Title: The Secrets We Keep

Author: Rick R. Reed

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: July 6, 2020

Length: 61200

Genre: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, MM romance, family drama, age-gap, men over 40, celebrities, family estrangement

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Synopsis

Jasper Warren is a happy-go-lucky young man in spite of the tragedy that’s marred his life. He’s on a road to nowhere with his roommate, Lacy, whom he adores, and a dead-end retail job in Chicago.

And then everything changes in a single night. Though Jasper doesn’t know it, his road is going somewhere after all. This time when tragedy strikes, it brings with it Lacy’s older, wealthy, sexy uncle Rob. Despite the heart-wrenching circumstances, an immediate connection forms between the two men.

But the secrets between them test their attraction. Will their revelations destroy the bloom of new love… or encourage it to grow?

The Secrets We Keep: My Inspiration

A Guest Post by Rick R. Reed

 

“The killings inside Mr. Tweed’s ramshackle shop at 759 Dresden Ave. on July 30 stunned the city, destroyed one family, damaged another and, as the decades passed with no arrest, took on the status of an urban legend.”

 

So begins an article from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that details a horrific crime that happened the summer I was fifteen in my hometown of East Liverpool, Ohio. I still remember the brutal case vividly. In our small town, a triple homicide, especially one so cruel, in which an old man, a young woman, her unborn child and her little girl, was the stuff of nightmares.

 

This is the basis for the back story of my younger main character, Jasper Warren. The crime makes him who he is today. It’s an odd inspiration, but I think one that works.

 

To read the whole news story, go here: https://www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2011/01/03/Documentary-details-Ohio-cold-case-from-1973/stories/201101030181

 

And here’s, partly, how I worked the crime into my fictional story:

 

 

When Jasper was a little boy, he’d often slide into his father’s queen-size bed on early weekend mornings when Dad left to go downstairs to make them a typical weekend breakfast—bacon cooked up in the old cast-iron skillet and then eggs fried in the grease. If it was summertime, he’d slice a tomato or two from his garden to accompany the bacon and eggs.

They’d eat while Dad read the paper and Jasper watched him, hoping for a word or two.

Those breakfasts were one of the few happy memories Jasper had of his childhood.

So was the smell of Old Spice on a still-warm pillowcase. For some reason, it made the little boy Jasper feel secure, safe—and those feelings were precious in the Warren household. The warm pillowcase and the scent were like a longed-for embrace.

Now, he couldn’t imagine why he’d awaken on this important morning reminded of the smell of his father on a pillowcase.

Unless it was the dream he was having upon awakening?

Fractured images came to him. Blood on an old plaid couch. A pair of upholstery shears on a dirty floor. A grainy newspaper photo showing a crowd gathered outside Thomas’s Used Furniture on Sixth Avenue in downtown Haddonfield, Illinois, Jasper’s hometown.

That newspaper image chilled him. He knew why. It haunted him to this day. It wasn’t just a story in a small-town rag; it was the destruction of his family.

He sat up, stomach grumbling, head pounding.

Even though he couldn’t remember much more about the dream, he could remember what inspired it.

When Jasper was seven years old, his pregnant mother, Mo, short for Maureen, and his baby sister, Sara, were brutally murdered in that used-furniture store one sweltering August afternoon, along with the proprietor, an older man with the comical name of Dick Popp. All three had been stabbed to death with a pair of upholstery shears. The store’s cash register and safe had been emptied. The day had been hot, with temperatures in the nineties and humidity to match. Not many people were out and about, but his mom had been, hoping to find a decent used baby carriage for cheap. People always said she was in “the wrong place at the wrong time” as no one in their little town would have a motive for slaughtering a sweet, young, and pregnant mother and her little girl. It nearly defied belief.

No one had seen or heard a thing. Later, there were a couple of reports of two men running down an alley behind the store. That was it as far as the culprits were concerned. As time went on, the descriptions of the men became more fanciful—there were bloodstains on their clothes; they were high on drugs; they were Satanists, cannibals, escapees from a lunatic asylum; they were white, black, Hispanic…

When he got older, Jasper would come to visit that alley one day to examine its brick surface, with weeds sprouting from the mortar, futilely hoping against hope that a clue might remain. He tried to imagine the killers. Did they feel remorse? Who could do such a thing?

Ultimately, no one was ever caught for the tragic and horrifying crime, although to this day, theories and gossip surrounding the crime still floated around the small town. It was a good spooky story to tell around a campfire. Some believed the murderers were still at large. Some said they were dead. Others attributed many, many unsolved crimes over the years to whomever had snuffed out the lives of Jasper’s family.

Except it wasn’t just a story for Jasper and his dad. The crime, which had probably taken only minutes to perpetrate, echoed through their years together, marring their very lives with an ugly rust-colored stain.

That summer day it was as though Dad had died too.

 

 

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Real Men. True Love.

Rick R. Reed is an award-winning and bestselling author of more than fifty works of published fiction. He is a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Entertainment Weekly has described his work as “heartrending and sensitive.” Lambda Literary has called him: “A writer that doesn’t disappoint…” Find him at www.rickrreedreality.blogspot.com. Rick lives in Palm Springs, CA, with his husband, Bruce, and their fierce Chihuahua/Shiba Inu mix, Kodi.

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