33. Sisters and Secrets
33
Sisters and Secrets
Rose
I don’t know how I make it from the restaurant where everything exploded with Anton to the office building, but I do. From there, everything goes from bad to worse.
My dad fires me.
In front of the whole team.
And in front of Queen Della, who is there via video conference.
By the time I pull into the driveway of The Downer, there’s a trail of teardrops and snot running from my eyes and nose and dripping off my chin. I didn’t think it was possible for one person to produce so many facial secretions, but I’m about to set a world record.
I fumble with my keys at the front door. My fingers are freezing, and the snot on my face turns frozen in the sub-zero temperature. I finally get the door open and tumble inside. It’s pitch black, and I don’t bother with the lights. I drop my bag of stuff and walk aimlessly toward the couch. I flop down, grab a throw pillow that Poppy picked out when she lived here and cling to it as a fresh wave of emotions crashes over me.
The front door bangs open, and I scream.
“Rosie. It’s us.” Poppy’s voice slices through my haze, and when one of them hits the lights, I make out the forms of both my sisters. “We were next door and saw you come in.”
They flank me on the couch. Poppy immediately puts her arms around me and holds me to her in a motherly hug. Noli holds out a tissue, making me cry even harder .
I don’t know how long I go on for, but they sit there with me, holding me, rubbing my back, not asking me what’s going on. I love them so much for it that there’s a deep ache in my chest.
When I finally come up from my tears for air, they stare at me with concerned expressions. Their blue eyes, so similar to mine, search my face for answers to unasked questions.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Poppy asks quietly.
“I really don’t.” My voice is hoarse from the sobbing.
“It might help,” Noli says after a second. “It’s something I’m learning in therapy. Naming my anxieties and issues takes some of the power out of them and puts it back in my hands.”
I let my head rest back on the couch. “I’ve ruined everything.”
“What do you mean?” Poppy asks.
“Everything with Anton,” I begin. “And with my job.”
Noli frowns. “What happened at Mood Reader?”
I shake my head. “Not that job.”
Poppy cocks her head to the side. “What are you talking about?”
I scrub my hands over my face. “I haven’t been honest with you both. When I tell you this, you’re going to hate me too…like everyone else.”
“Not true,” Noli says at the same time Poppy says, “We would never.”
“What if I told you I’ve been in touch with Dad for the past decade?” I blurt.
My sisters go still. The only sound in The Downer is the hum of the furnace.
“You’ve…been in touch with Dad?” Poppy asks slowly. “Our dad?”
I nod once. “Not just in touch with him. I’ve been working for him.”
Noli leans back. “What are you talking about?”
“Dad is the head of a private security and intelligence agency. I’ve been one of his agents since I graduated high school. ”
Now that the truth is out there, I plow ahead. I tell them everything. How our father recruited me after I graduated high school. How he trained me in self-defense, intelligence gathering, and undercover work. How I moved up the chain from small, odd jobs to more significant ops.
“Anton was a job back in Mobile. I was tasked with gathering information on his life and patterns of behavior and reporting them back to the palace in Penwick,” I explain. As I spell it all out for them, what I did to him sounds manipulative and sketchy, and I hate myself all over again. He has every right to hate me too.
“I fell for him then, but I shouldn’t have,” I press on. “He was a job, and when the job was done, I was told I needed to remove myself from his life. I broke up with him.” I suck in a breath. “It nearly wrecked me, but I stayed busy. That was when I went overseas. I was assigned to another protection detail there.”
“You weren’t teaching English abroad?” Poppy asks, dumbfounded.
I shake my head. “That was my cover.”
“Oh my gosh, Rosie,” Noli breathes.
“Were you in danger?” Poppy squeaks.
“Not really. Not directly.” I hedge. “I’m very good at my job—or what was my job. I was fired tonight.”
I tell them about Anton and coming clean. About how that put me in breach of our contract. About how Dad was livid and so was the queen. And most of all, so was Anton.
“He doesn’t want anything to do with me.” My voice cracks. “I don’t blame him. I was dishonest. For his whole life, people have been telling him what he wants to hear or telling him what he needs to do. He never knows anyone’s motives and whether or not they’re pure. He trusted me, and I turned out to be everything he feared. I went from being someone he cared about to his worst nightmare.”
“You’re no one’s nightmare, Rosie.” Poppy starts stroking my hair .
I shake my head. “How can you even say that? I lied to you too.”
“Yeah. About that,” Noli huffs. “What the heck?”
Poppy reaches across me and swats her. “Not. The. Time.”
“Sorry,” Noli mumbles.
“No. I’m sorry.“ I start crying again. “I just…when Dad reached out, I was so hopeful for a connection with him. I thought he’d come around eventually and want to have a role in our family again. He got into the business because he was a loner. He didn’t have anything holding him back, and that worked to his advantage. I was the same way, so he taught me everything he knew. The whole time, I was waiting for an opening to try to get our family reconciliation going, but it never came. By that point, I was so far in the weeds of my secret life with his agency that I didn’t know how to get out. I’ve completely lost myself. I just morph into whatever my assignments require of me, and I don’t know which way is up anymore. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t deserve to be found.”
“Alright, let’s get one thing straight.” Noli’s calm voice pierces through the fog of my self-loathing and grief. “That is absolutely not true.”
“One hundred percent false,” Poppy puts in.
I start shaking my head, but Poppy reaches up and squeezes my cheeks between her hands, cutting me off. “You do, Rosie. You unquestionably deserve to be found.”
“Thank you,” I whisper. “I really went and ruined everything, but you guys are being so nice.”
“It doesn’t matter what you did,” Poppy shushes me. “With the whole secret-double-life thing, or with Anton, or with our father, or any of it.”
“Although, we’re definitely going to circle back to all of that because wow , I’m going to need details.“ Noli’s droll tone makes me chuckle in spite of myself.
Poppy shoots her a look. “Right now, you need to understand that your worth, who you are as a person, isn’t tied up in what you’ve done. You are inherently good. You have value because you’re a human being. That doesn’t go away because you got messed up in a job or a relationship.”
I want to believe her, but it’s going to take a lot of soul searching to regain a semblance of my own identity—and the belief that I’m not a complete screw-up and the worst person in the world.
“It feels a little like it does. I’m scared,” I whisper. “Who even am I?”
“That’s the beautiful thing, Rosie. You get to decide that,” Noli says.
“For starters,” Poppy leans in and hugs me, “remember that you are Rose Marie Kasper, and you are loved.”
She holds me close, and Noli strokes my hair, and I fall apart again. I don’t remember the last time someone took care of me. I’ve always felt like the outlier in our sister group. I love Poppy and Noli more than anything, but I’ve intentionally kept myself distanced from them because of my job. Now I don’t have to. Everything imploded, and honestly? It’s a relief.
Another bout of my tears makes me shake. I feel empty, but at the same time, in my emptiness, there’s a levity I haven’t felt in years. It’s like I cried out all the secrets, broke through the web of deception that had been shrouding my soul, and while all that’s left is open space, at least I’m finally clean.