Dead Secret

her into an argument. “I was happy doing all those things you didn’t like. You wanted me to be happy doing what you wanted me to do. That just wasn’t me.”
    “If you had just tried. . . . You didn’t try.”
    “Do you have any idea how that sounds? God, Alan. Why are we having this conversation? You know, in the divorce papers there was this line that said our relationship was now like we had never been married. Our marriage is history and should stay that way.”
    “You never really loved me, did you?”
    That was the way their arguments always went. Alan would ignore Diane’s response and go on to the next thing he wanted to take issue with. Alan could certainly suck the joy out a celebration.
    “Don’t, Alan. It’s been seventeen years. Let it go.” Surely, thought Diane, he doesn’t want to get back together. “I did try. I tried for a year and a half, but I wasn’t going to give up graduate school. I wasn’t going to give up caving. I might have relented on the hair. All we did was argue. We both were miserable.”
    She suddenly felt like making a dash for the door. She rose and started back into the house.
    “Dammit, Diane, can’t you just listen for once?”
    Alan grabbed her arm. His fingers pressed hard against the tender incision. Searing, crippling pain shot through Diane’s arm. Bile rose in her throat.
    “You’re hurting me,” she cried out. “Let go.”
    “Don’t be silly. I can’t be hurting you.”
    The lights to the terrace suddenly came on. Susan and Gerald rushed through the patio doors.
    “Stop,” said Susan. “She’s injured.”
    “Dammit, man. Let her go,” said Gerald. “Look at her face. She’s about to pass out.”
    Alan let go and Diane started to sink. Gerald put a chair under her.
    “Shit, that hurt,” she said.
    “Let me see if he broke the stitches.” Susan helped her take off the light cotton jacket she’d worn over her short-sleeved shirt.
    “This is a long cut, Diane,” said Susan, looking through the translucent bandage at the line of stitches. “It looks like it was deep.”
    “The doctor said it was to the bone. I had to have some muscle repair.”
    “I didn’t realize,” sputtered Alan.
    “You did,” said Diane, “because I told you that you were hurting me.”
    “It didn’t make sense that my grasp was hurting. How was I to know?”
    “It’s weeping,” said Susan. “But the stitches look intact.”
    “Alan, that kind of logic is exactly the reason we are not married.” Diane’s arm throbbed. She turned to her sister. “I see Dad coming. Help me on with my jacket. We aren’t going to mention this.” She bored a hole through Alan with her gaze.
    “There you are,” said her dad, coming through the patio door. “I talked to your mother. She’s in a cottage on the prison grounds. As you can imagine, she is greatly relieved. She suffered so much in there.” His voice broke.
    “Sit down, Dad,” Susan said as she guided him to a chair.
    “They had her in a dormitory with five hundred other women. Five hundred. Some were ill and vomiting. They have elderly people in with young people. Many of them were vicious. She said one woman died during the night and they couldn’t get a guard to come and see about her until noon. It was awful. Just awful. Someone is going to pay for this. Alan, I want you to start a lawsuit immediately.”
    “I’ll look into it.”
    “Don’t look into it. Do it!” he snapped.
    “Of course. That’s what I meant,” Alan sputtered.
    They skipped the champagne. The joy at getting her mother out of prison was dampened by the knowledge of the frightful conditions. Diane knew what to expect, but hearing it from her father was still sickening. Alan had the good sense not to say that prison was not supposed to be Club Med, as he had often voiced in the past.
    Diane excused herself early, telling her father that she was tired from the flight.
    “I understand. I’m going to bed myself. We have to get up early and get Iris away from that place. I tell you, they are going to be sorry they picked on a Fallon.” He kissed her cheek and headed for his room. “God, I’m tired,” he said, going down the hallway.
    Alan went home, and Diane hoped it would be the last time she saw him. He apparently couldn’t bring himself to apologize for hurting her. An apology would be an admission of guilt, and that was simply beyond his ability to accept.
    “I’ll go up with you and dress your arm,” said