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In 1977, pregnant Genevieve Russell disappeared. Twenty years later, her remains are discovered and Timothy Gleason is charged with murder. But there is no sign of the unborn child.
CeeCee Wilkes knows how Genevieve Russell died, because she was there. And she knows what happened to her missing infant, because two decades ago she made the devastating choice to raise the baby as her own. Now Timothy Gleason is facing the death penalty, and she has another choice to make. Tell the truth and destroy her family. Or let an innocent man die in order to protect a lifetime of lies.
- Sales Rank: #28066 in Books
- Brand: Mira
- Published on: 2016-05-17
- Released on: 2016-05-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.99" h x 1.19" w x 5.28" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 496 pages
Review
"The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes will pull you in, make you laugh, make you cry, and make you question the known. It is full or surprises and captivating plot twists all the way until the very last page. If you are looking for a book to travel with this summer, The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes is a must read." -Examiner
"A complex, heart-wrenching tale, Chamberlain's latest novel...offers a Jodi Picoult–like story line yanked from the most shocking of headlines. ...[The] frankness of each scene and character should grab readers and keep them eagerly turning pages right up to the startling climax."
-Booklist on The Midwife's Confession
Complex, credible characterization....Even readers who are not already fans will sympathize with the flawed but caring people [Chamberlain] compassionately evokes." -Publishers Weeklyon Her Mother's Shadow
"Bestselling novelist Chamberlain returns with yet another heart- wrenching story about lost loves and the risks people take to save those they deeply care about." -RT Book Reviewson The Good Father
About the Author
Diane Chamberlain is the bestselling author of twenty novels, including The Midwife's Confession and The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes. Diane lives in North Carolina and is currently at work on her next novel. Visit her Web site at www.dianechamberlain.com and her blog at www.dianechamberlain.com/blog and her Facebook page at www.facebook.com/Diane.Chamberlain.Readers.Page.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Raleigh, North Carolina
SHE COULDN'T CONCENTR ATE ON MAKING LOVE. No matter how tenderly or passionately or intimately Ken touched her, her mind was miles away. It was a little after five on Tuesday afternoon, the time they protected from meetings or dinner with friends or anything else that might interfere with their getting together, and usually Corinne relished the lovemaking with her fiancé. Today, though, she wanted to fast-forward to the pillow talk. She had so much to say.
Ken rolled off her with a sigh, and she saw him smile in the late-afternoon light as he rested his hand on her stomach. Did that mean something? Smiling with his hand on her belly? She hoped so but didn't dare ask him. Not yet. Ken loved the afterglow—the slow untangling of their limbs and the gradual return to reality—so she would have to be patient. She stroked her fingers through his thick, ash-blond hair as she waited for his breathing to settle down. Their baby was going to beautiful, no doubt about it.
"Mmm," Ken purred as he nuzzled her shoulder. Thin bands of light slipped into the room through the blinds, leaving luminous stripes on the sheet over his legs. "I love you, Cor."
"I love you, too." She wrapped her arm around him, trying to sense if he was alert enough to listen to her. "I did something amazing today," she began. "Two somethings, actually."
"What did you do?" He sounded interested, if not quite awake.
"First, I took the 540 to work."
His head darted up from his pillow. "You did?"
"Uh-huh."
"How was it?"
"Excellent." She'd had sweaty palms the whole time, but she'd managed. For the past few years, she'd taught fourth grade in a school eight miles from their house, and she'd never once had the courage to take the expressway to get there. She'd stuck to the tiny back roads, curling her way through residential neighborhoods, dodging cars as they backed out of driveways. "It took me about ten minutes to get to work," she said. "It usually takes me forty."
"I'm proud of you," he said. "I know how hard that must have been to do."
"And then I did another amazing thing," she said.
"I haven't forgotten. Two things, you said. What other amazing thing did you do?"
"I went on the field trip to the museum with my class, instead of staying at school like I'd planned."
"Now you're scaring me," he teased. "Are you on some new drug or something?"
"Am I remarkable or what?" she asked.
"You are definitely the most remarkable woman I know." He leaned over to kiss her."You're my brave,beautiful,red-haired girl."
She'd walked inside the museum as though she did it every day of the week, and she bet no one knew that her heart was pounding and her throat felt as though it was tightening around her windpipe. She guarded her phobias carefully. She could never let any of her students' parents—or worse, her fellow teachers—know.
"Maybe you're trying to do too much too fast," Ken said. She shook her head."I'm on a roll," she said."Tomorrow, I plan to step into the elevator at the doctor's office. Just step into it," she added hastily. "I'll take the stairs. But stepping into it will be a first step. So to speak. Then maybe next week, I'll take it up a floor." She shuddered at the thought of the elevator doors closing behind her, locking her in a cubicle not much bigger than a coffin.
"Pretty soon you won't need me anymore."
