Secrets- ***** Chapter Three

"Nature," He began again: "I know Jacob always talk about nature. To him nature is God, is the creator. Even nature, to me, is incidental. It's trivial in the manner that people, like Jacob, give in to it. Let me tell you, nature isn't God, isn't even a place of worship, but it's a work place; and we all... especially people like Jacob, are just workers in it."

"Tim. I don't know what you're getting at." Jacob contained his anger. "To hear you talking, we may all live outside the human society where there is no law. Doesn't the logic of humanity demand...?"

"Jacob, you're one of the few people that I like and respect." Tim interrupted him. "Our century yearns for principals. It is tortured by lies and craves truth. We all question, seek. We all are nostalgic for the facts, for the truth which we can't find anywhere. Look at you, you have hidden a major truth about your life even from your wife, the most intimate person in your life. And she has done the same. Ask Rosa why she is dating me, an old prof... Ask Thui what secret she has buried in her heart, and ask Ed, your dearest friend of his shameful, dreadful secrets! You see we all want the truth but we can't face it. We're afraid of the truth." His tormented honesty in this new statement he made and in his somewhat integrity, even though he was judging people around him was shown in his tone of voice, even more than the words, the penetrating words he was speaking with his bleeding heart.

"God, it's two in the morning. We need to stop this nonsense. We must go home." Thui got up and picked up her purse.

"No, you want to leave because first you don't understand what I am saying and second you know your turn will come. Sit down. No one leaves until I say they can." Tim wore a stern look on his face. Thui sat automatically.

"Tim, stop it. This is my home not yours. They can leave if they want to." Jacob came to his old friend's' defense.

"I've been sitting on thorns for a long, long time." More and more Tim felt suffocated in a world that all goodness had become degraded. His face suddenly looked pale and sweat sat on his forehead. It appeared to Diana that sweat was washing up the color of his face.

"Listen, Jacob, you that write about people, take every day's life story of people and create a fascinating fiction..., yes, I said fascinating, because you're a good writer; here I have a new subject for your next book. I know the secret of your writing; you become the people you write about, you go under their skin, you suffer their pains, you share their confusion, their fascination, and their heartbreaking. This is a story for you. I let you use it; and I don't want any credit for it. Just try to feel me, just listen to my painful story, but at the same time, plan a novel. Listen with the ears of a novelist. I know you can do it. We, others in this room, can listen but ignore it at the same time. We won't let it go under our skin. We don't know how to become the other person; but you can, because you're a writer, a real one, and we're not."

"I've never imagined that you're in so much pain, Tim." Jacob's voice trembled with emotion.

"You've never shown or expressed your pain to anyone. No one has ever known your family. You've never discussed anything about yourself. You've always even hidden your age. You've always acted happy, in control. I had no idea!"

"Enough, Jacob." Tim interrupted. "I tell you everything tonight. No more mystery. I hide my age, right, I dye my hair. I wanted to get young women, like Rosa, which I learned shortly after we met is your daughter. If I knew that at the beginning, I would have never mixed up with her. You got to believe me. Do believe me.

"To me, women were my enemies, and I had to get even with them. What I've done was not an act of love but revenge. I had to use women. It worked. I helped them with their schools, they helped me with my plan. I wasn't like this. If I had married a woman like Diana, your precious wife, perhaps I wouldn't be like this. By the way, she is right. She had no role in that shameful act of mine. It was all me. This is one case that I feel sorry about to inflict pain and shame upon some one. She didn't deserve it. I admit it. I forced myself on her, Jacob. I didn't know you then. I had no idea that her husband, you, one day would become my colleague. I deeply, deeply apologized to both of you. When she said that she withdrew that course, she was right. At the time it was a surprise to me, but now I know the reason. She is a woman with principals. All I am asking is your forgiveness, both of you." Tim spoke as he thought.

To Be Continued

Secrets- ~`*`~* Chapter Three

Everyone was astounded by Diana's sudden plea. However they all thought that she had made a smart move. Thui woke up. She noticed with surprise that night had fallen deeply while she was dreaming. Outside was dark and hushed.

"You're right Diana." Tim said. "I stop but not before telling all of my story, my life. I, like all of you, have a secret; but I tell you my dreadful secret after I hear the secrets of the rest of you.

"What I want to tell you now, is about my son, my marriage, and the reason I accepted Jacob's invitation tonight. I wanted to face Ed personally. He is the one who ruined my son's life and put him in jail for life by freeing his rich client." Tim said, as though involuntarily, as though talking to himself, as though there was no one besides him in the room.

Everybody suddenly overcame with confusion. The hot blood spread beneath the skin of all, who listened to depressed, yet determined talk of Tim. Diana secretly glanced from Tim to Jacob. Tim had used the words, "my dreadful secret" with sardonic purpose, which she had noticed. " What is the dreadful secrets?" She did not know. Thui was the most surprised. She had no idea what was going on. She had heard the beginning of Diana's story but not the end. She was asleep the entire time. Now, her husband was been prosecuted.

*

"I'm a person you may call nihilist." Tim went on, getting up again. " You probably think that a nihilist is a person who doesn't believe in anything. That isn't true. Quite differently, a nihilist is someone who doesn't take the principals of things for granted. I personally cherish those principals. I see you're laughing. You think I have no principals. I do, even more than all of you. But all my principals have been stolen from me.

"Nowadays, everywhere you look, people say they're nihilist without even knowing the meaning of it. Now we have to see how one person, for example me, can manage to exist in this vain, unfeeling world." Tim stopped pacing; stood in the middle of the room. There was a crude, almost arrogant tone in his voice. Then he sat on the chair by the dinning table.

"We're destroying everything, destroying..." He repeated with an indescribable composure.

"We destroy, but we forget that we need to construct, too. You think it's funny that these words come out from my mouth, someone who seeks revenge, who recognized Diana the minute he walked here, and he taught, 'ha, I must reveal her secret.' You may be right; but a man who is already destroyed can construct? Don't ask me what I mean by that! You will know before dawn.

"Now I'm thinking about principals, the principals I've believed all my life; but now I'm at a point that no principals matter anymore. That is not my affair any longer. I thought the ground must be cleared first before us, the educators, so we could teach the new generations the principals. But you know my ground has changed to an abyss that at any point would devour me in it."

"Why don't you get to the point? It is not time for philosophy." Ed said with a real disgust in his voice.

"Be quiet. You must hear all these even though I'm sure you're not capable of understanding it." Tim was entangling in his words. "We set up our behavior on what we think as beneficial in today society. The most good thing we can do is to reject; like rejecting to give a helping hand to someone unless there is something in it for us; to abandon, like mothers who abandon their children; to deny, like when the truth comes to surface, like one deserts his own flash and blood and his own family; to dishonor, like dishonoring honesty; and to revoke, like when one revokes a promise, a duty. So we all forsake what we can to gain what is gained only by discarding the right thing." He got up from chair, walked a little, then poured a glass of wine for himself. This time he threw himself on the sofa, clasped his hands behind his neck, and stayed motionless for awhile, staring at the ceiling. His expression showed nothing but hopelessness. Perhaps he felt hiding from each human and each object that existed in that room. Rosa and Diana could see the true pain, Thui was mystified. Ed was annoyed; and Jacob was curious.

To Be Continued

Secrets-[`]~{~} Chapter Three

As life had passed by all these years, a hunger for innovation, originality forced Diana to a certain extent, and there she had noticed not only a chasm but also an emptiness... disarray without form. But what she had observed in this world was all vanity. It seemed to her that everyone lived on the edge, the edge that any given moment might had changed to an abyss beneath their feet. Nevertheless, she had noticed that people went out of their ways to create all kind of anxieties for themselves to ruin their lives.

Diana thought of Tim, who could have one woman like any normal man and settle down, yet he had chosen the adventure of being a womanizer and a rapist. He abused his position to a degree of no return. She wondered what kind of marriage he had had, and what happened to his only son. She wondered why Rosa dated a man older than her father! Was she the same as Tim, a user? She was not sure how long she stood there, gazing into dark; however, the sudden silence appeared to her lasted a long time. There was no sound. She turned around and faced others. Everyone was sitting quietly. They all looked at her. Jacob was still sitting next to Rosa.

"Maybe we need to end this night." Rosa said while getting up. She walked to Diana and hugged her.

"Are you okay?"

"I need to say my side of the story. She made me look like a monster." Tim said with an apparent anger. Then he ignored Rosa's intervention and continued:

"I'm not leaving until everyone hears what really happened!"

"No one will believe you. I know I won't." Rosa broke in rudely. It was obvious that their relationship was over.

"Now you're turning your back to me, too. I thought we were match made in heaven." Tim's tone of voice showed nothing but derision and contempt for Rosa.

"We're no match, and you know it. You and I used to be the same. We used each other and we used others. But now, right now, I'm going to stop. I don't want to be like you, shameless..." Rosa burst into tears. She could not finish what she intended to tell him.

Jacob put his arm around her shoulder and drew her close and kissed the top of her head. Rosa did not object this fatherly affection.

"You all think that I'm an evil person, but I'm not. Yes, I am, but what made me to be like this, you don't know." Tim got up and helped himself with a glass of wine.

"And Diana's story is somewhat true, but not all of it." He paused and then continued:

"You must hear what really happened."

"No, we mustn't." Ed broke his long silence.

"I want to know." Jacob finally said what Diana was so afraid to hear.

"Jacob stop it. This man is crazy. He wants to ruin every one's life. Where did you find him?" Ed said with exasperation.

"No, everybody must hear." Tim broke in. "And I know what kind of person you are, Mr. Ed, or I better say Edmund Hoyle, the powerful lawyer. You ruined my son's life. I know who you are. I know what kind of dirty and selfish lawyer you are. For you money is everything. We'll hear your story after I'll tell mine. You can's escape it tonight." Then he got up and began pacing the room. Then he sat again.

