A Secret Identity Read Online Free PDF

her a warm hug. Johnny squeezed between us in a loving nest. She hugged me back, perhaps too ardently because Johnny squirmed. Without thinking, both of us bent and kissed him, me on the top of his bald little head, she on his chubby cheek. One thing in life was certain: Johnny would never lack for love. He was a Bentley.
    I smiled at my sister-in-law. “I think you’re forgetting one basic thing. I don’t like change. No, I hate change. I’ve had too many recently, and I’m not facing another by moving. Let me get used to Pop being gone.” I smiled ruefully. “It’s going to take a while. I mean, I’m still struggling over Mom’s death three years ago.”
    When Ward, Marnie, and Johnny left, they departed with warm hugs and kisses but no understanding. Bentleys are supposed to be doers in life, not observers!
    To some extent Mom and Pop and Ward and Marnie were right about me. I was letting life pass me by. I was a recluse. But I was a happy recluse—until that late-May day.
    I wandered from room to room, Rainbow trailing behind. As I walked through the dining room, I thought of the time way back near the end of the lean years when Pop had decided he and Mom could afford new wallpaper, though they decided to save money by hanging it themselves.
    “Tess, straight! It’s got to be straight!”
    “Don’t you give me straight, John Seward Bentley, until you match that pattern like you’re supposed to. And look! You cut that piece too short. We’re going to have to buy another roll.”
    I remembered the fat little paperhanger who had finally been called, a man I had looked upon as a marriage saver. And I remembered Mom and Pop standing in the freshly hung room, arms about each other, smiling in shared pleasure that they could finally afford something as wonderful as new wallpaper and a paperhanger.
    In the kitchen I saw the stove Pop had gotten Mom even as she lay too ill to cook on it.
    “It’s the kind with no burners,” he told her as he kissed her pale cheek. “It’ll save you clean-up time.”
    The pain on his face as he leaned over her told me he knew she’d never use it. He just needed to do something concrete for her, something to bring some sort of control to a situation beyond his control.
    “John,” she whispered, knowing full well that the gift was a Band-Aid on a hemorrhage. “I love you.”
    I came to Pop’s office with its walls of plaques, commendations, and awards for his years of business achievement and community service. I looked at the neat, cleared desktop holding only his pictures of a young Mom and the last one taken of the whole family before her illness. I knew all the drawers were ordered or empty. Ward and Mr. Havens had taken away everything important and disposed of the rest. I missed Pop’s shaggy stacks of magazines, papers, bank statements, investment newsletters, and motivational quotes—the stacks that had driven Mom crazy.
    “John,” she’d storm, hand on her hip, “you have the most unsightly, pack-rat habits of anyone I know. One of these days I’m going to clean up this mess, and then you’ll be sorry.”
    “Tess,” Pop would answer, “did I ever tell you you’re beautiful when you’re mad?”
    “Don’t you beautiful me, John Seward Bentley!” she’d say. “Clean up your room!”
    “Or you won’t give me my allowance?” he’d reply, walking up behind her and nuzzling her neck.
    “John, stop that! The children are watching!” But her frown, never very serious to begin with, would show signs of severe strain.
    “Let them,” he’d say. “And they’ll know what God meant marriage to be.” He’d turn her in his arms and kiss her thoroughly, and she’d cuddle against him, smiling happily.
    Maybe they were why I write romances. I’d seen what real love was.
    Once, about ten years ago, I’d gone to Mom and Pop’s bedroom. I needed to talk to Mom about something long forgotten. I knocked on the door and she called, “Come in.”
    I opened