"I'm always going to need you." She wondered how serious he was with that statement. It was true that she needed Ken in ways most people didn't need a partner. He was the driver anytime they traveled more than a few miles from home. He was her rescuer when she'd have a panic attack in the supermarket, standing in the middle of an aisle with a full cart of groceries. He was the one holding on to her arm as he guided her through the mall or the Concert Hall or wherever they happened to be when her heart started pounding."I would just like to not need you that way. And I have to do this, Ken. I want that job."
She'd been offered a position that would start the following September, training teachers in Wake County to use a reading curriculum in which she'd become expert. That meant driving. A lot of driving. There would be six-lane highways to travel and bridges to cross and elevators she would have no choice but to ride. September was nearly a year away, and she was determined to have her fears mastered by then.
"Kenny."She pulled closer to him,nervous about the topic she was about to broach. "There's something else we really need to talk about."
His muscles tightened ever so slightly beneath her hands. "The pregnancy," he said.
She hated when he called it the pregnancy. She guessed she'd misread his smile earlier. "About the baby," she said. "Right."
He let out a sigh. "Cor, I've thought about it and I just don't think it's the right time. Especially with you starting a new job next year. How much stress do you need?"
"It would work out," she said. "The baby's due in late May. I'd take the end of the year off and have the summer to get used to being a mom and find day care and everything." She smoothed her hand over her stomach. Was it her imagination or was there already a slight slope to her belly? "We've been together so long," she continued. "It just doesn't make sense for me to have an abortion when I'm almost twenty-seven and you're thirty-eight and we can afford to have a child." She didn't say what else she was thinking: Of course, we'd have to get married. Finally. They'd been engaged and living together for four years, and if her pregnancy forced them to set a date, that was fine with her.
He gave her shoulders a squeeze, then sat up. "Let's talk about it later, okay?" he said.
"When?" she asked. "We can't keep putting this off."
"Later tonight," he promised.
She followed his gaze to the phone on the night table. The message light was blinking. He picked up the receiver and punched in their voice-mail code, then listened."Three messages," he said, hitting another button on the phone. The light in the room had grown dim, but she was still able to see him roll his eyes as he listened to the first message.
"Your mother," he said. "She says it's urgent."
"I'm sure." Corinne managed a laugh. Now that Dru had spilled the news of her pregnancy to their parents, she'd probably be getting urgent calls every day. Her mother had already e-mailed her to tell her that redheads were more prone to hemorrhaging after delivery. Thanks a heap, Mom. She hadn't bothered to reply. She hadn't spoken with her mother more than a few times in the past three years.
"There's one from Dru, too," Ken said."She says to call her the minute you get the message."
That was more worrisome. An urgent message from her mother was easy to ignore. From her sister, less so."I hope there's not anything wrong," she said, sitting up.
"They would have called you on your cell if it was so important," he said, still holding the phone to his ear.
"True." She got out of bed and pulled on her short green robe, then picked up her phone from the dresser and turned it on."Except, I didn't have my cell on today because of the field trip, so—"
"What the—" Ken frowned as he listened to another message.
"What the hell are you talking about?" He shouted into the phone. Glancing at his watch, he walked across the room to turn on the television.
"What's going on?" Corinne watched him click through the channels until he reached WIGH, the Raleigh station for which he was a reporter. "That was a message from Darren," he said, as he punched another phone number into the receiver."He's kicking me off the Gleason story."
"What?" She was incredulous. "Why?"
"He said it was for obvious reasons, like I should know what the hell he's talking about." He looked at his watch again and she knew he was waiting for the six-o'clock news. "Come on, come on," he said to the television or the phone—or maybe both."Give me Darren!" he yelled into the receiver. "Well, where is he?" He hung up and started dialing again.
"They can't pull you off that story," she said."That would be so unfair after all the work you've done on it." The Gleason story was his baby. He'd even attracted national attention for it. People were talking about him being a candidate for the Rosedale Award.
"Darren said,'Did you know about this?' like I've been keeping something from him." Ken ran his fingers through his hair. "Oh, don't give me your damn voice mail," he said into the phone.
"Dammit." She felt his impatience as he waited to leave a message.
"What the hell do you mean, I'm off the Gleason story?" he shouted. "Call me!"
He tossed the receiver onto the bed, then pounded the top of the television with his fist as though he could make the news come on sooner through force. "I don't believe this," he said. "When I left the courthouse today, the jury hadn't sentenced him yet and they were supposed to reconvene tomorrow. Maybe I heard it wrong. Maybe I missed the sentencing. Damn!"
Corinne looked down at the cell phone in her hand as she cycled through the list of callers."I have five messages,all from my parents' house," she said. Something was wrong. "I'd better call—"
"Shh," Ken said, turning up the volume as the brassy theme music introduced the news, and anchorman Paul Provost appeared on the screen.