"Why do you think I accept Jacob's invitation for tonight? Do you think it was for reading poetry with Diana? He told me one of his friend, a powerful lawyer, would be here, too. I asked him your name, and when I heard that despicable name, I told him that I would accept his invitation. I hate all lawyers, especially you, Mr. money lover."

"What is all these? How do you know Ed?" Jacob asked with a real concern in his voice.

"I am sure I don't know this man. I've never known this man before tonight." Ed answered.

"You'll remember when you hear what you did to my son. But before that I must confess that Diana's story is mostly true, except the part she said she didn't enjoy it. I know she did. She said she fainted, I don't..."

"Stop it Tim, stop..." Rosa screamed as hard as she could.

Diana was still standing by the window. Her heart knew that this doomed night was not over yet; nonetheless, her feeling rose above pity and meanness. She indistinctly realized that it was up to her to come up with some kind of resolution for this horrid night, to stop this madness. But her opponent, the man who had come to her home for revenge, was intelligent and could outsmart her. She looked at everybody one by one and deliberately. It seemed to her that all gone mad. Her orderly routine was lost, something that she lived by and it always bothered her when something disturbed it.

"I think we need to put all these personal vanity and vendetta aside." She reflected. Then she continued: "They all are further than truth. Please, Tim, stop. I don't know what kind of pain you're going through; but I know you're in pain. It's pain that has made you so angry, so very much against everyone, to the point that you think everyone is after you, everyone had done something terrible to you. Your anger has turned you to a mean man; but you're not a truly a vicious man."

To Be Continued

Secrets- {[}] Chapter Three

'...He said it in a way that brought chills to my bones.

" He pushed me back to the chair, after he put it back in the right position, and put the papers on my lap. 'You go on, study.' He said. He stood right behind me pushing his hands as hard as he could on my shoulders. I didn't know what to do, how to fight this? Mostly I was confused, besides being horrified. A few times, I turned to look at him. His eyes scared me. He said that I was acting childish. That I was losing a great opportunity. I found the courage to tell him to go to hell. He laughed: 'I am already in hell; and you're not going to tell me that this is not fun!'

"Slowly he slid his hands inside my shirt. I began a vain battle with him. That caused me to fall on the floor. He stood there, towering over me like a rapist not a professor, looking at me, lying on the floor defenseless. I could not recognize him. He didn't look like the distinguished and brilliant professor I knew in the class. Then he came on my top. He told me to take my clothes off. I didn't. I guess I was unconscious."

Diana's eyes were filled with tears now. No one of these people had ever seen such a distress, as they saw it in Diana Then. She bent her head on her chest, slowly wiped her tears with her hands, and then looked up at everyone, who were bitterly listening to her. She began a new cigarette, but her hand was shaking so much that it fell on the floor. She bent and picked it up, and stamped the fire on the floor with her shoes. She was in the state of abandoning herself to the sensation of an absolute ruination and the wretchedness that crashed in a half awareness and hushed viewing of the far reaching flow of life that for ever was swirling around her.

"After he finished," She began, looking fixedly to the space: "After he finished his despicable act, he helped me to dress. I'm not sure what happened. I might had fainted or were unconscious. I don't remember. Then he had this stern look on his face, acting in charge. 'You can go home now. Don't tell me you didn't enjoy it.' He said. 'You've already passed.'

"I left his office running. It was dark. In the parking lot, I was even afraid of my own footstep. I couldn't find my car key. I was afraid I had left it in his office. I ended up to overturn my bag on the asphalt to find my key. At home, Jacob was working in his office. Vickie was asleep. I went directly to the bathroom, stepped in the tub, and stayed under the hot water... I don't know for how long. I guess Jacob finally noticed that I was taking so long in the shower, or I was not acting right. He came to the bathroom. I heard him come. He sat on the commode and asked me if I was okay or something in that manner. I closed the water, pulled the curtain aside and stepped out. 'I need to tell you something.' I said. He nodded his head and then said: 'You don't have to.' I did not know what he meant.

I withdrew that course at once. I thought about doing something. I don't know... but then I felt who's going to believe me. Students always accuse their professors. This young professor from this distinguished university, so brilliant, no way. Later, I lost the courage to tell Jacob about it. I was ready to tell him that night, but he was so involved in his writing, that he didn't hear me. I went through hell to forget about this but I never did. Now this nightmare has returned to haunt me again. You, all of you, don't have to believe me, but I know that I have told the truth."

Diana gazed with fury to the space. then she got up and walked to the window. She pressed her forehead against the window pane. The coldness of it soothed her somewhat. Her breathing was heavy, her whole body shook. But her shaking was not the result of fear, as it had been the entire evening, but it was a trembling of relief. Yes, it was like the oscillating of a wave that had finally hit the wall and broke into pieces. She felt broken, yet relieved. She felt light after twenty three years carrying this nightmare. Now it was up to this people to believe her or not.

She finally found a peace of mind, what it used to be disturbed easily. At the same time, she felt sad; and while standing there, gazing into the dark of the night, her back to everyone, she even burst into tears once again. She did not know why! Certainly not because she had gained a peace of mind or because she had been outraged. She tried to investigate her crying. She might feel guilty, or it was the demand of disconnected and vague emotions.

To Be Continued

Secrets- ~{~} Chapter Three

...ashamed of myself for dating you!"

"Stop the nonsense." Tim retorted. "We both are useful to each other. We both belong to a group of people that use others for their needs. Don't you know that I know why you're dating me, a man older than your father? I have power and charm... and all the young women like that, and I use it. I never said that I was a good person, but I'm intelligent and brilliant according to all my colleagues. But I also know that I'm an evil person, I admit it. Even when Jacob invited me here, he told me that he wanted to introduce me to his wife because I'm so ingenious, that was the exact words he used, and his wife was so much into poetry. I help you with your school, I let you pass, I talk to your other professors to help you, but I want something in return." Then he looked at Diana and back to Jacob:

"I haven't been caught yet. That is why your wife slept with me, too, because I have power and I use it. I have a list of all my students that I slept with, and I follow up their careers and lives."

There was a sudden stillness in the room. The words had spilled out. Now everyone knew. Although they all had the idea what all these were about. By ruining other's lives, Tim did not mind to show his diabolic mind. It seemed as though devil possesses him; and he enjoyed it.

Rosa got up, but before doing that, she slapped Tim on his face; and then walked to Jacob and stood in front of him.

"Hours ago, you and I had no idea that we're related." Then suddenly she held his hands:

"Please forget about tonight... Let these people go. I'll stay. We talk tomorrow. We all are drunk." She spontaneously hugged her newly found father. Jacob cried quietly.

Diana started a cigarette and poured a glass of wine for herself, whatever was left at the bottle. She drank it all, forgotten a few minutes ago she was sick. Never in her life, she had drunken like this. But now she needed courage, more than human ability to tell the story. But her main reason for deciding to reveal this shame to others was not her part in this contrition, but was Tim's role of using all these young women. From what she saw, he had not changed at all.

*

"I was his student. " She began, feeling stronger. "The course I was taking was English Literature. Then Jacob's dissertation was pending. I was taking only one or two courses a semester. I was working so Jacob could finish school. Vickie was only one year old.

"We had exam that day, but I wasn't prepared. Vickie was very sick. I had not slept but only a few hours for the last three nights. At work, those days, a couple of time I fell asleep. My mom was taking care of Vickie when I was working."

"You don't have to tell us all these details." Jacob cut her rudely.

"I know details are boring to you, but I must."

"Yes, she does. She is telling how her circumstances were." Rosa came to her defense.

"Anyway..." It seemed that Diana was getting entangled in her words. "Anyway, that day of exam, I went to his office."She looked hatefully at Tim, and then continued:

"I wanted to ask him if I could take my exam another time. I explained to him my situation. I told him my daughter was sick, that I didn't have a chance or time to study. He was very kind. He told me to go to his office after class. He told me that he would work with me.

"I was overjoyed, happy. I thought what a great professor he was to work with his students, to understand their needs, to know the phony ones from the real ones, to know their personal problems besides the classroom." Diana let her hands drop on her lap, and stayed silent for a while which seemed a long time to others. She was searching for words to go on with the story.

Jacob got up, walked away from her, as though in sudden alarm at his wife's words which had burst from her lips. He went to the kitchen, brought back a new bottle of wine, opened it, and without offering the others, he poured a glass for himself. Then he looked around and saw Rosa. He walked to her, sat next to her, while holding her hand.

"After class, I went to his office." Diana was determined to tell the story and get it over with.

"It was late. I was taking night classes so I could work during the days. He was sitting behind his desk. He looked just as he looks now, except he had more hair. He had a smile on his face. he asked me to sit, and then gave me a whole bunch of papers, no actually they were only five pages. 'If you study these,' he said, 'you'll pass. That is not much, is it?' I nodded my head for no, and got up to leave. He reached from his side of desk and held my hand and said: 'No, I can't let you take these out with you. If anyone finds out that I've given these to you, it's not good for my reputation. You're a smart girl, you can study these here. You can make some notes if you want.' I was tempted but it was late. Jacob was expecting me at home any minute. I had to pick up Vickie from my mom's on my way home. On the other hand, I felt this was cheating. So I told him what I felt. He laughed. In fact he laughed very loud and then said: 'No, it's not cheating. I'm not giving you the answers, I'm giving you the questions. Go ahead, call your husband and your mother and tell them that you're running late.'

"So I did. I called home. I asked Jacob to go pick up Vickie from my parents'. I told him that my professor was helping me with me exam. Jacob knew that I had that meeting with Tim. He knew that I was going to ask him to take my exam another time. He told me on the phone: 'That's great. I wish I had a professor like yours.'

"I began studding the questions. He was sitting there, and occasionally told me that if I didn't understand something, I could ask him. I was very grateful, yet I was nervous,too. There was something in that room that made me very uncomfortable. He was reading a book, or appeared doing that; but I knew; I felt that his eyes were on me.

