The Secret Keeping by Francine Saint Marie Read Free Book Online

Delilah the mug and sitting beside her.
    Delilah blew across it and stared at Lydia over its rim. Lydia smiled back.
    “Liddy…she’s a beautiful woman. But you can bet your life she has someone, a woman like that.”
    Lydia drummed the pillow with her fingers. “But she doesn’t wear a ring.”
    “Ugh! Wedding rings are not surgically attached, you know?”
    Yes, she knew that. “But, Del, she never leaves with anyone. She’s never with anyone.” She avoided Delilah’s eyes.
    “Liddy?” came the vexed response. “How do you know all that?”
    How did she know all that? She wasn’t really sure.
    “What are we talking about here, anyway?” Delilah demanded. “Do I understand what we’re talking about?”
    Lydia threw her arms up in the air. “I don’t know.”
    The pouting lips. Hadn’t she seen that look before? “There’s easier pickings, Liddy.”
    Lydia sighed. “I’m not saying that. I simply find her interesting.”
    “Interesting? Let’s try it this way. Have you ever even talked to her? You know. Hi, my name is Lydia Beaumont and I’m eager to ruin my life?”
    “Ruin my life?”
    “Or, hello my name is Lydia and I will not clean or bathe until you sleep with me.” She swung her arm, implicating Lydia by her cluttered rooms.
    Lydia clasped her hands together and took in her friend’s amused face. “You think?” she asked. The place was a mess. She hadn’t bathed today.
    “That you want to sleep with her…am I getting this right? Yes, I think you want to sleep with her. Two straight women, for godsakes– you’re after the mismatch of the century, Liddy.”

    Silence.
    “Besides, that woman’s trouble. I can feel it.”
    “What do you mean? How can a woman be trouble?”
    “How? You’re adorable. Trust me, kid, she’s trouble.”
    “I do trust you. I find her attractive, that’s all. That’s as far as it goes.”
    “Attractive she is. But if it’s a one-nighter you need, then order it from the bar. They’d be happy to oblige you, pardner, and you know it.”
    She groaned in response.
    “That’s my learned opinion, Liddy. Upon which, I urge you to rely.”
    Lydia sighed and went over to the window, her gaze wandering restlessly over the cityscape. Her drive was coming back. Out of commission for so long, she had hardly noticed it was missing till now. Now it was flooding through her veins again, with nowhere to direct it. Unlike Delilah, she had an aversion to picking up strangers, had no real knack for anonymous one-night stands. Even when she was younger she would always back out at the last heated minute. In fact, she was practically famous for that. Or infamous, who cares?
    Under her own pressure she had found herself reevaluating those apprehensions. She was at times researching the suits lined up eight to the bar. Her studies were, at best, inconclusive.
    The sun was warm through the glass and she lifted her face up to it and shut her eyes, the heat of its rays on her lids, holding them down, heavy and almost contented. They glistened in the sun, lustrous. She loved sunshine.
    “Del, I can’t. I’ve tried.”
    _____

    It had finally reached that intolerable state where navigating herself through it was as treacherous as a minefield. The place looked like a college dorm instead of a grown woman’s apartment and Lydia was too embarrassed to hire a maid.
    She stood in the middle of it on a Saturday morning armed with an array of cleaning products and implements and wearing a mildly perplexed expression, blue jeans and an old sweatshirt with faded letters imprinted on the front that read, “I stink therefore I am.” It was too late for wondering how it all had happened. She just had to clean it up.
    She popped in a CD and began with the living room because it required the most attention, discovering in and around the couch a host of items one might find useful in the kitchen. Forks, knives, a service for twenty, if one didn’t mind mismatched plates. She stacked