CHAPTER ONE
Pa was home: the rising rattle of the motor became louder before shuddering off underneath Mandy and Jolee’s bedroom window. There was only one slam of a door—only one occupant. Mandy could hear him as he stumbled in through the door, heavy boots pounding across the bare floors of the house.
His footfalls trembled into the room, rattling the pictures that sat on the dresser. Mandy began praying under her breath, digging her fingers into her tattered quilt, pulling it around herself. She shifted to her side, gazing over to the sleeping form in the bed next to hers.
“Jolee? Jolee, are you awake?” she asked. The soft rise and fall of the covers gave the appearance that her little sister was sleeping. Sleep had eluded Mandy. She had spent the last hours squeezing her eyes shut and trying to clear her mind. But she knew.
She knew when she came home from school and Pa’s old pickup truck was missing from its spot next to the porch that there was going to be trouble. It had happened every time before. Mandy furrowed her brow, thinking of how Jolee had held out hope.
“Maybe he’s just working late. Got caught up at the repair shop,” Jolee had said, squinting her eyes against the sunlight.
Mandy frowned at her and nodded. “Let’s hope so. But he probably went drinking. Happens all the time,” Mandy had said. She placed her hand on the small of Jolee’s back and moved up the porch steps.
“Hope the sheriff don’t bring him home this time,” Jolee had said before bouncing across the wooden floor.
The Secret Keepers Description:
Mandy and Jolee may live with their father Dale—but they can only rely on each other and Mrs. Mattern, the widow who lives next door. Dale is an erratic, sometimes violent drunk. The girls’ mother is dead, and a distant grandmother is their only other relation.
Hidden in Mrs. Mattern’s possession is a gold box belonging to the girls’ mother, a box containing a secret that only Mrs. Mattern and the Reverend Johnson know but one which deeply concerns the two sisters.
When an act of violence drives Mandy and Jolee from their South Carolina home, the sisters seek out the grandmother who abandoned them…only to discover a long-kept family secret.