"After half an hour, I wanted to tell him that I should leave, that I was worried for my daughter; but I don't know why, I couldn't. Then suddenly he asked me: 'How old are you?' I looked up. He was not on his chair. He was standing next to me. 'Twenty three,' I said. He put his hand on my shoulder. I shivered. He noticed it. 'Relax, I'm not going to bite you. You're too young to be married and have a child, and support your family.' He said. 'What is wrong with that?' I argued.

"I knew something was not right. As I was contemplating to get up and leave and forget about my exam, he began touching my hair and shoulders. I was frozen with horror. I was so frightened that even I couldn't get up from my chair. Nonetheless, I did and dropped the chair meanwhile. He began laughing again: 'That is not a great price for passing this difficult exam, is it?' He said. I ran to the door, but it was locked. He had planned all these. I found some strength to scream: 'What do you want from me. Let me go please.' 'No one is here to hear you. I'm not going to do anything to you that you don't ask for it.' He said it in a way that brought chills to my bones.

To Be Continued

Secrets- ~~ Chapter Three

Her voice, she realized was dead:

"I..." She could not go on.

They all listened to her hushed voice worriedly.

"I want...him to leave!"

They all heard her abrupt, feverish, and frantic words through her stifled voice. They all knew that she was not acting normal, that something was terribly amiss with her.

"A minute ago, you were condemning Jacob for something he had done before marrying you. I am not leaving until everyone knows what you did when you were married." Tim said with a wave of his hand, and then sat on a chair away from everyone.

How could Diana endure such an adversity without slipping into madness? Perhaps a simple glance at Jacob would save her and she would not be wasted. She began hating Tim like a nightmare. She thought to herself: "Dose he make a trophy from all his victims, and follows them up to the end of eternity?" Hatred and disgust strongly mingled in her. She opened her eyes wide, as she looked from her husband to others and then back again. Her mind that used to be so quick in making decision, now was so vain even to imagine that her eyes were striking only shame. That was a conviction which stayed indelibly frozen in her mind.

Jacob bluntly motioned to Diana to a chair. He sat himself at a slight angle to her. Then he faced her with an unbelievable and anxious suspense.

"What is this all about?' He asked with a silly grimace on his face that did not match his words.

Diana seemed confused. Everything was terribly foreign to her, and that foreignness was killing her. The blaze of the day had been passed; it was now replaced by a drunk night that used to have sweet smell of sleep, a sleep that awaited the tormented and the discontented. But sleep was so far away, and the sweetness was only a mirage. She wished she could dissipate this night by a wave of her hand or blink of her eyes; but the night was there, and the nightmare stared at her, and sleep was just a dream.

Again she looked searchingly and watchfully at all these listeners, who all impatiently were waiting for her to open her mouth and say something. It was cruel, yet all these curious people awaited out of spite not kindness of their hearts to convict her and whoever else they could. Were They human?

"Don't make us wait any longer!" Tim said with a faded smile in the corner of his mouth. "If you don't talk, then I will."

Diana got up. Jacob tried to pull her back to the seat, but she moved away quickly away from him. She could hardly stand on her feet. She wept quietly, being angry at her own tears. Others, who had not seen such tears in her eyes before, knew the degree of distraught in her.

"I must say first...when it happened, I wanted to tell you Jacob, but you said you didn't want to know it." She wept more and covered her face.

"I don't know what you're talking about?" Jacob said. His voice was almost dead, too.

"Now, right now..., death is a pleasant thing. I'm not...afraid to die now. I wish... it was the end of me now... I musty say, I've always loved you. My love... to you made every sense to you... before, and perhaps... it makes no sense now." Diana stopped crying. She stood next to the dining room table, leaning on it for support. It appeared that now she could talk after she had that "love" part out of her mouth.

"Please for old time sake, let me tell you the story when we're alone, not now..." She looked intensely at Jacob through now her dry eyes. It seemed that now she was making sense and was more in control of her emotions than a minute ago. Then she walked back to where Jacob was sitting. She searched for his hands, but he pulled it away.

"Jacob," She began, feeling she could tell the story and even pay the price for it.

"My dear, love is not only one thing, it's many things in one form. For me my love to you has been my anchor, my savior. When our daughter left, it was love, my love to you and yours to me... that enabled me to live, to survive. Now my kind of love is breaking down. Help me. Save me. Let me tell you tomorrow. Let's these people go to their homes. Save me from this disaster please."

"A minute ago you said that from now on you live with me out of sympathy, now you talk about your love for me! which one is it?" Jacob said with extreme sadness in his voice. Tim started to clap his hands.

"Bravo, bravo..."

Now everyone was back sitting in their usual seats. They all listened to her cry for help, her frantic, yet supplicate cry. However no one wanted to leave. Rosa, who had a very good idea what the story might be, was the only one who offered her support to Diana.

"She is right. I think we all need to leave now, and let them solve their problems without us." Then she looked with a glow of hatred in her eyes to Tim:

"I was told many times what a terrible man you are, but I didn't want to believe it. Now, I'm ashamed of myself for dating you!"

To Be continued

Secrets- Chapter Three

How could Diana stop the shame that had filled her for over twenty years of being spilled out now? What would be her next step? A step that one would think it over, debate it in her mind, and come up when the exact right words; and was definitely the kind that would not be contemplated, yet simply would be taken, like a casual thing. As she deliberated in her mind for a solution, her senses, which had gone frantic up to that moment, gradually returned. She looked around to all those people, whom their curiosity had made them all to look like hungry wolves. However their hunger was with their own kind of pride and vanity. It was not that they were identified by any specific ambition or aptitude to break away from the baffled path in a calculated attempt toward individuality which would be entirely awkward.

Somehow, Diana looked at these people as though she was seeing beneath their skin their wicked souls. She thought: "Why should they know of something that I am not proud of and in fact very ashamed of? Why must this senseless mistake of so many years passed, which I had no control over it, now had to come to haunt me?

In this crowd, she detested three people positively, Ed, for his vanity and love for money and power, Thui for her stupidity in general, yet smartness to cling to a powerful lawyer, older than her father for her personal gain, and all the rumors around that she had done something terrible in her home country, and Tim for his cruel honesty and his love for ruining other people's lives. If someone told her then that Tim had planned all these, she had the suspicious that it was true. However, she loved Rosa, who had arrived her house as a guest and she had never met her before, and now turned out to be her stepdaughter. She also loved Jacob, her husband, in spite of the great secret he had hidden from her for so long.

But now, right now, her integrity, her life, her name, her marriage, and everything that people thought of her and she thought of herself were on display. her reputation was challenged. She was not even a devote Christian to pray for a miracle. Besides, the essence of religion belief did not depend on reason; and her reason had not anything to do with wrong doing or immorality. It had been only a mistake, being in a wrong place at a wrong time.

Inevitably, since then, she had never forgiven herself for it. How could she? Even though she had had no control over it. She had thought that this disgrace would never be discovered by others. Now she was entirely the victim of this man's boundless inhumanity. What she needed was some kind of generosity of the human heart. She began to feel a bitter distaste for this man, Tim; but her disgust was mostly out of self- ridicule and fault.

After the dreadful stillness, now everyone seemed exasperated, every one was standing up. But there was one among all, whose questioning eyes Diana wanted to avoid. That person was Jacob. She began, trembling, wanting some fresh air. Her voice, she realized was dead.

To Be continued

Secrets{[}]{[}] Chapter two

Silence fell. It seemed no one was aware of Diana's well being at all. She was so within herself as though she never existed. Nevertheless, Jacob torn between the resurrection of his marriage and the finding of his lost daughter, was completely conscious of his wife's behavior. He buried his face in his hands and thought for a moment: "How can I save my life?" His feelings and thoughts showed in his entire existence. He was stared by others, who all carried hatred, fear, and love in the abstracted, contemptible smile that they possessed on their drunken faces.

He knew of the urgency to implore to his wife for forgiveness; but he was frightened by that plea at the same time. Suddenly something unexpected happened. Rosa, who remembered her conversation with her mother, and then with Diana in the bedroom, got up from her seat, walked to Diana, and stood in front of her. Diana seemed to be dozing, her head in her chest, her eyes closed. Rosa touched her shoulders. Diana raised her head, her eyes red, like fire. The two women hugged, a long, loving embrace. Rosa sat next to her.

"Please forgive him. He is a good man with bad attitude. Do it for me. He has suffered enough. I've already forgiven him. What do you say."

Diana looked up. Every one was anxious to hear her response. It was obvious that the two women liked each other and had no grudge against the other. Their aversion was for a man that from now on they had to share.

"Lies and darkness, hatred and lies..." Diana burst into a loud cry. Her outburst was so intense at that moment that Jacob thought she might die from it.

He could not help thinking of death, of even killing himself seeing his wife's disturbance so sever then. He thought death would not be so terrible at all. And If the events this night were so emotionally powerful, then how could they overcome? But the more clearly he understood his thoughts, the more clamorously he wanted to live, to embrace life, to go on with living no matter the aftermath. He revealed to himself that he might had resented this dark night, this heedless, uncaring destiny which was designed to annihilate him like an insect without his awareness. But why hadn't he broken his silence, why hadn't he just confessed to his wife at the beginning? What was all these resentment for? He was shocked by Diana's sudden air of vagueness, but at the same time, he did not know how he would act if it was her.

Everything in that house, at that moment, appeared hostile and daunting, as though all the things around were disguising secrets, like when people play hide and sick. But in a single moment, an unusual mood came over him. Again he paced the room, pale and gloomy, suffering the incurable pain. His knees shook and a fugitive smile meandered on his shivering lips. He reflected, vaguely surprised himself, and just then. alarmed with awe, suddenly stopped in front of Diana, whose head was on Rosa's shoulder.

"If you want to go on living by hating me, no one can stop you. I never lied to you; it was just so painful, so hurtful for me to reveal this suffering to anyone even you. I know now that if I had told you at the beginning, you had married me any way and may be you could even helped me to find Rosa. Go on, hate me, despise me, but you have no right to do so because I hate myself for it. Now I'm at your mercy. Say something, cry, scream, do what ever you want, but do something." He felt a decisive , undoubted conviction that Diana would respond to his cry for help. Suddenly as if an ocean was opened before him, he saw Diana's fiery eyes. She was sick. Rosa and Jacob helped her to bathroom. Rosa stayed with her. Jacob returned to the room. They returned in a short order, Diana walking firmer.

