Secrets{**}~{**} Chapter one

~*

"What else do you want me to do? I finished marinating the steaks."

The screechy sound of the old vacuum cleaner prevented Diana of hearing her husband. He raised his voice while repeating his question; and when this time again, she did not hear him,he simply walked to the living room and pulled the plug of the vacuum cleaner. Diana turned to see what happened. Then he repeated his question.

"Everything is under control, thanks honey."

Jacob went to his office and sat behind his desk. Gazing at his typewriter, he drove himself to a world of reminiscence. He also wanted things to be different. He wished Vickie would have been normal like Diana not his mother, since his daughter's behavior reminded him of his sister's life. That thought gave him a chill as though he was in the middle of winter. He practically saw the hair standing on his arm. He believed that his sister's tragic life had everything to do with the way their mother treated her and their father ignored completely the way she was treated by his psycho wife. But why Vickie! She had all the love that any parents could give a child; she had the best maternal grandparents in the world. She had a normal life. Why her?

He suddenly realized that for the last three years he had thought of Vickie as a child, an extension of himself and Diana. The reality was that he did not know anything about his daughter as a woman. Agonizingly he thought about her. What had caused her to leave them in that manner, to run away from them? Was there such thing as to run away from too much love and care? Was it because perhaps she had been too spoiled? What was happening to her now? Suddenly the truth came to him in the most painful manner- Vickie was not the little girl he wanted her to be. Diana's and his obsession for her was all wrong. It was something that they had cultivated in their mind to justify an illusion or imagination. All children are birds, when they grow, the fly out. Both Diana and he had come to that conclusion for a while; but this discovery for him was like the ultimate knowledge. Excepts some birds would return, would keep the relation going, would be kind and trustworthy. The only difference in their bird and other birds was that she had flown somewhere they did not not know or accept, and she did not want to be found.

Now with a clear vision, he understood that as extended family was a story of past, the newer generation, especially children, who mostly lacked the love, support, and get together with their grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins..., perhaps had a divorced parents and were raised with moms, were more under the influence of the peer pressure than, let's say their parents. But why his Vickie? Jacob could almost foresaw the future of nation and the insanity of it because of all these dispersions.

He shouted. Derogation was not his sense as portrayal was. He was a good teacher again.

~*

Since the morning was gone and preparation for the party was ended, Jacob and Diana were sitting silently in the living room. But their silence, their sitting together said vividly and expressively of their trusting each other and and the closeness between them. Each seemed inattentive of the other and yet filled with an internal ecstasy for being together. Since this morning, the expression on their faces had also changed from intensity to some degree of relaxation.

"I'll bet Ed is going to be here any minute. He's always early." Jacob looked at the clock, hanging over the fireplace. It was twenty minutes before six.

Diana nodded her head for yes.

"I'll have a glass of wine, do you want one?"

"Sure," Diana responded.

"I've chilled the wines in refrigerator. Do you want white or red?' Jacob asked her with so much love in his voice.

"White,"

Jacob got up to bring the wine. The door bell rang. He stopped and went to the door but not before looking at his wife and saying:

"I told you Ed is always early."

Ed and Thui came in. In the last couple of years Ed's hair had turned all gray. He had a blue, plaid, short sleeves shirt and khaki pants on. At his age, sixty eight, he did not care much about fitness. It seemed that every time The Heimers saw him, he was a little heavier. On the other hand, Thui, his wife, only thirty years old, was slim and fit. She had a red flower print sleeveless dress on. The skirt was full and long. She had white sandals on and her polished toe nail were shown through the opening of her shoes. Her long black hair, fuller than ever, laid straight on her broad back.

To Be continued.