Sky's the Limit
Copyright© 2026 by aroslav
Chapter 16: Keeping the Secret
THERESA CALLUM was an attractive five-seven brunette. That should have been my first clue something was wrong. I’d never seen Brent with someone who wasn’t blonde. Of course, I didn’t associate that at first. Even Brent could expand his horizons. But Debbie wasn’t so liberal. She hadn’t seemed upset by Theresa’s presence on Brent’s other side at all.
We’d all chuckled that she’d been demoted to Matthew’s nanny and replaced at Brent’s side. Debbie wasn’t the kind to take that without a fight. She’d spent five years getting inside the Drake family as Brent’s lover, David’s emissary to the planning council, and maybe Matthew’s caretaker. Yet she didn’t see Theresa as a threat.
For everything I should have suspected, there was just one thing ringing through my head: How could she claim to be me?
Theresa was making her way to the dais and I was half standing at the table, staring at Pearl and Ruby. I wanted to object, but I didn’t want to be revealed to the twins.
“That can’t be!” I said as I sat back down in my seat. The twins turned to look at me.
“Thank you,” Theresa said as she reached for the certificate from Pat and Marge.
“I object!” came a voice from the table where Pat and Marge had been sitting with the six judges. I looked over and saw Professor Dirkson from the university standing. He started toward the dais. “That is not Jan Winslow!”
There was quite a stir in the room as people started questioning each other regarding who this was and who was claiming to be the author. Voices kept getting louder until Pat took the microphone from Pearl.
“Your attention please,” he said, trying to gain some semblance of order from the room. “None of us expected Ms. Winslow to be present this evening. We’re happy to have her. But this is Professor Dirkson from the university. He was one of the final judges in our fiction competition. Professor Dirkson, are you objecting to the award going to Ms. Winslow? I believe you selected her manuscript yourself.”
“He wants to go back on his judgment?” Brent shouted. “That’s not fair. This competition must have been rigged!”
That declaration set a new storm of comments in motion among the audience. A couple people stood and headed toward the door.
“Nothing was rigged in the competition!” Ruby shouted back at Brent. “None of us even knew the outcome until Pearl opened the envelope.”
“Were other categories rigged, too?” Debbie insisted from next to Brent. “We’ve known Theresa was Jan Winslow since the preliminary voting. How dare you cast doubt on her identity?”
“Please, let Professor Dirkson clarify what he has objected to,” Pat said, handing the microphone to my professor.
“I can attest that this is not Jan Winslow, or if she claims that identity, she is not the Jan Winslow who wrote this manuscript,” he said.
“Then who is?” someone shouted.
Professor Dirkson looked directly at me and all I could do was close my eyes and shake my head. I definitely didn’t want to be outed like this. He got the message.
“Let me simply ask this woman when and how she got the idea for To Have and To Kill,” he said.
“I just thought it would be a fun idea to have a romantic mystery,” she said. “I’d have two people fall in love and meet in a hotel, but only one would come out. I won’t say which one because I don’t want to give any spoilers.”
She could have read that off the slide Ruby had prepared with a one-line blurb for the book on the cover. But people seemed to shift toward her.
“If this is how the contest is judged, I want to remove my manuscript from TBR Publishing and take it elsewhere!” Melanie said from David’s table.
That stung. This could both damage our company reputation and destroy a property that could make the company money. Dirkson looked at me again and then cleared his throat.
“And when did you write this fabulous novel—and I must say, there was never a doubt in any of our minds that it was a winner,” he said.
“Oh, a year or so ago. It came easily once I had the concept down.”
I thought she must actually be a writer to be able to talk so glibly about the process. I’d conceived the idea seven years before while I was still a student. Of course, Dirkson would remember my short story.
“It so happens that I had Jan Winslow in one of my creative writing classes at the university seven years ago,” he said. “He, and I emphasize that Jan is male, wrote a short story with this same title. We talked extensively about how he could develop it into a full novel. It was easy to see his style and the plot points we outlined.”
“You should have disqualified yourself as a judge,” David said.
It was becoming clear to me that the primary reason the Drakes were at the awards banquet was to cast a shadow over our competition and destroy our reputation. It was even clearer when Melanie stood beside him.
“I want to withdraw my manuscript from the competition,” she shouted. “I will return the certificate and decline payment. I thought I was entering a fair competition, not one where the judges were already bought off.”
“Cancel the awards!” someone called out. People picked it up as a chant.
None of these people had read the entire manuscript. We read it in the family and the two judges of the category had read it. Otherwise, there were no copies. Of course, I had a copy as each author had a copy of his or her manuscript. I certainly didn’t give it to anyone else.
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