Jacob was saying things that he wished them to disclose other different things. There was a touch of disdain in his words; nonetheless, he was equally and extremely convulsive. He looked around apprehensively. It was clear that he was losing the track of what he was saying at every new word that came out of his mouth. His entire aura along with his disturbed look, eccentric glowing, and distraught appearance concerned everyone especially Rosa. He looked at Diana, who seemed more like herself, after she had vomited all the poisonous alcohol, fixedly; the spasm now was suspended on his face. He stood there vacant waiting for a miracle.

Considering all the agitation in the house, Diana still seemed unaware of her surroundings. She was ready to go on sitting there as long as it would take without moving or saying a word. she had a misgiving that if she stayed quiet even for that night, she would indelibly allured into this trap and her life would be adhered to this aversion for ever; nevertheless, internally she wanted to stay silent, so as her life would be saved, so as things would return to the way they were.

Rosa, who noticed the extreme disturbance of both Diana and Jacob, felt somewhat responsible for all these commotion. If she had not insisted on talking to Jacob about her mother, things would be normal for all three of them, and Jacob and Diana would go on living their happy lives. She was the cause of all these. She had forgotten that she had planned all these with Tim's help and insistence.

"Listen Diana," She began: "you can't hate him for this. I can't even hate him for this." Then she added, as if to herself: " This hostility will drop you, me and him deeply into the most hopeless abyss. You can't possibly blame him for wanting to forget a hurtful, painful thing that he had no control over it. You heard it yourself that my mother set him up because as she put it, he was kind and naive."

Every one was relieved by Rosa's intervention; however, they all waited to see what Diana would say to her.

"You're an original woman." Diana said at last while getting up. She paced the room and stopped in front of the window.

"You're more original than me. I saw that the minute I entered your home this evening." Rosa responded.

"I can't love him with love anymore. I can love him with sympathy now." Diana astonished all.

"I'll stay with him out of spite."

"You can't do that. This is emotional blackmail." Rosa protested, throwing her fist in the air.

"Yes, I can. Our feelings don't depend on reason. You want me to be reasonable. I am and willing to continue living with him, but my reason is different than my feelings."

"Stop it Diana. You're going mad." Tim cried loud.

Everyone stood up by his sudden screaming. Diana froze in front of window. Her knees buckled; and before falling, she managed to sit herself on a chair. All crowded around her and took her air away.

"I want all of you leave my house now." She frantically cried.

They all listened to her frenzied words. They all knew that something was wrong with her.

"No, "Tim retorted. "We're not leaving , not yet." He paused for a moment, and then added with a little softer tone of voice:

"You think Jacob is the only one with secret. I bet all of us have some kind of hideous secrets buried inside us. I know I do; and I'll share that with you after we hear Diana's secret. I bet Diana you have a secret or two. Look at me, you know I am right."

Diana automatically looked at Tim. Her eyes discharged nothing but shame and fire.

"Stop the nonsense. Get out of my house." She protested.

"No, I recognized you the minuted I came in. In fact I knew you before I came here tonight. Think, think, when was it? Was it twenty, twenty two, three years ago?'

There was a sudden hush in the room.

To Be continued

Secrets- ~`{}`~ Chapter One

*

The agonies of curiosity languished Jacob, Ed, Thui, and Tim. Jacob's hands fell loose on each side of his body, as though he was to be put in death at any moment. He knew that he had told the truth. It was Tim, who got up, hugged Rosa, and made her to sit next to him. Her face, like her name, was rosy color. Nothing can be read in her dreamy eyes.

"Are you okay? Did you talk to your mother?" Tim quizzed her.

"I'm fine. And yes, I did talk to my mother." Her voice was harsh and shaky.

Diana sank into the armchair, holding her head with her hands. Jacob wanted to go to her, to kneel in front of her, and to beg her for normality. But he continued sitting on his chair.

"What did your mother say?" Thui was dying to know the story.

"She unveiled twenty seven years of lies. Jacob's story is absolutely correct. My mother has lied to me all my life. To night I lost my mother to gain a father; but I am not sure if I can forgive him for abandoning me!"

"But you heard the story. Your mother left him no choice," Ed said, as though involuntarily, as though talking to himself.

"You're all fool. Some of you are fool with heart and no mind, and some of you are fool with mind and no heart. Jacob is a fool, too. He is a fool with heart and no mind. What he did to me, his own child, and then to his wife, by not telling her, is not acceptable. Now all of us are unhappy, all of us suffer." Rosa concluded abruptly. She blushed as if suddenly realizing of the kind of people she was speaking to.

Jacob thought that now both women are against her, even though his story turned out to be true.

"Listen, Rosa, I've never forgiven myself for this. Both of us have been the victim of Ellen's vendetta against men. I should have searched more, I admit to that." Jacob said with reluctance.

Rosa was thinking deep. Diana was so quiet that one might think that she was even dead. The entire room was filled with an unbelievable hush. The breeze that came through the open window did not sooth the aching skin of these weary people. Jacob was beginning to feel this intense love for this young woman. He had this urge, need, even the urgency to hug this beautiful woman to eternity; and somehow to make up for the lost times. However, he was not sure how she would react; and he was not certain if she should show this sudden affection to his daughter in Diana's presence.

"Can you guys just make up. I think what happened tonight requires celebration. Let's forget about who did what, let's start afresh." Ed Said with an unusual animation. His eyes flashing. What a simpleton he was?

An incredible inner light suddenly overwhelmed Jacob's soul. He, who a minute ago was physically and emotionally worn out, depresses, and shattered, unexpectedly was enchanted by Rosa's angelic face. He looked at her illusory eyes, those delicate eyes that no one could determine the color of them, noticeably shivering with enthusiasm and fervor, and at her face which glowed with inspiration. "No, I can't let go of this again." He thought to himself. His face was pale, twitching slightly. It seemed as though something was bewitching him.

"Why don't you all make up. This has been an interesting evening!" Tim's face wreathed in smile; nonetheless, he spoke as he thought. He truly wanted a good and happy ending to all these even if it was for only a short while.

The tender smile of Rosa's face, however, did not suit her at that moment. It seemed as if that smile had become unattached and unsecured; and she could not fasten it together as hard as she tried.

"Rosa," Jacob paused, as though was not sure how to continue. What he wanted to say was:

Rosa, I've never forgotten about you. I've always carried you in my heart. You read "TWILIGHT", that book was for you. I secretly dedicated that book to you." He said all these in his speaking mind, almost to himself, as if replying to some internal urge, or mysterious thought of his own.

"I can't distinguish your love from hatred." Rosa said in half whisper. "Tonight I ruined your tranquil life, marriage, and you must hate me now."

Jacob finally got up, paced the room for awhile, and then did what he was yearning to do. He sat on the floor, right in front of Rosa and hugged her legs. Then he put his head on her lap and sobbed. It was a thrilling scene. Men were holding their tears while The three women cried openly and loud. Women had always known how to show their emotions.

Rosa was trembling. Tim was holding her shoulder to stop her from that, while Jacob's head was still on her lap, and he was crying hard and loud. Involuntarily, her hand touched Jacob's head and then slowly she ran it through his hair and neck. He raised his head and their eyes met. She eased down from her sofa to the floor, and there, for the first time, the father and daughter embraced each other.

"Allow me to love you." Jacob murmured, his head was hidden on her shoulder.

"I can't love you if there is no hope!" She reflected.

"Right now, you've given me a glimpse of a real life, something I agonized for twenty seven years; and then you tell me to go on living in a false life. No one can endure this..." Jacob appealed. He was watching every transient change on Rosa's expression now that they were looking at each other, holding hands.

"I am enduring it." She retorted.

"I know you have every right to detest me. Perhaps you have pity on me; and I am certain that your pity is more powerful than your love." He got up and went back to his chair.

Rosa sank back into her seat, reflecting. She seemed wanting to say more but stuttered in a forlorn and futile gloominess.

"Come on you guys, let's move on." Ed interfered with others' thoughts.

"I don't know what to make of all these! what should I call you now, dad, Jacob, or...?" Rosa said, as if talking to herself.

"Call me anything you want. Just let me have a relation with you now that I found you. You were robbed from me by your mother, so I couldn't be your dad, let me be your friend now." Jacob pleaded both with his words and his eyes. His gaze was exceptionally unusual. He seemed to look at Rosa as he was looking at a thing too far away from him, or at a picture of her, a picture that he had created in his heart for all these years. That image of his lost daughter that he had actualized in his heart had filled him all these years with the agony of spare; he had pitied himself all these years.

To Be continued

Secrets- {~}~~ Chapter Two

Everyone looked at each other and tried to analyze Diana's Behavior; and the way she rushed back to the bedroom, the force she used to close the bedroom door, but no one said anything. Jacob brought his cigar box and the three men began smoking cigar. Jacob paced the room up and down; not a lot of space, yet he made a u turn and paced again, and again.

"If yesterday," He said, stopping suddenly, "I had to leave my home for ever and say good bye to to this place, certainly I would had felt awful. Now I feel I need to leave my home, and I don't know how I feel tomorrow." His heart overflowed with pain.

"Stop it." Tim said. "You're talking like a mad man. Why do you think you may have to leave your home tomorrow? I don't think your marriage is ruined; and besides how do you know that Diana doesn't have a secret or two in her heart that you've never known about it."

"My Diana! Never, impossible- I know everything about her."

"My dear friend the night is not over yet, you may get the surprise of your life before the morning comes." Tim's remark astonished all.

"You're crazy." Jacob threw his fist in the air.

