Tell Me No Secrets by Joy Fielding Page B

shadows.
    People always raved about the glorious colors of autumn, the reds, oranges, and yellows that disrupted, then replaced, the omnipresent green of summer. Jess had never shared their enthusiasm. For her, the change in colors meant only that the leaves were dying. And now, the trees were almost bare. What leaves were left were faded, shriveled, drained of energy. Cruel reminders of their once buoyant selves. Like people abandoned in old-age homes, death the only visitor they could rely on. Lonely people left too long without love.
    Certainly her father deserved to find love, Jess thought, turning right and finding herself on a street she didn’t recognize. She looked for a sign, didn’t see one, turned left at the next corner. Still no street sign. What was the matter with people who lived in the suburbs? Didn’t they want anyone to know where they were?
    She’d always lived in the heart of the city, always in the same three-block radius, except during her marriage to Don. When she was little, and her father had worked as buyer for a chain of women’s clothing stores, they’d lived in a duplex on Howe Street They’d moved when she was ten, her father then the successful manager of his own store, to a fully detached house on Burling Street, only a block away. Nothing fancy. Nothing particularly innovative or compelling in its architecture. Decidedly no Mies van der Rohe or Frank Lloyd Wright. It was just comfortable. The kind of house one feltgood about coming home to. They’d loved it, planned on staying in it forever. And then one afternoon in August, her mother left for a doctor’s appointment and never came back.
    After that, everybody went their separate ways—Maureen back to Harvard, Jess back to law school and into marriage with Don, her father on increased buying trips to Europe. The once loved house sat empty. Eventually, her father worked up the necessary resolve to sell it. He could no longer bear to live in it alone.
    And now her father had a new woman in his life.
    It shouldn’t have come as such a surprise, Jess realized, turning another corner and finding herself back on Sheraton Road. What was truly surprising was that he had waited eight long years. Women had always found him attractive. True, he was only average in appearance and his hairline had receded into nothingness, but there was still a twinkle in his brown eyes, and a ready laugh in his voice.
    For a long while, there had been no laughter.
    In the days, even months, after Laura Koster went missing, Art Koster had been the chief, and only, suspect in his wife’s disappearance. Despite the fact he’d been out of town on a buying trip when she’d vanished, the police had refused to rule out his potential involvement. He could have hired someone, after all, they pointed out, delving into the couple’s marriage, asking questions of neighbors and friends, probing into his business and financial affairs.
    How had the couple been getting along? Did they argue? How frequently? About money? The time he spent away from home? Other women?
    Of course they argued, Art Koster had told them. Not often, but possibly more often than be realized. Not aboutanything important. Not about money. Not about his occasional business trips. Certainly not about other women. There were no other women, he told the police. He insisted on taking a polygraph test. Passed. The police seemed disappointed. Ultimately, they’d had no choice but to believe him.
    There had never been any question as far as Jess was concerned. Her father was innocent. It was that simple. Whatever had happened to her mother, her father had had nothing to do with it.
    It had taken Art Koster years to resume the rhythm of his daily life. For a time, he lost himself in his work. He drifted apart from old friends, then away. He rarely socialized, didn’t date. He moved to an apartment on the waterfront, spent hours staring at Lake Michigan, seeing only Jess and Don and Maureen. Everyone