SLAY PAIRS WITH ROSE (The Kelly's Deli Cozy Murder Mysteries Book 3) by Sophie Brent (phonics reading books .txt) 📕

“Emma’s mother used to work in my dad’s accountancy firm. She was the office manager and made sure everything worked smoothly, which was not always the easiest of jobs. My mum had just been made a partner in a law firm in the city and was working crazy hours to keep up with the extra workload that came with the new responsibility. I knew that my dad was a typical workaholic accountant but having two parents who were totally obsessed with their careers is a hard thing to deal with for any child.”

“I know what that feels like! Bottom line. You spent a lot of time on your own.” Erin asked, urging Fiona to carry on speaking.

Fiona nodded. “I was sent away to boarding school when I was nine and only came home for the school holidays. Apart from two weeks of awkward silences in some sunny place, getting to know them again, I was usually left in my dad’s office and told to work on a school project and not to get in the way.”

She smiled up at Erin. “I knew Emma’s mother as Mrs. Jenny Lucas. I think that she felt sorry for me and used to make sure that I was fed and looked after while my dad was working.  We chatted over meals and walks in the park. Over time, she told me that she was divorced and had a little girl of her own who was my age, who was staying with her grandparents over the school holidays. I liked Mrs. Lucas very much.”

Fiona paused and started chewing her lower lip. “And…so did my dad. In other ways.”

“Your dad and Jenny Lucas. Ah. Right. Got it. So, her little girl...”

“Was Emma Lucas. My half-sister,” Fiona nodded. “My father had insisted that his name was kept off the birth certificate or any other legal document. But she was his daughter. There’s no doubt about it. They had been seeing one another for years before she fell pregnant.”

“How did you find out?”

Fiona pushed up from the soft mattress and walked over to the bedroom window to watch the pedestrians stroll along the street outside in blissful ignorance of the torment raging inside that room.

“You know what it is like at university. There are so many new things to deal with and people to meet. I had just started my accountancy degree and the first term was tough!”

“I remember,” Erin laughed. “I thought that I would never be on top of all of the project work and essays and assignments that we had to complete by Christmas. To be honest, it was mad.”

“Mad. Yes, that just about describes it. But just when I thought that I was coping, there was a knock on my door one evening and one of the girls in my class was standing there. She said that her name was Emma Lucas and she wondered if I was any relation to Eric Hanson because her mother Jenny Lucas used to work for him.  Well, of course, I invited her in, and we got talking, and that’s when it all came out.” Her words were shuddering stops and starts. “My dad… and her mother.”

Erin walked a few steps closer to Fiona and wrapped her hand around the hot thin fingers of the desperately lonely woman who had lost a sister.

“I always wanted a sister to share my life,” Erin murmured, “but it was not to be. I think that’s why I appreciate my friends like Zoe, Prisha, and Carol.”

Fiona turned and looked at Erin for a moment with a gentle smile on her face.

“I know just what you mean. I made tons of friends at boarding school, but Ethan, Harry and Maya will always be the people who are there for me, no matter what. I wanted to be closer to Zoe, you know,” Fiona whispered, “But she said she already had one bundle of trouble to deal with.  Her school friend, Erin Kelly.”

Erin smiled back in the bright sunshine.

“I take that as a compliment, but we are very different people.  Zoe is capable of giving unconditional loyalty to her friends and family.  I’m not sure that I am.”

Fiona turned back to stare out through the open window as the sound of cars and pedestrians filtered up from the street and then nodded slowly.

“You can’t imagine how I felt to be told by a total stranger that I had a half-sister that I didn’t know existed. Shock. Anger. Resentment. Oh yes, all of those things. A sister was the one thing that I had always longed for, just like you. I felt betrayed by my parents, Erin. Betrayed because of some old-fashioned and ridiculous sense of shame.”

“Did you ask your mother about Emma?”

“Of course. I actually called Emma a liar to her face and said that she must have made a mistake. How could they keep a secret daughter from me? That was a totally ridiculous idea.”

Fiona’s voice was trembling, and Erin took a tighter hold of her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“There was no mistake. I came home from university that weekend and told my mother about this mad girl who had knocked on my hall of residence door and introduced herself as my sister. I remember sitting at the kitchen table joking about how ridiculous that was, until I noticed that my mum wasn’t laughing. She was crying.”

Fiona turned to look at Erin with tears streaming down her cheeks.

“My mother always knew about Emma, but she refused to talk about it.  My dad couldn’t bear to see the damage that he had caused in so many lives, so he paid the child maintenance and school fees for a little girl he knew nothing about. He even refused to see her or legally acknowledge that she was his.  Emma was the ghost.  The reminder that