Jacob felt like going away right then, somewhere far; disappearing from this crowd completely. Even a dark, abandoned place, at that moment would appeal to him. He just wanted to be alone with his thoughts, where no one would know him and the only friend would be his thoughts. He appeared talkative and restless. He wanted to enter into feverish argument with everyone in the room. It seemed that he was provoked by these people; yet his discussion loomed to be over the contradictory and instantaneous subjects which made it almost impossible to know what truly he meant at that moment. He had this crazy idea that he was being set up.

"Now, right now is a futile dream." He said with a malicious laughter. "You're calling me crazy." He turned to Tim and then continued:

"You're forgetting that the purpose behind one's action normally and boundlessly are more complex and disparate than we think they are in our ensuing clarification; and they seldom can be explained." He spoke with bitterness and fast, as though there was not enough time to express all the thoughts and feelings that congested his mind.

"Hey, listen," Ed began: "Perfection is just an illusion; virtue is only in books and it is nothing but illusion in our lives, Is it that so?"

"You mean no one is perfect!?" Thui cocked her head; her waves of black hair moved from one side to the other. "I thought you were perfect, dear." She widened her eyes and then sank into her thoughts and became silent again.

Suddenly Jacob realized why Diana never liked Thui. She was just so ordinary. He could not help to speak his mind; otherwise he would not, since the circumstances and drinking had made all of them to show their real soul:

"You know, ordinary people like you," He turned to Thui. "are the essential element in the human business. To forget about them means to ruin validity; therefore, I must ignore what you just said; because you belong to a group that your existence is a necessary link to human affairs, yet your voice doesn't have any sound."

Thui was offended; nonetheless, she stayed speechless. Ed shook his head. It seemed that he wanted to say something in his wife's defense but he decided not to. After all he knew Jacob for over twenty years. He had never seen him like this. However he could not help to say:

"I think you had enough of playing fool for one night, Jacob. May be we just wait and see what happens."

An abstruse and unfaltering discernment of his own mediocrity along with an inexorable longing to persuade himself that he was a man of perfect intellect had aggravated Ed since young age. Education, however, had given him the knowledge and power to play the game among the intellectual people, but internally he had always known that all the circle of his friends, including Jacob, were natural intellectuals. Even now, he saw Jacob would be a lot different than if he was playing fool. He had a great deal of pride and surely stifled vanity.

"What is this party?" Jacob got up again. "What is this endless celebration? Why don't you all go home?" Jacob's speech was impaired and blurred. He was always drawn to entertain or to be entertained from childhood; nonetheless, he could never partake in these parties internally.

"Thui, get up. Let's go." Ed said with a frown.

"No, you all stay. The night has not ended. This is a night of reckoning for all of us." Tim's comment shivered everyone.

Thui sat down automatically.

"What do you mean by that?" Ed asked Tim, Grimacing.

"I don't know, just my intuition. Please stay." Tim spoke as if it was his house with a gentle voice.

"Jacob asked us to leave! How can we stay?" Ed stammered.

"Jacob, did you really mean that?" Tim asked.

"I suppose not. I'm just irritated. You can understand that; and besides I am very tired and at this moment hate everyone. My life has turned upside down in one evening. That may surprise you, merely because we all are the type, the manifestation, the personification and the climax of the most arrogant, the most self- centered, the most incidental and hateful mediocrity." He said with a mean frown and then went on: " We're not foolish, and foolishness here have no consequence. We all deliberately do things and then we can get away with them."

"You're very unhappy and disturbed now, Jacob." Tim said gently.

"Better be unhappy and know it." Jacob answered. "I bet you, that you who pretends happiness, are very unhappy yourself and don't know it. That makes you a fool, too. There are useless people in this world, who in their self- vindication don't have any knowledge that most of their authority is only a thin line; and they don't find themselves responsible for anything. That is why many people nowadays lose their belief." Jacob, finally sat again. He looked exhausted.

"I don't know what to say except that you're right. But it is the tremendous strength of our minds that makes us superior, not our actions. Perfection, that is what you're talking about, can not be reached or found. One can only look at it as perfection, isn't that so?" Tim replied with a very sullen look on his face.

"Can you just forget this, tonight, and pretend that nothing has happened? Besides, what you're saying has nothing to do with tonight!" Ed said after a short silence.

"How can I forget what happened tonight? The more I forget tonight, the more I submit myself to the confusion of life and love. And what I am saying has every relation with tonight! You've always told me that I'm a philosopher. Remember, for everything I look at life as the law of nature, philosophy of mind. I think of people and the depth of their action. Why they do what they do? I don't look at the surface. I hate superficiality." Jacob turned away his face angrily from everyone and lit up his cigar which was dead by now. His gaze was strange. He had a vacant and abject smile on his lips.

Tim and Ed seemed bewildered. They waited apprehensively. Jacob wrung his hands while a sigh broke from his throat. Thui looked bored.

They all suddenly heard the bedroom door opened. Diana and Rosa came to the living room after almost one hour. No one could read anything on their faces.

*

To Be Continued

SEcrets- {}{}{ Chapter Two

~~

There are some who educe inconceivable gratification from their resentful exposure. Even though Jacob was not one of them, seeing all around him, the ugliness of what he was himself so ashamed of grew in his mind. Nevertheless, in a way he wanted the chance to relieve this anger upon someone, the fury at his own bad night. He shouted, trembling and barely able to control himself, at Tim, who had criticized him earlier about this long, ugly secrets; because he could find him the instigator. To get rid of this secret of almost three decade, he had gone through hell and that hell's fire had burned him to the bone tonight.

"We all have a whole life with a constant of complications which sometimes are not apparent to us, like having a pluming problem. We all live for today or as some some say, one day at a time, and try to forget what will be next. We hope that the closet that holds our skeletons, have a strong lock and no key. You're lecturing me, but I bet if I could have the key to your heart, there are many skeleton hiding there and they all will be revealed. You know it and I know it. Tell me who doesn't have a secret, tell me?"

Tim was astounded, however he knew what Jacob said was true. His secrets were beyond belief. Ed turned to Jacob with a look that sometime he carried in the courtroom, and for a moment forgot their deep rooted friendship.

"Jacob, I really feel for you, tonight. But you have not even told me this secrets of yours. You could have someone to defend you tonight if you have told me about it. I thought we were friends. Why are you mad at Tim?"

Jacob continued his barking at Ed, at said with a voice of an injured man:

"Ed, don't you start me with that? Only the things I know about you are plenty, not the things that I am sure are in your closet, too! And don't act like a lawyer here since I know you and your dirty tricks so well. May be that is why I never told you."

The party had become like a war. The only silent one and perhaps most dangerous one was Thui. She had not said a word for the longest time. She knew that her secret would perhaps ruin her life and shatter all the hope for humanity.

Diana and Rosa were still in the bedroom. It was more than half an hour since they had gone there. Jacob was not sure if they were talking to each other or to Ellen. Thui was all attention and wished she was in the bedroom. On the other hand she was anxious to go home, yet she wanted to stay and see the rest of the night. Earlier she had called Julie, Ed's daughter, who was baby sitting their three Small children and told her that she better put the children in bed and didn't wait up for them. They would pick them up in the morning.

Ed poured more wine and brought a glass for Jacob, who was still on the chair by the dinning table. He patted jacob on the shoulder.

"What are you going to do now? I hate to see your marriage falls apart because of this!"

Jacob looked up. His eyes were red and dry. He thought for a moment and said exasperatedly:

"No, I know Diana for twenty six years. She has a big, forgiven heart. My marriage won't fall apart, but I will; because I know tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, Diana will come to me as a comforter not a tormentor; and each time I see her as a solace, it will remind me a little more about my horrid secret. I will become a man counting his days while she will rain me with love and forgiveness; and all of you live to the fullest."

"Stop it!" Tim said. "You are talking like a mad man. Why are you so negative about everything? We better stop drinking and take a moment to think straight."

"You think it's the drinking!?" Jacob's voice passed its prime. "No, I have a good knowledge of what human is bale to do. See, what I've done, what a wreck I've made! Do you know a woman is bale to torture a man with her love not cruelty and derision; and never, not once, feel a little repentance? She looks at you and she knows, she feels that at that moment that she is crucifying you, torturing you to death, she is giving you love, and she has a right to be like that because you have once stepped out of the right path without you even knowing it. All people have relationships before their marriages, but not many fall in a trap that I did. But women in the back of their minds, think later they can reconcile with you with their love. In this kind of situation, they always have a weapon against you which they used so skillfully."

Jacob's dry eyes expressed a kind of restless and vague impatience. In fact everyone felt uneasy. They all wanted to know what was happening in the bedroom. Finally Jacob said, shaking all over on his chair:

"Thui, go to bedroom and see what's happening."

"No, no, that is not a good idea." Tim said.

Thui and Ed, who were several times at the point of leaving, but yet they didn't want o leave, now sat silent and motionless. Their heads were bent in their chest. Perhaps they were thinking about their own secrets. Jacob was silent now; his forefinger on his forehead, as if contemplating; but suddenly his fearful smile overcame by a look that showed a distorted concern. He heard the bedroom door opened.

Diana walked to the living room wearing a stern look on her face. She did not look ant anybody. She did not say a word. She grabbed the pack of the cigarette and poured two glasses of wine and walked back to the bedroom. Jacob could not say a word and would not dare to remind her of their policy of not smoking in the bedroom ever.

To Be Continued

Secrets- ~{`~}~ Chapter Two

"Maybe we change the subject now." Tim realized Jacob's frustration.

"No, I want to know the rest of the story." Rosa broke her long silence.

Diana got up and poured more wine for herself and her guests. It was obvious that she was drunk but not to the point to lose her faculties. She had never done this. Staggering, she returned to her seat but before getting there, she hit her foot on the leg of the coffee table.

"Oh, d..."

"Are you okay?" Jacob asked.

Diana stayed silent, but it was Rosa, who would not let it go.

"Did you ever think to contact my mother?" Her tone of voice was extremely sad.

"Of course, I did. I tried, but I couldn't find her anywhere. A few joint friends we had, didn't know anything about her whereabouts. I finally gave up."

"You gave up because you had another daughter!"

