Secrets and Lies Read Online Free

aspects, and she was able to grieve. That didn’t mean there weren’t things she had to take care of; she had to take over his business, pay his employees, keep them working and prove herself to every client that walked through the door. But, in a way, he had prepared her for that too.
    She wanted to cry, thinking about her father. For all of his faults he was one of the most amazing men she knew. He had survived, pushed on, even after the love of his life was gone. He had loved her mother so much she thought he might die when she disappeared, but instead he held on for her. He became more protective, almost insanely so. He rarely let her go anywhere by herself, not even to the corner store where he used to allow her to walk to as a way of giving her a measure of independence.
    She didn’t complain. She didn’t try to assure him that he was suffocating her. She knew why he held on so tight. He was afraid he would lose her too.
    She wished he were alive now. Perhaps that wish was purely selfish because she wanted somebody to cling to now. She was alone, no family left to call and cry with, to have support from. Finding her mother was like suffering the loss all over again. Knowing the cops didn’t seem to give a rat’s behind about the case made it that much more difficult. Why? That was the question ever present in her mind since they found her mother. Why, after all this time, was she the one to find the body? She could still see it vividly in her mind. They looked so much alike. The same button nose, the same high cheekbones…God, it was like looking at herself. Only her mother had that perfect dip in her lips, something she didn’t possess. She had almost forgotten the shape of her mother’s lips. She remembered some things, most of which came from the times she had studied the pictures her father kept around the house, like a shrine to Neenah Davis, the “love of his life,” the only love he had ever had in his life.
    She had never, ever seen anything like it. Her mother was perfectly preserved as if she had died yesterday instead of nearly twenty years ago.
    Thena pulled her car into the garage and let the automatic door down. She managed, with blurry eyes, to make it from car to kitchen before her legs refused to carry her farther. She sunk to the floor and she cried. For the first time since she saw the body, she broke down. The pain hit her hard. Emotions threatened to swallow her whole. Her father had always said no matter what life throws your way it’s important to press on. “Never let it break you, Button,” he would say right before pinching her nose between his thumb and index finger. Until now she had managed to follow his advice. But now, with everything that was happening, she wasn’t sure she could press on. She wasn’t sure she could stop life from breaking her down.
    She didn’t want to be alone right now. She needed somebody to talk to; somebody to assure her things would be okay. She didn’t have family. She had very few friends. She was always so busy tending to everybody else that she had spent very little time tending to herself.
    She picked up the phone and punched in the speed dial. “Kyle,” she heard the tremble in her voice when she spoke, but she couldn’t stop it. “I could really use a friend right now.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    She started crying harder. “I found her,” she managed to say. “I found my mother.”
    “I’ll be right there.”
    The phone clicked and she knew he had hung up on her. Kyle was one of those guys who would drop everything for a friend if that friend needed him. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t called him sooner, but she hadn’t. She had invested her energy into trying to keep the men working so they could put food on their tables, trying to meet with the police to see if they planned to investigate, and then trying to find alternative options when it became clear that they weren’t in a hurry to work on her mother’s case. She