I Have a Secret (A Sloane Monroe Novel, Book Three) by Cheryl Bradshaw Read Free Book Online Page A

home.   “You’ve all probably heard by now a member of our group was killed on the class reunion cruise several days ago,” he said.  “I’d planned to read from the Big Book tonight and follow our regular course like usual, but many of you were good friends with Doug, and out of respect for his passing, I thought you might like to share a few of your thoughts and memories first.
    A man a couple chairs to my left raised his hand.  The speaker at the podium tilted his head toward him to indicate his request was granted.   The man relayed a story about how Doug had given him a loan at the bank after every other bank in town turned him down.  Similar comments floated around the room until almost every person had their say.
    While I sat and listened my eyes veered back to the blond woman who sat silent, disengaged from the conversation going on around her.  The woman’s thumb and pointer fingers were pressed beneath her eyelids like she was trying to form some kind of invisible shield, but it didn’t hide the fact she was crying.   Tears dripped over her light pink fingernails and ran down the backside of her hand until it was almost completely soaked. 
    A minute later, the blond woman stood up, turned to the man at the podium and whispered, “Excuse me, I need to go,” and then she bolted for the door.  I followed. 
    When she reached the parking lot, I broke my silence.  “Are you all right?”
    She pivoted on her black suede boot and squinted.  “Why are you following me?”
    “I wasn’t.  I mean, I guess I was, but I saw how upset you were in there and—”
    “Who are you?  I know everyone in this town, but I haven’t seen you before.  People don’t just pass through and poke their head in on an AA meeting, so what are you doing here?”
    “I’m an old friend of Doug’s from high school.” 
    She dried her eyes with her hand and shook her head.  “You couldn’t be.”
    I shrugged.  “Why?”
    “Because if you were, I’d know you.”
    “What’s your name?” I said.
    “What’s yours?”
    “Sloane.”
    We both stood there while her brain ran a scan of all prior Sloane’s she may have known in her life.  And then, a recollection.  “Is your last name Monroe?”
    I nodded and she rushed over and threw her arms around me.  My arms remained at my side—stiff and wishing for immediate release.
    “I can’t believe this!” she said. 
    I couldn’t believe it either.  I patted her on the back a couple times and tried to understand why she’d latched on to me.  She pulled back after a minute, rested her palms on my shoulders, and tipped her head to one side.  “Wait.  You don’t recognize me, do you?”  
    “I’m sorry, no.”
    She let me go, stepped back and pointed at herself.  “I’m Heather Masterson.”
    Still nothing.
    Her eyes lit up.  “Remember that time in school when you came around the corner and found me in the trash can?”
    I flashed back to a memory from my senior year of a scared young girl with a mouthful of tinsel teeth.  “Some of the varsity girls put you in there as part of freshman orientation.”
    She laughed.  “Yeah, they spilled that plate of spaghetti on my head too.  You helped me out and gave me one of your sweatshirts from your locker since mine was soaked in red.  I idolized you after that.”
    “You were a few years younger than we were.  I didn’t think you knew Doug very well back then.  Did you meet in AA?”
    She nodded.  “I was his sponsor.”
    “But I thought sponsors—”
    “Had to be the same sex?  They probably prefer it, but there weren’t enough of us, and it’s not like there’s a rule against it.  Doug chose me, and I didn’t want to say no.”
    “What do you mean—chose?”
    “He’d come to a few meetings and heard me talk about how long I’d been sober and said he was moved by my story of sobriety and by what I shared with the group.  After that he asked me to be his sponsor.”
    Heather