"This is not fair. I gave up because I couldn't do anything. She had disappeared with you in thin air. My experience has always been that life is what matters. I knew that Ellen would be a good mother even though she was wild in her young age. She desperately wanted to have a child. She went through a meditated plan to set me up; but she didn't respect men, She thought she could be both mother and father for you; and I see that she has done a good job raising you. Oh, God... I don't know what to believe now."

"How can you be experienced, as you claim, and only see the surface? How do you know that she's done a good job raising me?" Rosa was barely able to speak.

"You're right. I just see the surface; I just see you, my little Rosalina, beautiful, grown up, working on your PhD." Jacob covered his face again and began crying.

Rosa cried silently. Everyone else was engrossed all with attention.

"How do I know what you're telling me is the truth? Your story doesn't match my mother's."

"What did you mother tell you about me?"

"Not much; but from what I've gathered, you refused to marry her after she became pregnant with me. That is why she turned her back to men. She's been very bitter. She hates men."

"She was always like that. How can I prove to you that I am telling you the truth?"

"You lied once, so you can lie twice." Diana's voice was coming from the bottom of her drunkenness.

"I didn't lie. I just didn't tell you." Jacob retorted.

"I want to call my mother now and clear this. I can't stand it anymore." Rosa talked hysterically. Tim grabbed Rosa's hand, who was getting up to go to the phone.

"No, It's too late, One o'clock here, two o'clock where your mother is. We all had too much to drink. You can still do it in the morning."

"No, I want to call her now."

"Don't stop her, Tim. Let her call. I think the truth worth waking up a person at this time." Jacob got up from his chair. "Life matters, life alone. What kind of life three of us will have if we don't clear this matter now. Maybe, just maybe these two women can find in themselves to forgive me after the phone call. I want us to discover life tonight, the eternal process of it, not the discovery itself. I must add, and this is for you Diana, that in every serious thought of human, there is always something hidden which is not possible to share it with others. I'm sure you have some hidden thoughts, secrets, somewhere among the layers of your brain that you never shared them with others even me. Am I right or not?"

Diana shivered.

"Watching all of you around me, the ugliness of what I, myself, am so ashamed of aggrandizes tremendously. Let's clear this matter. Rosa, go ahead, call your mother. You can use the bedroom phone if you want privacy."

Rosa walked to bedroom. Diana got up and followed her. While disappearing in the hallway, she said:

"I have nothing against Rosa. In fact, I like her; but I am part of this and must listen to her conversation with her mother."

They vanished like the sun would fade in dusk. The others heard the bang of closing the bedroom door. Then it was silent.

~~

To Be Continued

SEcrets- ~{}~ Chapter Two

"I saw you for the first time in the hospital. Your eyes were closed. Your skin was pink and soft. You had no hair. I fell in love with you at once. I wanted to hold you, to be your father. I don't know... I can't continue."

He covered his face with both hands and sobbed. Everyone was quiet. The only sound was his crying aloud.

"Please, go on." Rosa said as though involuntarily.

"She told me that she would never see me again; and if I try, she would have me arrested. She said that the only thing she would let me do, is to name you, only the first name. She was using her last name for you; that is it. Then she wanted me out of her life and baby's life forever. I named you Rosalina. I was reading a novel then and I had seen that name in that novel. She told me that I must wave my parental right, or otherwise she would make my life miserable. She said she doesn't expect anything from me.

"Any time I tried to see you, she would not allow it. One time, she even called the police. She left me no choice, since she disappeared one day with you and that was it. She had left me some papers with a friend to wave my rights. After waiting another six months and searching everywhere, I did what she wanted finally."

Jacob gazed to an unknown place for a while. His eyes now seemed dry.

"In this dark period," He continued: "I tormented myself harshly by remaining alone and not socializing with anyone. The tremendous longing which human heart is capable of overwhelmed me. 'Could I regain my life again?' I kept asking myself. I didn't tell anyone about you. Only a few of our joint friends knew the story. If they knew where she was with you, they would not tell me. At that time, my mother was not talking to me, my father was drawn in his own misery; and my sister..." He stopped and covered his face again. The ambiance was so tense that nothing was heard but his heavy breathing. Everyone was engrossed in what he would say next.

"Can I be happy?" He began again. "Oh, what my grief and agony matter if I don't have the strength to be happy! I thought then that I could never find that resolution, that I could never be happy by seeing a tree or be happy by speaking to someone. People told me that I was impulsive. I didn't know that I was or not. The only relief that I found then was to study more. That for me was my own way of coping with life of sorrow and self- condemnation and stupor in this world. Sometimes though, I would defy in a ragging way; however, by doing that, I would admonish myself more.

"I could not help myself. I would fight back, but there was nothing to fight back with. I would talk to my fellow students arrogantly. I would insist on being treated falsely. They wouldn't understand me. They thought perhaps I was either out of my mind or ingenious. For a long time, it seemed that I couldn't understand the uproar around me, or perhaps I understood it clearly but stood aside like a soul apart who had no escape, no place in any on these outcries. I was like an invisible man, put in a room, looking at people, who were all strange to me, yet they all interested me." Jacob was vehemently talkative and restless. It seemed as though infinity cast its weighty arms over him.

"One night," He went on, getting up from his chair and began pacing the room: "One night, I desperately turned on my bed, and decided to move on. The first thing that came to my mind was to move away from there, somewhere far, as far as I could. I thought by doing that, I could forget that pain, I could meet new people, and I could go on with my life. I had a scholarship from the University Of Dallas; and I decided to take it; but not before searching some more for Ellen. I left my address to couple of Ellen's friends."

"Was that why you came to Dallas? I thought it was for getting away from your parents!" Diana said loudly, trembling, so everyone could hear.

Jacob sat again. To his wife's hysterical shout, he replied with a very sullen, sour look on his face:

"Sweet heart, I am so sorry that you have to learn about this in this dismal night. I've never intended to hurt you. I've been stupid and afraid. There has been many times I wanted to tell you but I was afraid to lose you. I should have told you when we first met. Can you ever forgive me for this?" He brought his fist which was placed on his forehead on the table. Then he added, as if to himself:

"You all wish and pray for me peace that I don't dare to wish for myself. I admit I'm guilty; but I don't know what my guilt is! These two women here, my wife, whom I give my life to, and my lost daughter, whom I've carried her love in my heart for the last twenty seven years, now are looking at me as though I'm a murderer. Why don't you get up and shoot me, kill me. If I deserve that kind of price, I accept it."

To Be Continued

Secrets- ~~ Chapter Two

Jacob wore frown. Tension and repressed temper filled his body. Clearly he wanted to tell the story openly, but for some reason he restrained himself. He was beginning to feel an intense love for this young woman, his daughter. But what constrained him was not the shame, or revealing the secrets, it was life from that moment on with his wife, Diana; specially since they had no news from their daughter, Vickie. He was not sure what tomorrow would bring him, when all these people would be gone to their homes, and the affect of heavy drinking would wear off. Would he wake up in bed next to Diana, or would she be gone like others? However he knew of her incredible personality, of her high regard for him, of her excellent quality she had to forgiver. She was a woman of restless imagination. Surely she would acquit him of keeping this secret from her and for so long! Slowly he singled out his guests and scrutinized them. He thought to himself: "Which of these people will criticize me tomorrow; Ed, who knows that I know many terrible things he's done to make money, or Tim, who knows that I know of many affairs he's had, or Thui and her shady past, who cares?" The only people that their feeling mattered were Diana and Rosa.

"I'm going to tell you the story, but before I begin, I need to apologize to Diana." At this point, he got up, walked to Diana, and sat on the floor in front of her, hugging her knees.

"I don't want you think of me as an evil person. Why I never told you, I'm not sure. We all are complex."

Diana stayed silent. He continued to stare avidly and humbly into her eyes. Diana was not sure how she felt. She was not sure of anything. If she had the power to control her reaction, she would want to be forgiving to Jacob and making Rosa part of her family. But for now, she did not know how she would feel the next day.

"I want to hear the story." She said, as if awakening from a trance.

"Can I sit next to you? I need your comfort to go through this." He said, as if talking to himself.

"Yes,"

"In Philadelphia, the day my mother broke up with me over simplifying my last name, I simply went through hell. I wasn't sure if this was a temporary thing or it would last for ever. It did last for ever by the way. I walked for hours. I missed my classes that day; and in the evening I went to a bar and got drunk. There, for the first time I met Ellen, your mother, Rosa." He looked at Rosa at this point, but her head was still on Tim's shoulder. Then Jacob continued:

"She was with a man. Somehow I don't know why, they got into a fight. I never asked her who that man was or why they were fighting. The man left her. I was sitting alone in the bar, it was late and I still was drinking. She joined me. She was upset, I was upset. We both were very depressed for different reasons. At two in the morning, when I was leaving, she walked outside with me. I was very drunk, so was she... She simply, without me asking her, came to my apartment. I don't know, I don't remember what happened that night; but when I woke up in the morning, she was there, sleeping next to me with all her clothes on. I had all my clothes on, too, even my shoes."

At this point, Jacob tried to see the impression of what he had said so far on his guests and more importantly Diana in an objective way. He seemed disturbed by touching the painful nerves of his past life.

"In the course of coming days," He went on: "Ellen and I became good friends. I realized that she was going to the same university. She had no relation with her parents. Her father was a drunker, and her mother had married a different kind of abusive man after divorcing her father. In a week, after we met, she moved in with me. She initiated that of course; and her reason was to save money. 'Why do we pay two rents for two apartments?' She said to me. I don't think she ever was in love with me. She said she was, but I know love when I see it. I never believed her. She was too selfish for that. But I was in love with her, so I thought.

"One thing though, I didn't like about her and we argued about it all the times, was that she used people in any way she could and when she was done using them, she threw them out like a dirty napkin. She liked to bring her friends, men and women, to the apartment, and she wanted us to change partners, all in the same room. She said she had seen it in a movie. She said it was fun. The first time she did this, I threatened her that I will not live with some one who has no honor; so she stopped. Three months into our relationship, she told me she was pregnant. I thought she was using birth control pill. She told me she did. I asked her how could she be pregnant if she took the pills? She said she had lied and she never used any pills.