"Good evening, Triangle," Paul said, referring to the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. "Just hours before Timothy Gleason was to be sentenced for the 1977 murder of Genevieve Russell and her unborn child, a shocking revelation shed doubt on his guilt."
"What?" Ken stared at the TV.
Footage of a small arts-and-crafts-style bungalow filled the screen. The roof looked wet from a recent rain, and the trees were lush, the leaves just starting to turn.
"Is that…?" Corinne pressed her hand to her mouth. She knew exactly how the air smelled in the small front yard of the house. It would be thick and sweet with the damp arrival of autumn.
"Oh, my God."
Through the front door, a middle-aged woman limped onto the porch. She looked small and tired. And she looked scared.
"What the hell is going on?" Ken...
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Heartbreaking and Courageous Read
By Lizzie McComas
The book started out slow for me. And then it escalated VERY rapidly. It was like a book on steroids.
***SPOILERS***
I found it difficult to believe that a girl would say yes to kidnapping someone for a man she loves (that she only recently had gotten to "know"). I suppose stranger things have happened, though. After the actual kidnapping and when "real life" begins with the baby, that's when the book REALLY captured my attention.
I don't exactly know what it is about the book that is so spellbounding. There's fear, deceit, love, "strangulation", severe phobias, courage, and finally...truth. This book is heartbreaking to me. The beginning made me so angry, but the middle to the end broke my heart completely. It's amazing how you can feel compassion and a sort of understanding for a criminal.
I really recommend this book. I read it all night long because I couldn't put it down. See what it does for you. Like it, love it, or hate it, I think this is the type of book that makes you really think and it stays with you.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
LOVABLE BUT FLAWED CHARACTERS....
By Laurel-Rain Snow
CeeCee Wilkes was a vulnerable, sixteen-year-old girl who had lived in foster homes after the death of her mother when she was twelve.
The letters she carried with her, the ones her mother had written to serve as a guide to her as she matured, would be her only touchstone. But nothing in her mother's letters or the life she'd lived could have prepared her for the charming, manipulative Tim Gleason.
The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes begins with a prologue in the present, with a young woman named Corinne, who watches as the woman she knew as her mother confesses a horrendous secret in front of TV cameras.
We then flash back to 1977, and to an event that changed CeeCee's life forever.
In alternating narratives told by Corinne, by CeeCee, and then Eve Elliott, the persona she took on while in hiding, we learn about the fear and vulnerability the young girl faced one terrible night in a remote cabin, and how she spent the next period of her life in hiding. And tried over the years to be the best mother she could be to the baby she "stole" in order to protect her.
What really happened in that remote cabin? What would finally bring the truth out? What price would CeeCee (Eve) have to pay for telling her story? And how would Corinne bury the bitterness and anger she feels in order to reach out to the woman she knew as her mother?
This was a story that spotlighted many issues of morality and choice, and which allows the reader to root for CeeCee despite her wrong choices. I could not stop reading or caring about the characters, flawed though they were. I loved this story and would recommend it for all who enjoy family stories and for those who are fans of Chamberlain. 5.0 stars.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Interesting read
By S. A.
This is an OK book. Reads more like an action movie. It is not a literary sensation.
The book tells the story of a 16-year old Cee Cee Wilkes that gets caught up in unfortunate events and her life changes forever. Later in her life she makes decisions that affect not only her life, but lives of people very close to her. The reader goes through an emotional roller coaster and a love-hate relationship with Cee Cee and several characters in the book. The author introduces concepts and characters that seem to be good in concept but end up in bead actions and it is not always easy to understand why. It is a captivating story ( as someone else suggested , good airplane read) but not a 5 star, because of the following reasons;
-I bought the Kindle version and I have not seen the hard copy, so this might be just the kindle version. But there were a lot of typos that I found odd. I hoped someone would have edited the e-version!
-As clever as the plot is, there are some unanswered questions and confusing parts. Why does Bets make that last decision (I am not telling what, not to spoil the book). That did not make sense at all. How did Corinne develop those phobias? I did not get what the author meant by "over-protection". To me, Cee Cee or Eva did what every mother would have done. Seemed like she was the same loving and caring mother to Dru that she was to Cory. There is perhaps just one reference by the husband to suggest otherwise. The author could have done a better job in explaining Cory's character to the reader. Perhaps a few more pages could have written on Cory's childhood and her relationship with Eva. There are also other questions, like How come the police never became suspicious of Cee Cee who suddenly left the town? -What happened to all those who helped her and she named them all? -How did all those working for SCAPE , who was supposedly a good cause, agree to be tangled in a mess that includes death of another person? And neither them , nor cee cee never question that? and most important of all, it did not make sense at all to put her in charge of what happened in the Cabin. For people who had such a huge plot, it was stupid to put a 16-year old in charge and let her control the outcome of what they had plotted so carefully!
All in all this is an interesting book with an engaging plot. Once you start, it will be hard to put it down, but you have to be prepared to ignore some flaws.
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