Keepsake Read Free

Was
     this when he was president? Did you meet him, too?”
    “I met him, sure,” April said. She adjusted her skirt, tucking her blouse in more smoothly, and straightened the name tag
     that was pinned to the lapel of her suit jacket. April Harrington, it read. Bookseller,
Poison Pen Bookshop,
Boston, MA. “I was never very nice to him, though. One day I told him that both he and my mother were going to hell.” She
     smiled. “I was a judgmental kid.”
    Maggie came out of her stall, smoothing her red dress down around her generous hips. “What was he like?” she asked, joining
     April at the mirror. The name tag on Maggie McKay’s chest identified her as a bookseller from Somerville, MA, where she specialized
     in romance novels. She and April had met at a New England Booksellers Association conference four years before and become
     close friends. “Was he as sexy as everyone says?”
    “God, Maggie, I was only nine years old. Besides, I was very angry with him. He had been my hero—as he was to so many of us
     in those days. I’d looked up to him, respected him, adored him. I watched the Kennedys on television and yearned for a family
     just like theirs. Then I found out he was sleeping with my mother, and I hated him for that. It wasn’t common knowledge in
     those days that he was a philanderer. I’d believed, like everybody else, in the Camelot myth of the perfect marriage to Jackie,
     the darling children, the American dream. When that was shattered, well… I just didn’t understand.”
    “So it was a relationship? Your mother saw him more than once or twice?”
    “Oh, yes. My mother was quite a woman and this was quite a coup. She wasn’t one to let go of such a golden opportunity.”
    “This is an incredible story, April!” Maggie said. “I can’t believe you never told me this before.”
    With a flick of her wrist April replaced her lipstick. Shepursed her lips to even the color, trying to concentrate on the mundane task she was performing. But her stomach was churning
     and her palms were sweaty. There were a lot of things she had never told Maggie, not only about her mother, but also about
     herself.
    “We moved to Washington.” She took a tube of mascara from her purse to touch up her lashes. She opened it, then changed her
     mind and put the tube away. She always made a mess with mascara. “She saw him off and on for the next several months. She
     was good. ‘Always sleep with the top dog’ was my mother’s motto. Once she got him, a man didn’t want out on Rina, even if
     he was president of the United States.”
    “Wow,” Maggie said again. “In all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never even mentioned your mother.”
    April caught her eye in the mirror. “I haven’t mentioned her because she abandoned me when I was twelve years old to follow
     her newest lover—a Frenchman whom she met through her association with Kennedy—back home to Paris. She promised to send for
     me. She never did.”
    Maggie nodded, her dark eyes sympathetic. The woman with the severe chignon nodded, too. She had been taking an inordinately
     long time to wash and dry her perfectly manicured hands. Now, picking up her own pile of convention material, which was topped
     by the latest celebrity biography, she turned to April and said, “Pardon me, but I couldn’t help overhearing.” She considered
     the name tag on April’s lapel, then said, “You’re the mystery expert, aren’t you? April Harrington? I saw the piece about
     you in
Publishers Weekly
a couple of months ago.”
    “Well, it’s our readers who are the real experts,” April said. “All we do is try to cater to their tastes with a broad selection
     of new and classic mystery novels.”
    “Is your mother still alive?” the woman asked. She obyiouslywasn’t interested in the mystery bookselling business. “If so, she should do a book.” She reached into her purse and pulled
     out a card, which she extended to April. Sandra