"Here we were, two young people, away from our homes, rejected by our families, and trying to make a life for ourselves; and now she was pregnant. I was very hurt that she had lied to me about the pills; but I never asked her to have an abortion. I am Catholic; and all my life I've was told that abortion was a terrible thing. I didn't want to abandon my child, as my mother did to me and my sister, or her parents did to her. I wanted to marry her. I wanted to do an honorable thing. She laughed hysterically and said: 'I'll never marry. Marriage is for fools. Married people are miserable. Look around yourself, then you see what I mean.' I told her then what about our child? Then she said: 'You mean my child. I wanted to have a child and now I do. It is my child not yours. I don't need you anymore.'

"I realized that she had used me. I was devastated. I told her that I wouldn't allow this. She laughed more and said: 'Just try!'

"She moved out the next day. During her pregnancy, I tried many times to bring her to marry me. She asked me for money all the time and I gave it to her, even though I was so hurt by her. I saw her all the time with different men and I thought about my child she was carrying. Then I told her that I wouldn't wave my parental right. Her answer was that she would fight me to eternity.

"I went with her to hospital when the time came." Jacob stopped. He tried to contain his deep sadness. His eyes were welling up with tears.

"I chastised myself for not fighting my rights as your father, Rosa. But you must understand that Ellen, your mother, was very stubborn."

"She still is." Rosa murmured.

To Be Continued

Secrets- Chapter Two

Jacob began, trembling; his voice faltering at every word while fatigue, wine, and nervous tension accentuated the disarray. Seeing every one's anxiousness, the ugliness of what he, himself, was so ashamed of weighted on him even more. Before beginning to talk, he sat on a chair by the dinning table. He had been walking in the room for some while. His glittering eyes wandered indecisively and indefinitely with impatience; his glance drifted aimlessly from one face to another.

"Yes, I know your mother." He said shaking on his chair. "And your name is not Rosa."

He was silent now, putting his forefinger to his forehead, as if remembering; but suddenly his fearful smile changed to a sullen depression.

So much had changed already for Rosa; and in spite of her confusion and fear, there was certain conclusive images were shaping in her mind. Jacob looked somber as the night he was part of it. He seemed very thoughtful. He got up from the chair, by doing that, the chair turned over. Nobody even paid attention to it. He walked a little; and then put the chair back in place and sat again, only this time at the very edge of it, as though he was waiting for something, as though, in fact, he did not know what he was waiting for. Then he buried his face with his hands and wept silently.

Diana got up, all shaken, and walked to him. She did not want to believe what was obvious; therefore, she did not know how to behave, outrageous or calm. The others, also in shock waiting impatiently. Midway to reach Jacob, Diana changed her mind and went to the kitchen, where she began smoking and drinking. Finally it was Tim, who finally broke the dreadful silence:

"If her name is not Rosa, then what is it? How do you know that?"

Jacob dropped his hands from his face, stared to an unknown place. He was barely able to speak:

"Because I named her myself!

Suddenly Diana turned towards Jacob and glowered at him with a menacing frown; but no one saw that since she was away from everyone. Others were bewildered. Jacob wrung his hands, and sighs broke from his chest. Irrevocably he had never forgiven himself. The ambiance of the room was filled with oppression and strain. Everyone was waiting; no one talked. Jacob thought besides his wife, the three precious women in her life all had disappeared on him, his sister, Helena, tragically, and his two daughters with the forces that they were beyond his control. He wished that he had told Diana about this part of his life, but every time he had decided to do so, the fear of losing Diana had stopped her. This was something he should have told Diana before they got married, not after.

It was Rosa, as though involuntarily, as though talking to herself, who finally said:

"Are you my father?"

"I'm a fool." He began. "I'm a fool with a heart and no wisdom; but I suffer just like a fool with wisdom and no heart. We all will suffer for this.

Diana, away from everyone else, smoked continuously and drank more wine. She could not believe that for the last twenty six years Jacob had hidden his child from her.

"Do you want to tell us Jacob or not?" Thui's unwanted question startled Jacob. He looked up to the faces that loomed conspicuously in his brain.

"I tell you the story. but remember truth often times hurt more than lies." Then he turned to Rosa, who was sitting next to Tim with her head on his shoulder, said:

"I don't want to ruin my marriage, and I don't want to lose you again."

Every one looked for Diana, but he was not around, Then they saw the smoke of her cigarette from the kitchen.

"My marriage is already ruined. It's up to you. I tell the story if you want me to; but remember you may not feel the same for certain people afterwards."

"What do you mean?" Ed asked.

"I mean what I mean. You need to get the meaning from the story. All I'm saying is that I'm not a bad person."

Jacob had never been able to forget this agonizing picture or put it out of his mind. He had even overstated this affliction out of all proportion through his life and his books. However, at this moment, he was completely besides himself and hardly knew how to start the story for these curious people. He wished they all go away, but immediately he thought about Diana, his enduring, his ever parient wife. He looked up. Now she was sitting far away from him in a circle of smoke which was created by her non stop smoking with her hands under her cheeks. Through that fog of smoke, he was able to see her eyes. Diana also noticed his gaze. Suddenly she surprised everyone, looked up and said:

"Don't you think this is a privet matter between you and Rosa and it must be revealed personally?"

Frowns followed her statement.

"It's already revealed." Tim said sarcastically."

"What do you think, Rosa?" Diana asked her.

Rosa, who had been silent for a while, raised her head and looked amiably at Diana.

"I have no idea what Jacob meant by saying I may not feel the same for certain people." Then she sighed and touched her forehead: "I like to hear the story and others are already heard it, so let's just get it over with!"

To Be Continued

Secrets-^^^^^^ Chapter one

"How do you know he didn't care for you?" Jacob waved his hands in protest.

"I know, my mother told me."

"Maybe she lied to you." Jacob responded, astonishing everyone.

"How else could it be? He shamed me and my mother. And let me tell you, there is a limit to the disgrace in the avowal of a man feebleness above and beyond which he can not do when he feels an extreme vindication in the disgrace itself. That is the man that impregnated my mother with me."

Thui did not understand a word Rosa said but a few.

"You're exaggerating, honey." Tim said in a soft tone.

"No," Rosa cried: "It's no exaggeration. Yes, it's difficult, almost impossible for me to understand; nevertheless, how can I be responsible for understanding a thing that isn't understandable."

"Do you ever wonder?" Ed asked.

"All these wondering is empty thinking. Yes, I wonder a lot; but I try not to duel on them."

Diana, who a minute ago was the subject of outburst herself, felt the subject needed to be changed. She got up and asked Rosa:

"Will help me to serve the dessert? Any one wants coffee?"

Rosa got up and went to the kitchen to join Diana.

"It seems that tonight everyone is after us." She told Diana.

"No, sweet heart, don't think that way. Every one is just drunk." Diana said in a motherly way.

"Why did you call me sweet heart? It gave me chills!"

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. I don't know it myself. Because may be you remind me of my Vickie." Diana was wondering why Rosa was so frightened of love.

"I'm so sorry for your suffering. You're a good person. Your husband, I bet he is a good man, a good father."

"Yes, he is." Diana said proudly, and then she continued: "You know Jacob was in Philadelphia when you were born. I didn't know him then. May be he knows your father."

Rosa seemed bewildered.

"Why did you say that?"

"I don't know, I am not sure. Just thought may be he knows your relatives." Diana meant what she said.

"You mean he could have known my mother or father?"

"No, that was not in my mind; but now that you said it, it's possible."

"You know my mother went to college for a while, but she quit when she got pregnant with me." Rosa's dreamy eyes were not angry anymore.

"Is that true?"

"Yes, maybe she knew Jacob then. There is a possibility, may be Jacob knew her boyfriend."

The thought shivered both women.

"That is very unlikely. Philadelphia is a very big city." Diana said.

"You just said it's possible. Life is a very strange thing. I want to talk to Jacob about my mother." Rosa left the kitchen and called Jacob to the kitchen.

Diana thought to herself that first Rosa did not care and now she all excited of perhaps finding out something about her father. What mixed emotions can do to people! sometimes people who were caught in the webs of mixed emotion, even themselves did not know what they want. Now the three of them were in the kitchen. Rosa began:

"You know your wife just gave me an idea." She was faced Jacob. Diana was standing behind her. "She said that you were in Philadelphia when I was born. My mother was going to college. I thought you might know her."

"What college did she go?" Jacob asked. There was a strange fog covering his face.

"I don't know. She never told me. But what if you knew her; then you might know her boyfriend, my father."

"I thought you don't give a d..., your exact words, about your father." Jacob said with an indescribable gesture.

"People say things they don't mean or opposite of what they mean. I have to choose between the pain of knowing and nothingness. I always choose the pain over nothingness."

"What would you do with the information, if I knew your mother?"

"I don't know. I guess I will go on living a life which I have taken it for granted for all these years."

"Could you?" Tim said. Nobody had noticed that he had come to the kitchen and was listening to their conversation.

Rosa looked at him:

"Can someone see an image that has no image?" She added after a moment of silence: "Finding out about my father is an image I've had for a long time, yet at the same time, it has no image."

"You don't make sense." Jacob said.

"Yes, I do. I want and I don't want, but I want more than I don't want. I don't know what I'll do with the information if they come available to me, but I want them anyway."

"So what can I help you with ?" Jacob asked her.

"I just want to know if you knew my mother's boyfriend since you were in Philadelphia when I was born."

"I don't even know your mother." Jacob leaned on the wall, his face pale, his eyes were twitching.

"Let me tell you my mother's name."

"I was there almost three decades ago." Jacob said, trying to stop the continuation of this conversation. "I am sure I can't remember all the names of the people I knew."

"That is possible. But there are some names and faces that remain in our minds for ever." Rosa talked passionately. Her face looked feverish. She sat on the chair of the kitchen table.

