Tell Me No Secrets by Joy Fielding Page A

She’s
your
friend.”
    “She’s also a therapist.”
    “I don’t need a therapist.”
    “I think you do. Look, I’m going to write out her phone number before you go. I want you to call her.”
    Jess was about to argue, but thought better of it when she heard her father’s footsteps on the stairs.
    “Well, look at this,” her father bellowed from the doorway. “All my gorgeous girls together in one room.” He walked to Jess and engulfed her in his arms, kissing her cheek. “How are you, doll?”
    “I’m fine, Daddy,” Jess told him, and felt, for the first time that day, that maybe she was.
    “And how’s my other doll?” he asked Maureen, hugging her against him. “And my little dolls?” he asked, drawing them all together. He lifted Chloe from her mother’s arms, smothering her face with kisses. “Oh you sweet thing. You sweet thing,” he chanted. “I love you. Yes, I do.” He stopped, smiling at his own two daughters. “I said that to a biggergirl last night,” he told them, then stood back and waited for their reaction.
    “What did you say?” Maureen asked.
    Jess said nothing. Maureen had taken the words right out of her mouth.

FIVE
    J ess spent the first hour after she left her sister’s house driving around the streets of Evanston trying not to think about the things her father had said at dinner. Naturally, she could think of nothing else.
    “I said that to a bigger girl last night,” he’d announced, sounding so calm, so pleased, so sure of himself. As if falling in love was no big deal, as if he made that sort of declaration every day.
    “Tell us all about her,” Maureen had urged at the dinner table, ladling out the mock turtle soup as Jess struggled to banish the image of a child’s decapitated turtle from her mind. “We want to hear absolutely everything. What’s her name? What’s she like? Where did you meet? When do
we
get to meet her?”
    No, Jess thought. Don’t say another word. Don’t tell us a thing. Please, don’t say anything.
    “Her name is Sherry Hasek,” her father stated proudly.“She’s just a little bit of a thing. Not too tall, a little on the skinny side, dark hair, almost black. I think she colors it. …”
    Jess forced a spoonful of hot soup into her mouth, felt it numb the tip of her tongue, sear the roof of her mouth. Her mother had been tall, bosomy, her brown hair attractively sprinkled with gray. She’d always hated dyed black hair, said it looked so phony. Her father had agreed. Could he possibly have forgotten? she wondered, swallowing the urge to remind him, feeling the soup burn a path to her stomach. Pictures of headless turtles swam their way back up the path to her brain.
    “We met at my life drawing class about six months ago,” he continued.
    “Don’t tell me she was a model.” Barry laughed into his soup.
    “No, just a fellow student. Always liked to draw, never had the time. Like me.”
    “Is she a widow?” Maureen asked. “What’s the matter, Jess? Don’t you like the soup?”
    She wasn’t a widow. She was divorced. Had been for almost fifteen years. She was fifty-eight, the mother of three grown sons, and she worked in an antique store. She liked bright colors, dressed in long flowing skirts and Birkenstock sandals, and had been the one to first suggest coffee after class. Evidently she knew a good thing when she saw it. Art Koster was definitely a good thing.
    Jess turned a corner and found herself back on Sheridan Road, stately homes to one side, Lake Michigan to the other. How long had she been circling the dark streets of Evanston? Long enough for it to have started raining, she realized, activating the car’s windshield wipers, seeing oneof them stick, drag itself across the car’s window in what was obviously a Herculean effort. Rain then, not snow, she thought, not sure which she preferred. A fog was rolling in from the lake.
    October was always the least dependable of months, she thought, full of ghosts and