The Secret Sister by M. DeLuca (leveled readers txt) 📗

The Secret Sister

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Las Vegas, November 2019

Minneapolis

Eight months earlier

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Las Vegas, November 2019

A Message from M.M. DeLuca

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

Cover

Table of Contents

Start of Content

To all those children who overcome unimaginable obstacles just to get to school each day.

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

George Eliot

Prologue

Las Vegas, November 2019

The lights around the giant Ferris wheel glow bluish-purple and the night becomes unreal. Like a scene from a fairy tale.

I decide it’s time to lose my husband, Guy.

I slip into the shelter of an alleyway, between Cibo’s Margarita Bar and Sin City Souvenirs. Watch him amble by the market stalls, still chatting as if I’m strolling beside him. He doesn’t notice I’m gone until he stops at a leather stall to rummage through a case of tooled leather belts. Then he turns as if to show me one, his eyes wide with excitement, his head likely fogged with fantasies – my hair veiling my face as I kneel on the marble tiles of a hotel bathroom to undo that buckle. His hands grazing my shoulders, breath warm and tickly on my back. He loves me. Can’t get enough of me. That I know. Have always known. I press my shoulder against the sunbaked wall, heart aching as he turns full circle, forehead furrowed, scanning the crowds with panicked eyes. The belt dangles from his hand. He throws it back onto the counter. Knocks down a rack of earrings. The pony-tailed vendor shrugs. Shakes his head when Guy staggers into the milling crowds and stands, arms outstretched, turning slowly like a creaking windmill. He reaches for his phone and fumbles with the thumbprint ID. My ringer is off so there’s only an insistent vibration. Again and again he calls. Three, four, five times. Then the texts arrive.

Where are you

Anna where r u

Where r u.

Call me.

Text me

I’m still at the leather stall.

I’ll wait

Where r u

Come on Anna. Call me???

R u ok Anna.

Anna?????

Back and forth he paces past the same three stalls. Past the busker with her plaid shirt, torn blue jeans and ruby lips. Past the rhinestone-clad showgirls posing with the drunken frat boys. He shoves his phone into people’s faces as they amble by, jabs at the display, begging for information. I imagine his words. Have you seen this woman? My wife? She’s wandered off. Lost herself. Crazy, huh? He holds his hand palm downwards and measures my height in the air. She’s five-six. Thirtyish. Shoulder-length black hair, slim, pretty, wearing a sleeveless white shift dress.

His mouth droops at the corners and his hands move in freakish semaphore. Some people stop, shake their heads and move on. Others just walk straight by, brushing him aside as if he’s a crazy, buzzing gnat.

When he slumps down on a garbage can and wipes his sleeve over his eyes, love and remorse swell in waves, clutching at my throat until I think I’ll choke. I want to end this thing I’m doing, but then I remember Birdie.

How I have to fix everything for her. Make it all right again.

I made this promise and I can’t go back on it now.

I won’t betray you, Birdie. Ever, ever again.

Then I feel the pressure of a firm hand on my shoulder and it’s too late to turn back.

Minneapolis

Eight months earlier

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I knew all about Guy before I met him in person.

I checked out his Facebook profile and studied his photos closely enough to figure that his condo was in a newly built tower attached to one of the converted warehouse buildings in the Mill District overlooking the river, where penthouse apartments sold for a million or more. Luxury pads that boasted “intelligent and intuitively designed condos with timeless finishes, sweeping views of the river and 24-hour concierge in a boutique style lobby.”

At that time, I was living paycheck to paycheck teaching English Lit at an alternative high school. Driving home every day from work, I crossed through the Mill District to get to my tiny upper floor, one bed, one bath on the other side of the river. The wrong side, next to the freight yards and abandoned cold storage plant. From my bedroom window I could see those golden towers in the distance, and I’d imagine exactly where Guy was. I’d picture him silhouetted against a wall of windows, the honeyed expanse of an oak-timbered, brick-walled room spread out behind him.

The heady promise of that vision kept me going, even though I was broke and barely able to scrape together next month’s rent money. My only worldly possessions included a television on a ten-dollar Ikea stand, a bed, a second-hand patio table with two mismatched metal chairs, a floor cushion for a sofa, and a closet full of cheap, untouched clothes, their tags dangling in a neat row.

It was lunchtime when Guy and I met in person for the first time. The end of my grueling morning. My mouth watered at the thought of a peanut butter and banana sandwich waiting in the staffroom fridge. Then the intercom crackled into action and the principal announced there’d be an extended lunch period because of a high priority professional development presentation. Attendance non-negotiable.

I slammed down the pile of student writing journals, scattering them across the desk. I’d rather spend my lunch hour having my wisdom teeth pulled than listen to some earnest academic blather on about the educational process. Often the speakers were remote, ivory-tower types – usually failed classroom teachers, totally unsuited to front line work – who’d retreated to the quiet sanctuary of a university education department to avoid a nervous breakdown. Once they’d escaped the real, gritty world of teaching, these academics thrived in peaceful isolation, cranking out research papers on student engagement, teacher charisma, self-determination, scaffolding, collaborating, integration or any other buzz worthy topic