Dead Secret

she’ll have to see a doctor. The place is rife with Staph infection, HIV, and sexually transmitted diseases.”
    Susan sat driving in silence, her eyes never leaving the road. Diane noticed tears rolling down her cheeks.
    “I’m sorry,” said Diane. “I didn’t want to worry you.”
    “What if this has changed her?”
    “It will have. Let’s just hope she can get her old self back. It’ll help if she sees a therapist. Would she be willing to do that?”
    “I don’t know. Let’s not tell Dad about that. Not right now. Let’s just tell him that we think she’ll be coming home.”
    “Okay. I’ll follow your lead on that,” Diane said, acknowledging that her sister understood their parents much better than she did.
    They turned and drove up the winding drive of their parents’ home. A Lincoln not unlike Susan’s was parked in the garage. Next to it was a silver-blue Jaguar.
    “That’s Dad’s car,” Susan said as she pulled in behind the Lincoln. “The Jag belongs to Alan.” She pulled down the visor, looked in the mirror and carefully dried her eyes. She took out a compact and lipstick from her purse, smoothed her makeup with a little powder and applied color to her lips. “We have a good life here. Why would anyone do this to us? We haven’t hurt anybody.”
    “I don’t know. There’s a lot of mean people in the world. Just as I was leaving to come here, someone broke into the home of one of my employees and trashed everything she owned. I have no idea why.”
    “How do people get like that? I just don’t understand.”
    “I’m not sure there is any understanding it, Susan.”
    Diane hadn’t visited her parents in a couple of years. Not since she had returned from South America. Not since they had shown no sympathy whatsoever when Diane’s daughter died, simply because Ariel was not born to Diane, simply because she was a native South American Indian. That memory cut through Diane like a sharp knife.
    They got out of the car and she followed Susan into the house.

Chapter 22
    “Diane, dear, it’s good to see you,” her father said. Nathan Fallon, Diane’s father, rose from his chair as they entered the den to give a hug and kiss to her cheek.
    He looked much as he had the last time she’d visited. Hardly aged, but he did look tired. His hair was silver only on the sides, as she remembered, and he was still slender and well dressed as ever in an expensive suit. It was a warmer reception than she usually got. Her family weren’t huggers. He held her at arm’s length and looked her over.
    “You look good. It’s been too long. You need to come visit more often.”
    “Hello, Diane, it has been a long time.”
    Diane just noticed Alan Delacroix, her ex-husband, sitting in one of the stuffed chairs in the den. He wasn’t aging as well as her father, but it had been more than a decade since she last saw him. Alan had the dark hair and dark eyes of his mother’s Irish side of the family more than his father’s French side. His once-black hair was now salted with gray, and his former leanness had given way to an added twenty-five or thirty pounds. The one thing that hadn’t changed about him was that his smile still looked like a badly disguised smirk. What had she been thinking all those years ago?
    “Alan. Yes, it has been a long time.”
    The den was her father’s favorite room. He called it the library because of lawyer’s bookcases on one wall. Practically everything in it was made either of dark cherry wood or leather. He and Alan had been sitting on chocolate-colored leather-upholstered chairs. The dents in the seats of the matching ottomans said that both had had their feet up.
    Diane liked the room. She didn’t like seeing Alan in it. It wasn’t so much that she harbored any ill will toward Alan—she was the one who had wanted out of the marriage—but because in the divorce Alan had gotten custody of her family.
    “You look well,” said Alan. “A little tired, perhaps.” His compliments always came with a barb. He had changed very little.
    Susan stood, looking uncomfortable. Diane wondered if her sister was afraid she would “start something” as she called it. Her father simply smiled.
    “Alan has some good news,” he said. “He has an appointment with a contact in the Justice Department to talk about Iris’s situation.”
    Alan beamed as he looked from Diane to Susan. They both opened their mouths to speak but were interrupted by the entry into the