Want to Know a Secret?

by Freida McFadden

Too bad you don’t know the secret to making your husband happy. Unlike Courtney Burns.

Six tickets to a Taylor Swift concert.

They say that what you do when you drive shows what kind of person you really are deep down.

“I’m not Owen’s birth mother. His biological mother… died several years ago. He doesn’t even remember her. I adopted him after Sean and I got married.”

I tried to read it—I really did. I got about two pages in, and I was just done. I simply couldn’t go on. I think it was the part where he was at the pet store, picking out varieties of birdseed. Life is too short to read boring books.

“That’s right. I am.” “April is my daughter,” she says. “And she is pure evil.”

“Tell her to let me go home. I won’t tell anyone. I swear. I’ll say she was with me the whole night.” “I… I don’t understand…” “The night that girl died.” There’s a spark of clarity in the older woman’s eyes. “I won’t tell the police she wasn’t with me. I promise. I won’t tell a soul.”

“Janet Portland was her daughter’s alibi for murder,” Peggy says. “Then a year later, Janet decided to stop being her alibi anymore. And now she’s here. On enough medications to kill a horse. You can connect the dots from there.”

direction of my own house. I’ll talk to her later. Much later.

April has been sleeping with Mark for months? Oh God. Poor Kathy.

When the screen lights up, I start typing. Want to know a secret? Your son isn’t where you think he is.

Oh, and Maria hates April now.

“She claims that she and Elliot are trying to get pregnant,” she tells me one morning in my kitchen, “but guess what? I found birth control pills in the closet in her downstairs bathroom.”

If that’s the case, is it possible Maria could be in danger?

Like mother like son.

I mean, this is a lot of money. We’re talking grand larceny.

“Right.” Maria nods. “But you told me it was a white SUV that was following her. I mean, think about how many white SUVs there are out there. Everyone has one. Even me.”

Maria winks at me.

Just as good as April’s.

was a white SUV, just like the kind April used to drive.

shoveling snow.

And then I lifted the shovel and brought it down on her skull. Again. And again.

I lost count of how many times I hit her. But eventually, she wasn’t moving anymore. There was blood everywhere. In a puddle on the sidewalk and leaking from her skull, obscuring her face. And I realized she was dead.

I killed her. I killed my daughter.

But I don’t understand. How could April go to jail? Because April is dead. And I’m the one who killed her. THE END