Best Kept Secret Read Online Free

perhaps, petite and demure. Instead, she got me—all wild brown curls and fleshy curves. Big breasts, big opinions.
    “You’re late,” she says.
    I twist my wrist up from my son’s body, which is still clamped around me, and look at my watch. Ten minutes after 9:00 a.m. Panic seizes me. She’ll report me to Mr. Hines, the court guardian. I’ll lose my son. I worry that everything I do goes under automatic scrutiny.
How does it look for me to do this?
I wonder, as I order a soda at dinner.
Are they wondering why I don’t ask for a real drink? A glass of wine? A vodka tonic with a twist?
I feel like I have to explain every little movement, or lack of movement.
    It’s similar to how I used to feel when I’d buy wine at a different grocery store or corner market every day. “I’m having a party tonight,” I’d explain to an uninterested checker. “Eight people, so I’ll need four bottles of wine.” Like the checker gave a good goddamn.
    “Only a few minutes late,” I say to Alice now, not just a little defensively. “Sorry.”
    “It’s fine,” Alice says, looking at me with cool disdain.
    Charlie chooses this moment to wriggle out of my grasp. He jumps up and down in front of me. “Look, Mama! I can do a cartwheel!” Falling forward, he places both palms flat on the wet grass and does a donkey kick not more than eight inches or so off the ground. He lands on his knees with a
thump.
    I clap for him. “Excellent!” He grins, causing the deep, cherry-pit dimple on his left cheek to appear.
    “Charles!” Alice scolds. “Look what you did to your jeans!”
    The grin vanishes. He stands, looks down at his now brightly stained green knees. “Sorry.”
    I reach down, ruffle his curls. “That’s okay, buddy. That’s why God invented Spray ’n Wash, right?”
    “Yeah!” he says. He looks up at me, smiling again, and then to the sky. He waves. “Thanks, God!”
    Oh, my Charlie.
My eyes well up.
Would you look at that. Look at that sweet soul. I haven’t completely screwed him up.
    “God isn’t doing your laundry,” Alice says lightly as she steps down the stairs.
    I look at her, anger tight and warm in my chest. It’s that mama bear feeling rearing its head.
    She sees my eyes flash. Her expression melts into one of supreme smugness. That’s right, it says. Here it comes. Yell at me. Give me something to tell the court.
    Kill her with kindness.
The chant I played over and over in my head on the way to this moment. I take a deep breath before speaking.
    “Thanks for taking such good care of his clothes. I’ll wash his jeans today, and bring them back.” And then, because I cannot help it, I continue. “Why doesn’t Martin do his laundry?”
    She lifts her jaw. “Martin is busy working. Martin is busy making sure his son is fed and clothed and brought to school on time. He is very busy being a parent.”
    Which is more than I can say about you,
I hear the unspoken finish to her statement. She doesn’t need to speak. Her eyes paint the words: black, ugly brushstrokes in the air between us.
    “How nice for him,” I spit out. I can’t stop myself. “Most single parents don’t have someone to pick up their slack.”
Dammit. And I was doing so well.
    “Most single parents don’t drink themselves into oblivion, either,”she launches back. She speaks quietly, over Charlie’s listening ears. “
I
didn’t.”
    Her words pummel me. They stop my breath. Sudden, violent guilt invades each cell in my body. She is sacred and pure. I am the evil, rotten mother who couldn’t control her drinking. I deserve her hatred. I deserve the pain that goes with it. She is right and I am wrong. I earned every minute of all I have to endure.
    Charlie grabs my arm with both hands and pulls in the direction of my car. “Mama, let’s go,” he whimpers. “I want to go.”
    “Okay, monkey,” I say. And then, to Alice, “I’ll have him back tomorrow at twelve o’clock.”
    “Twelve o’clock sharp,” she