Page 46 of Our Little Secret

“That’s not true,” Brooke said but trod lightly.

“It is!” Leah cried.

Brooke cut the engine, slipped out of her seat belt, and tried her best to hug her sister. Theirs might be a tense relationship, but she hated to see Leah hurting. Again. But it was too late. Now, as the garage door rolled down, Leah gave up all pretense of being in control and was openly sobbing, her face pink, tears running down her cheeks.

“Come on,” Brooke said. “Let’s go inside.”

“I can’t. Not like this.”

“Sure you can. We’re family.” Feeling a stab of guilt for her negative thoughts about her sister, Brooke reached across Leah’s lap and opened the glove compartment, where she found a small pack of tissues. “Pull yourself together. Okay?” She handed the package to her sister. “Everything’s not as bad as it seems.”

“Isn’t it?” Leah plucked a tissue from the pack and dabbed at her eyes.

“Come on. Let’s go inside and you can . . . have a glass of water or a soda or tea. Maybe that drink you mentioned earlier.”

“I don’t want anything.” Leah blew her nose and didn’t move. The garage door light went out and the only illumination seeping into the garage came through a tiny window grimy with dirt and cobwebs.

“What am I gonna do?” Leah said as more tears filled her eyes.

“You’re going to figure it out. We’ll go in the house. No one’s home and you can go upstairs to the extra bedroom—the one next to Marilee’s.”

“I remember.”

“Good.”

Leah slumped in the seat as if she suddenly couldn’t move. Now that she’d confessed her real reason for flying to Seattle, she was too weary to get out of the SUV.

Brooke was having none of it. She couldn’t be late picking up Marilee again. She wouldn’t. As far as she knew—and she’d asked friends and kept up with the school and neighborhood platforms on Facebook—Allison Carelli was still missing. Everyone was on edge.

So she couldn’t deal with Leah’s histrionics. She grabbed her sister’s shoulders, her fingers digging into the soft cotton of Leah’s cardigan. “Come on now. Pull yourself together.” Dear God, how many times had she said those very words to her?

“I–I can’t.”

“You can and you will.” Brooke was nose-to-nose with her sister.

“But—”

“You have before!”

Leah gasped, obviously stung, but they’d been through this time and time again. Brooke knew what she needed to do. Leah could use a shoulder to cry on, sure, but she also needed someone to toughen her up. To slap her back to reality. Brooke said, “I’ll bring up your bag and get you settled, then I have to run and pick up Marilee from school and grab something from the deli. As I said, Neal’s still at work, so you’ll have the house to yourself for about an hour. Maybe a little longer.”

“No, I just can’t—”

“Sure you can,” Brooke said, cutting off whatever wimpy excuse her sister could conjure. “Let’s go.” Reaching across Leah’s lap again, she opened the passenger door and the interior light blinked on.

“You don’t have to be so mean,” her sister said, but she unhooked her seat belt.

“I’m not being mean,” Brooke countered, “just reasonable.” She wanted to explain that she too was dealing with stress, but now was not the time. “Come on, move it.”

“Geez . . .” Leah said and, under her breath, she might have murmured “bitch” as she got out of the SUV.

Brooke didn’t care. Right now she had bigger fish to fry, as Nana used to say, larger problems than Leah’s forever revolving door of husbands. Muscles aching a bit from her struggle with Gideon, Brooke set her jaw and dragged the roller bag up the stairs, a step ahead of her sister.

In the kitchen Leah glanced out the back windows to the view. “I’ve always loved this place, you know.” As she dashed the remainder of tears from her eyes, she looked around the cluster of rooms on the first floor: the kitchen, the dining area and living room, and the alcove to the side yard. Then she wandered to Neal’s office, tucked in the lowest floor of the turret, and peeked inside before returning to the kitchen. She seemed more composed and asked, “Do you know how lucky you are?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”And now more than ever.

“This house—”