Diana was thinking that it was rude of them to leave Ed and Thui back in the living room. She called them and they joined them in the kitchen. Diana handed the dessert and coffee to her guests but none were interested in eating anymore. However Tim poured more wine.

"Let's go to the living room." Diana said. "There is not enough chair here for everyone." She felt dizzy. After saying that, she walked to the living room; and everyone followed her. Rosa seemed thoughtful. She was not a cheerful person who entered this house a few hours ago anymore.

"So, what were we talking about?" Tim deliberately wanted to bring back all to the terrible mood they had in the kitchen.

"My father," Rosa reflected. She talked as though to an empty place.

"All right, let's get it over with. You want to know if by any chance Jacob knew your mother!" Tim used the word "mother" with an ironical intent; however no one noticed.

"Yes," Rosa gazed fixedly into space. No body knew how her thoughts meandered. However they were drifting entirely in her past. There was a bleak, restless expression on her face. This expression did not look like a person was absorbed by her memories.

"All right, let's do it."

What is the reason for all these?" Jacob murmured: "How could I possibly know a woman, your mother, in that big city?"

"What are you afraid of, sweet heart." Diana began: "If it makes her happy!"

Everyone was surprised by Diana's remark, as though she had lots of feeling for Rosa, who she had just met that evening.

"Okay, Rosa," Jacob said: "Tell me about your mother. No one knows; maybe we get lucky and I knew her."

Suddenly Rosa overcame with confusion. The hot blood spread in a wave beneath the skin of her beautiful face.

"I guess first I have to tell you her name."

"Right,"Tim interrupted. Their three years plan was finally bearing fruit.

"Are we going to do this or not?" Rosa turned to Tim and said with a lot of anger in her voice.

"Everyone quiet; this is like a game, our game for tonight." Tim said, rubbing his hands together.

A silence ensued. More wine was poured into the glasses.

"My mother's name is Ellen Pace."

To Be continued

Secrets-//////Chapter One

"Jacob just told me enough." Diana's voice was shaking. "No, It's not enough. You know, I don't understand how one can see a flower and not be happy by that sight. But my flower is lost; so I can't be happy." She cried, a kind of drunken cry; scarcely realizing what she just said. Discharging those words out of her mouth without ease, her face changed, her lips shivered. Apparently she did not believe herself what she just said, yet she wished to prolong that emotional outpouring.

Everyone stayed silent for a while. Now Diana had her head on Jacob's chest and cried quietly.

"Well anyone needs anything?'" Jacob said after the deadly silence. She knew that Thui was the one who had started all these by telling Tim and Rosa about their daughter, and of course Diana's over drinking did not help the situation. If he could have Ed without Thui, He would. Ed and him went back twenty years. He remembered his first wife, how she died, his other children. He remembered Thui, who was first came to America with an old American Judge, and after his death, became Ed's house servant and more.

As Jacob stood to go to kitchen to make coffee, Diana said:

"How about another round of wine!" She raised her head. Her eyes were red. Her hair was all messes up; nonetheless, she looked even more beautiful than before in her blue shirt and skirt. Her auburn hair, which was covering with gray, had half loosened from her pony tail; it shone under the light of the room.

"Sweet heart, I think you had enough wine."

"I'm not a teenager, you know." And then she got up herself, almost stumbled and brought an unopened bottle of wine. She struggled for opening it.

"Let me do it." Tim took the bottle away from her. After opening it, he poured wine for everyone. Thui's head was bent into her chest. She was dozing. It was eleven o'clock.

"Look at my wife. She is asleep. We better go." Ed said.

"No, the evening is just beginning." Diana said in a demanding voice. Ed did not respond.

"So Jacob, what are you working on now?" Tim asked.

Jacob was glad for the change of the subject.

"Just another story. But I am struggling. Diana knows."

"How so?"

"I don't know. It's complicated. I guess because the story is so close to my heart."

"You know I've read two of your books." Rosa said smilingly.

"Really, which ones?" Jacob was delighted.

"MOTHER AND SON, and TWILIGHT."

"It's strange. MOTHER AND SON was only sold five hundred copies. It was a failure. So you're one of the five hundred people who read that book!"

"I enjoyed it very much; and besides there are more than five hundred that read that book. I personally gave my copy to many of my friends to read."

Jacob seemed so pleased.

"Maybe you're prejudice because we both are from the same place."

Everyone looked puzzled. Jacob noticed that.

"She said it herself that she is from Philadelphia. I was born in Levittown, a small city in Pennsylvania. I went to school for my graduate study in Philadelphia." It appeared as though Jacob was defending himself.

"Where were you born, Rosa?" Diana asked after a long silence. She appeared to be okay now.

"I was born in Philadelphia. I moved to Dallas when I was eighteen, right after high school."

"How so?"Thui asked. She was awake now.

"Well I had a friend then. I followed her to Dallas.

"So, your mother still there?" Thui asked.

"Yes, and don't ask me what she does, because I don't know. All I can tell you is that she never married; but she always have boyfriends. Somehow I know that she is against men. She told me many times her self that she hates men, yet she always have a boyfriend."

"Is that why you don't want to get married because of your mother's influence?" Ed asked as if to himself.

Rosa smiled and thought for a minute.

"I just don't like the hassle, the obligation; and I definitely don't want to have children. All parents suffer." She looked at Diana for approval without knowing that her remark deeply hurt Diana.

"Yes they suffer." Diana said. "But a lot of children suffer, too; like yourself, not knowing your father, and not believing in your mother."

Rosa blushed, and the more she blushed, the more she felt angry at herself for bringing this subject. Her indignation was shown in her magical eyes.

"I never said that I don't believe in my mother. I just don't get along with her." She paused and then went on:

"She is, in fact, a sorry soul. I feel sorry for her. I don't want to be in her place. As for my father, frankly I don't give a d... to know who he is." Her voice was shaking.

"If he didn't want me, I don't want him either."

To Be Continued

Secrets- ()()()(Chapter One

The mild and dark night looked almost black with its sluggish trees, quiet stars and planets, and the smell of pure and unrestricted air. Jacob got up. The candles burned dimly in the dark air. He went inside. The blind swayed and made a bang sound and let the fragrance of the night and its secretive rustling go inside. Diana raised her head which was bent to her chest and looked around. She felt dizzy. Everyone looked at her. She stayed silent. She showed invisible signs of an overwrought upheaval, she was visibly irritated, and she did not want to talk while everyone glaring at her as though they all were driven by some mysterious restlessness.

"Jacob told me you write poetry, Diana?" Tim asked with his own kind of gentleness, but obviously it was more curiosity.

"Yes, I do. You, too, right?"

Tim nodded his head. After all he was the professor of Old English Literature.

"I'm a primitive compare to you. I heard you're very good. Jacob told me you've published some. Can you recite one of your poem for us?"

Diana covertly glanced at everyone. All were curious but that is not what she saw in Thui's face. She looked miserable amongst all these professors, teacher, lawyer, candidate for PhD. Jacob came back outside and joined them again.

"Tim wants to hear one of my poems, what do you think, sweet heart?"

Jacob kissed top of her head. "That is a brilliant idea."

Suddenly Diana overpowered by confusion. The hot blood flowed in wave beneath her skin.

"I am shy."She said.

"Come on honey. It's okay." Jacob stood behind her chair and hugged her back.

"It's too dark here; I can't read."

"let's go inside then." Both Jacob and Tim said at the same time.

Oh, please!" Thui said it in her speaking mind.

They all want inside. Diana brought her book of poetry. It was a thick book and as she was looking through it, Tim and Rosa noticed that that there was not an unwritten page in it.

"I don't know which one to read!"

"Read a happy one." Ed said after a long silence.

"Poetry is not about happy and sad. You write what you feel." Diana began. "This book is the poems I've written in the last couple of years. My other ones are all put aside somewhere. In the meaning that you want happy, I don't think I have a happy one." It was clear that she was finding her way through an internal torture.

"Why don't you open the book and read what ever is on that page." Rosa suggested.

Diana thought that Rosa's advice was a fair one; so she did what Rosa had said. Then she read:

"I breathe an unheard experience,

Which its gentle sounds so intense.

Wishing with an unreal prediction

To hear easing words of benediction.

It tells me to be patient, for darkness ends;

It will be sunshine any day and friends.

It tells me the storm will be over and done;

Rain will stop, where it had begun.

In my poverty, I offered my heart only.

What I got in return is being still lonely."

She stopped. A few drops of tears fell on her cheeks. Everyone, even Thui, was saddened.

"You know all writers are creators. They invent things in their minds that in real life may not be possible or sound right; but when you hear them, you understand them." Tim paused and then continued: "It was beautiful"

Thui had already told them outside when Diana was walking, the story of Vickie's disappearance even though her husband, Ed told her not to.

"Honey please stop. Jacob is my friend. If they want, they will talk about it."

However, Thui had continued with Vickie's story from the beginning to the end.

"I agree with you." Jacob said. "I also believe that any form of art is confronting boldly things that they might even endanger the artist's life or well being. So many example..."

Diana took the book to her room. When she returned, Rosa said:

"Will you read some more?"

Diana smiled. It was obvious that she liked Rosa. "Maybe later."

Thui whispered in Ed's ear: "Lets get out of here. I don't like it when they have other people over."

Ed ignored his wife completely.

"Why are you so unhappy?" Rosa's astonishing question shocked everyone.

"What kind of question is that?" Tim, shaken, asked her.

"It's okay." Diana began. "I don't mind to answer the question. Can anyone truly be happy? You're right, Rosa. I am unhappy; and since Thui have given our secret away," She paused and looked at Thui with red eyes and then continued: "Oh, I want to be happy if I had the strength. What does my grief matter if I can be happy? But how can I when every second of my passing life, I only think about my daughter."

Everyone seemed touched by this inmost feeling of Diana. Jacob, who was sitting next to her, hugged her and whispered in her ear: "Enough!"

To Be Continued