mail, he moved down his list and called Tyrone Coleman, the groundskeeper, instead.

      Tyrone was just as trusted and loyal to the family, but he couldn’t fill in any of the blanks. He insisted that Josephine hadn’t said anything unusual to him before her death. He claimed she hadn’t been acting odd, either. And he hadn’t noticed any strangers or hostile individuals hanging around the property.

      “No, sir,” he said to almost every question. “When I lef’ work on Friday, she was jus’ like she always was. You know’d your mother. If she didn’t like somethin’ she woulda said—and then she woulda changed it straightaway. That was a woman who knew her own mind fer sure.”

      He spoke of Josephine with a mixture of awe and affection, the way one might refer to a willful child who was to be indulged.

      “Yes, she did,” Keith said.

      “You’re a lot like her—you know that,” Tyrone told him next.

      “You aren’t the first to mention it,” he responded.

      “That’s a good thing, Mr. Lazarow, sir. Your mamma was a strong woman. Once she got somethin’ in her head, she was immovable. Like a rock.”

      As far as Keith was concerned, she’d been more like a sledgehammer. Her iron will could blast through any obstacle. But Tyrone seemed to be the same tolerant and respectful person he’d always been. He seemed truly bewildered by her death and upset that she was gone.

      Keith told the groundskeeper he still had a job, that he could report to work whenever he was ready—a proclamation that was greeted with a tremendous amount of gratitude. Afterward, Keith thanked him and hung up. But several hours later, when it was well past the time he could call anyone, he was still going over that conversation and everything else he’d learned since receiving word of his mother’s death. How had Josephine died—and why? Had someone strangled her? Drugged her and then drowned her?

      The mere possibility enraged him. It made no difference that they’d had so much difficulty getting along. The fact that they’d struggled actually made what had happened worse. Whoever killed her had robbed him of the ability to improve their relationship, to achieve any closure. But anger wasn’t all he felt. There was plenty of guilt, too. Would his grandfather have expected him to stay and protect her and the Coldiron legacy?

      If he’d been able to cope with his own life, he would’ve stuck around—and who could say how that might’ve changed things?

      Maybe she’d be alive right now...

      Unable to sleep, he pulled his computer out of his bag, opened it and leaned against the headboard while he researched strangulation and asphyxiation and what doctors looked for in determining whether someone had died in that way. From what he read, many of the signs didn’t show up within the first twenty-four hours, which was interesting and made him wonder if his mother had been examined the day after she was found. He also learned that “petechial hemorrhaging,” in which the blood vessels burst behind the eyes, was one red flag. A broken hyoid bone was another.

      At nearly three, he set his computer aside and went to his mother’s suite. After walking through the empty bedroom and bathroom, he wandered into the retreat set off to one side, which had a balcony with a fabulous view of the beach and ocean below. He stared out at the storm-tossed waves for several minutes. The wind and the rain had gotten stronger. Then he sat down and poked through his mother’s writing desk more thoroughly than when he’d been ransacking the place for her phone.

      He found nothing that clarified what might have happened, but he did come across a stack of letters tucked inside a big travel book in a deep file drawer. They were addressed to him at his company’s address in LA.

      Frowning at the discovery, he sat on the velvet-covered bench at the foot of Josephine’s bed to see what they were. Written on perfumed stationery—his mother couldn’t do anything ordinary—they were sealed, as if she’d planned on mailing them. But he’d never received any communication from her. She’d had too much pride to contact him, since he was the one who’d cut her off.

      He counted them. Ten in all. Tapping them against his knee, he studied the flowing script. Even her handwriting exhibited an elegance few people could emulate.

      So what did she have to tell him? Dare he find out? There had to be some reason she’d chosen not to mail them. And he was already feeling troubled and unsettled. Why give her a voice? Would he be able to tolerate what she said?

      In case he couldn’t, he got up and shoved them back into the book, which he returned to the drawer. He’d be smarter to protect his sobriety, he thought. But after several minutes of pacing, he retrieved them, opened the top one and skimmed the contents.

      It was just a regular letter, like something he might expect if he’d been stationed overseas in the army or was away at school. The others followed the same pattern. Some were Christmas cards. Some were birthday cards. She talked about the flower shop and Coldiron House and the vacation rentals. She talked about seeing Roxanne and any news about Roxanne’s “little family.” She talked about Maisey giving birth to Bryson, noted his size and weight and complained that he wasn’t named after anyone in their family. She also talked about Pippa taking vacation or getting sick and who she might get to fill in.

      She didn’t offer him any apologies, however. She didn’t even acknowledge the fact that they were estranged. She just pretended nothing had happened between them and they were still speaking.

      After reading the last one, he stacked the envelopes the way he’d found them.

      Maybe he shouldn’t have read them, after all. They reminded him of how charming his mother could be when she was on her best behavior, made him miss her. They also made him wonder if maybe he was the one to blame for their problems. He’d already spent a lifetime wondering. Is it me or her? These letters dredged up all of that confusion and uncertainty. But, refusing to succumb to those thoughts, he forced himself to look at the letters more objectively. What did they mean? Was the fact that she’d taken the time to write an apology in itself? Was it her way of expressing her love?

      The closings never varied—Love, Mom. That was the only thing that might suggest she cared about him, two words that could easily be interpreted as a standard closing. Was there so much wrong between them that she wouldn’t risk tackling the issues? Was she hoping to simply go on, to forget the past as if it hadn’t existed?

      Since she was never one to apologize, that was her favorite