Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 75th cycle. Now cycle 76!

"Secret No More"
((Older) Rachel, Sophie (OC)), Chloe (OC), Tara, Eva & Marcus (OCs)
Red series
(no listings yet; sequel to "Peace Pancakes")

Rachel had not been nearly as resistant to the idea Chloe put before her a few days earlier as the redhead thought she would be. Even when she'd made her second request, her host and idol had been on board. As far as she was concerned, Rachel thought this step was a healthy one for the girl.

So, one Saturday morning, Chloe waited inside the coffee shop, the very same one where she had first met Rachel Berry. Tara was the first to arrive.

"I'm not late, am I?" she asked, and Chloe smirked. The girl was usually early, usually the first one there, and always inexplicably out of breath and coming out of a jog.

"Not at all," Chloe assured her as she sat.

"Good," she reached to undo her jacket.

"You might want to keep it on, we're not actually staying here, we just need to wait for the others to get here," she explained, and Tara let go of the jacket.

Within minutes, Eva and Marcus would arrive, equally curious as to the reason for their having been summoned to this place if they were not going to stay, especially since Chloe was being so mysterious about it all. Even as she invited them to get up and go, she would not say, which lead to playful taunts, wondering if she was taking them to a hole somewhere in order to murder them.

This had continued for a while, until they'd reached the house, and Chloe came to a stop. "Where are we?" Tara asked.

"This is my place. Well, I mean it's where I've been staying while I'm in New York," she clarified.

"It looks huge!" Eva craned her head.

"That's just because you're so tiny," Marcus teased, and Eva gave a half shove before smirking at the girls. "Never took us here before," he pointed out.

"Yeah, well, there's kind of a reason for that, but I think you'll figure it out soon enough," she gestured for them to follow. She briefly smiled to herself as she put the key in the door, knowing deep down their reactions would not be angry ones. This might actually be funny.

Chloe remembered the first time she'd come through that door. She didn't know what she had expected to find, but then Rachel Berry was a star, wasn't she? Stars' homes were supposed to be almost ridiculously rich looking, with awards everywhere, pictures and memorabilia at every turn… There was some of this here, yes, but within reason. The first impression she'd gotten of Rachel Berry's home was that it was her home, the place where she wasn't a star. It was normal then that it took a few minutes before any kind of clue could hit them.

Eva was the first one to notice anything. She had first taken them up to her room, on the pretense that she was going to put her things away, and none of them saw the pictures on the walls, showing Sophie at various ages, with her mother, with her father, with her grandparents and other relatives and friends of the family. This had made her smile to herself again, but she didn't betray a thing. They'd gone back downstairs, and when they had gone to put their jackets in the closet, Eva had seen one that was already hanging there.

"Hey, check it out," she held it out. "It's just like Miss Berry's coat." It was put back, the connection not quite made.

Again, Eva had then spotted one lone picture on a wall, of an eight-year-old Sophie, and she'd stopped to look at it for a minute or so, a look in her eyes suggesting that it was familiar to her for reasons she could not explain.

Of all things to clinch it, Marcus had picked up a magazine sitting on the kitchen table, and as he'd leafed through it, Eva had spotted the label fixed at the bottom of the cover, stating this was a subscription sent to one Sophie Perry. She snatched it out of his hands, much to his protest. She stared at the label again, with the name, and the address which did belong to this house, and then she went back to look at the picture in the hall.

"Where are you going?" Tara asked, following behind along with Marcus and Chloe. It was a few more seconds, and then Eva's finger jabbed in the air toward the photo.

"That's her daughter, that's… it's…" she looked around. "It's her coat!"

"Are you okay?" Marcus asked, staring at her. Eva looked at Chloe, who was trying very hard not to laugh.

"What's going on, is this a prank?"

"Not a prank," Chloe shook her head.

"What's not a prank?" Tara asked, cutting over their voices.

"This is her house, Berry's house!" her voice fell to a hush, like they'd just broken in.

"What?" Tara and Marcus spoke at once, leaning up to look at the picture. Over the years, if anyone paid any attention at all to Rachel Berry's career, they would have seen the girl in a number of pictures already. The fact that the Broadway star and her now late husband's names rhymed so much they bordered on being identical was something they all recalled.

The trio stared back at their curly haired friend with a very pointed question in their eyes.

"I couldn't tell you before, she wouldn't let me," she told them, cashing in the second request she'd made, the first being that she could bring them here and reveal where she'd been staying all this time.

Once they knew, their only question was how fast she could show them around. With a promise that they wouldn't go poking around too much, Chloe had showed them around the rest of the house, leaving only Rachel and Sophie's rooms and Rachel's office unseen. They were particularly taken with those awards that were in fact on display, and with the pictures, and with the studio space for dancing and recording.

They would keep this secret now, as much as she had. They were her friends, great friends she had never expected but would keep on cherishing long after this summer was over, and for this she had owed them the truth.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!