Introduction

For fans of stranger than truth stories, Sandy Schnakenburg is uncovering rattling and unprecedented revelations in this powerful memoir of love, secrets, and survival.

When Lee Metoyer is hired to be the new housekeeper, she has no idea that she’s about to become the anchor to a family in an abusive patriarch's home, setting a mystery in motion that will take decades to uncover. At the age of seventy-two, Lee falls ill and on her deathbed asks Sandy to write her story. The only problem is, Sandy doesn’t know the story.

Embarking on a quest to honor Lee’s final wishes, Sandy takes an emotional and thrilling journey, unveiling shocking truths not only about her beloved housekeeper but also her own upbringing. As she digs further, she learns that Lee came to her family’s sprawling estate in Barrington, IL, harboring a secret past. For decades, she’s been in hiding. But Lee is not the only one with secrets; Sandy’s quest forces her to grapple with her own family history as well, and to finally confront the effects of the psychological abuse she suffered as a child.

Both a chilling and exciting personal tale of love and survival, The Housekeeper’s Secret is a gripping saga that illuminates the resilience of the human spirit.

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Excerpt

On a cool autumn morning in October 1994, Mom stood whipping eggs at the marble-topped island in the kitchen. I was thirty-two years old, married, and living in Australia. I’d

moved out of my childhood home fifteen years earlier, but once a year I flew home to visit Mom and Lee. Even as Lee had become frailer, as she’d grown thinner and quieter, Mom had avoided talking about what we were both thinking. But that morning, she turned to me and said gently, “Sandy, why don’t you spend some time with Lee today? She won’t be with us much longer.”

Lee not with us. A world without Lee in it? It was almost unthinkable.

Walking down the steps to the lower level of the house, I heard the raspy wheeze of Lee’s breathing and the whispering hiss of the oxygen machine. I tiptoed down the hall like a teenager hoping not to get caught coming home after mid- night. The wall outside Lee’s bedroom was covered in cherished memories—framed photos documenting the nearly three decades she’d been with our family. Group shots near a concession stand at Wrigley Field. A Christmas photo of a joyful Lee dressed in her pristine white uniform, cradling her beloved Mr. Cub book. A picture of Lee propping me up when I was five and burdened by a full-length cast on my right leg. My First Communion photo with Lee and Mom on each side of me, this time with Lee the injured one, a stark white plaster cast running from her thigh to her foot.

Lee’s door was wide open, and she sat upright in bed, smiling. A tube traveled out of the oxygen tank, then split in two, and snaked to the back of her head and around to the front where two little tubes rested just inside her nostrils.

“Sandy,” she whispered, “come here and sit with me.”

I settled beside her on the light blue comforter, careful not to jostle her fragile frame. A slender beam of light shone through the little window in the corner, and my eyes darted to the dresser mirror where Lee’s most treasured photos were securely tucked in the space between the mirror and its frame. One photo of her beloved husband and another of their cherished little boy, both tragically taken from her in a devastating car wreck. She’d brought these precious mementos with her in 1965 when she first arrived to work for our family. Over the years, I must have studied the images hundreds of times, wish- ing I’d known the boy, wishing I could have played with him, wishing Lee had that husband to hold her hand. I thought, soon she’ll be reunited with them, the two souls she holds dearer than life.

Lee gently removed the oxygen tube from her nose and rested her frail hand on mine.

“Can I ask you something?” she whispered.

SANDRA SCHNAKENBURG 3

“Of course. Anything.”

“I never wrote that book I wanted to write. And now I’m running out of time.”

Many times, through the years, Lee had said, “Someday I’m going to write a book, and nobody will believe it,” but she never said any more about it. And she never showed any interest in writing, never jotting so much as a draft of a short story, but oh, how she loved words. Her books, her crossword puzzles, her dictionary—they were some of her favorite things in the world.

Now Lee looked up at me with weary eyes. “Will you write the book for me?”

Me? Was she serious? I was an accountant. An accountant who didn’t also happen to be a writer. And I knew almost nothing about her life. As I’d always understood it, she’d come to work for my family shortly after the tragic car crash and had been part of our lives ever since. What stories from her early years belonged in a book? Had she been a showgirl? A courtesan? A spy? Somewhere in a locker was there a folder of correspondence between her and Harry Truman?

I said, “You mean the book you’ve been threatening to write for most of my life?” We both laughed, then Lee turned to the side and launched into a rattling, gasping coughing fit. It broke my heart to see her struggling for air. If I could, I would have given her my breath.

She stopped coughing and dabbed delicately around her mouth with a tissue. “Well?”

Her request hung in the air. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

***SPOILER ALERT***

From the author:

1. Why do you think Lee asked me to write her story and not my other siblings?  
2. Why did it take me so long to write the story?
3. How do you think Lee was able to leave her past behind and start over again?  Victor Frankl, a holocaust survivor, speaks about the concept of “resilience” in his book- “Man’s Search for Meaning”. Without giving away any spoilers, do you believe Victor and Lee had more in common than once would think? A housekeeper and a holocaust survivor?
4. What was Lee’s biggest strength that helped her persevere?
5. What was Lee’s weakness or vulnerability that she could not escape, and she took to her grave?
6. Why do you think Lee would not commit to staying at our house on Rainbow Road for more than 2 weeks at a time, for three years?
7. Why do you think Lee needed to think about it over night when asked to permanently move in with the family, especially given the circumstances of where she stayed bi-weekly weekends?
8. What was Lee most afraid of?  
9. What was the common bond Lillian and Lee shared?  What were their differences?
10. What do you think Lee liked most about the Krilich family?  Least?
11. Why do you think Lee lied about her birth date?
12. Why did Lee lie about the tragedy of her husband and son being killed? 
13. Does the reader see Lee as a Liar or an authentic character, true and honest to their every word and action?
14. What was your first reaction when you discovered her truth?  No spoilers.

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