Dirty Little Secret (Dirty #1) Read Free

sister, Julie, who was sixteen years older than I was, lived nearby, but had three kids of her own, and we’d never been close.
    Mom handed me a cup of coffee and gave me her usual dry kiss.  I braced myself for an observation on how I was getting too fat, or too thin, or that my shirt washed out my skin, or a comment on whatever it was that she currently didn’t approve of. 
    For the record, I would smile and take it, then move on, not just because I was cheerful and it was my birthday and the last week of spring semester, but because that was the nature of our relationship.
    Mom opened her mouth, “Those pants –“
    The doorbell rang, cutting her off, and I jumped up to answer it without being asked.  That’s the kind of daughter I’ve always been.  Dutiful.  Helpful.  Probably some other “fuls”, too, if I thought about it. 
    So I opened the door, smiled politely at the courier, confirmed that I was, indeed, Melissa Hanover, and signed on the digital dotted line. 
    Receiving mail at my parents’ house wasn’t unusual.  I never bothered to change my address when Shelby and I got our place, so it didn’t seem odd to receive a package there.  And of course, it was my birthday.  So I opened it right then. 
    Maybe I should’ve assumed that someone in some mailroom somewhere had mislabelled the envelope.  Numbers and charts and stuff that looked straight out of a TV crime lab jumped up from the page, meaning nothing to me.  But when I frowned and flipped over to page two, my own name caught and held my eye.  I zeroed in on it.
    I had to read the words three times before they made any kind of sense.
    Paternity test for Melissa Hanover, confirmed.
    My first instinct was utter puzzlement.  And maybe a small bit of disgust.  Had my mom had an aff air?  Because if she had, then…Eww.
    But the final page made things much more…I don’t want to say worse.  Interesting seems like too broad a descriptor.  Maybe the most accurate thing to say is that the words on that page made things much more daytime-talk-show-worthy.
    My sister – the long, lean, cheering machine, the super-mom with the hand-sewn Halloween costumes and the easy smile – was my mom.  My dad was some guy named Andrew Linozzo.
    To say the bomb dropped doesn’t accurately describe my feelings.  My knees gave way, and I landed with a thump in my mom’s marble foyer. (No, wait.  She was my grandmother, wasn’t she? How was I going to adjust to that?  Ever?)
    It took me several long minutes to pull myself together, and when I at last made my way back to the living room on shaking legs, and shoved the paperwork in her face, she just sipped her cappuccino and asked me to pass the sugar.
    “What is this?” I choked out.
    “Exactly what it looks like.”
    “It looks like I just walked into a soap opera.”
    For one second, my mom was speechless.  It was probably the most rebellious, sarcastic thing I’d ever said.  But I didn’t take it back or apologize.  I just waited.
    My mom sighed. “It’s not as sordid as you think. It was a practical decision intended to protect everyone’s best interests.”
    I tried to come up with a fair question.  One that wouldn’t challenge her logic.  Which was irrefutable as always.  I settled on the most obvious line of inquiry.
    “Who is Andrew Linozzo?”
    “Who was Andrew Linozzo,” she corrected. “He’s dead.”
    “ My father is dead ?”
    I do n’t know why that revelation hit me the way it did.  He was a man I had never met.  He was a man I never even knew existed. 
    Still, I slumped down onto the couch, and my mom finally seemed to notice that I wasn’t quite as blasé about the whole thing as she was.
    “He was not a father ,” she told me. “He was a deadbeat who seduced your sister when she was in her junior year of high school. He went to jail, where he unceremoniously died.”
    “That’s…” I trailed off, unable to find an appropriate word. “Sad.”