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to marry his sister a long time ago…”

    “Him! Here! Dear God!” Marge exclaimed. She put her hands to her mouth. “No!”

    “It’s all right, Marge,” she said at once. “He came looking for your father, not J.B.”

    Marge’s eyes were wide, frightened. “You know?” she asked huskily.

    She sighed heavily. “Yes. Grange told me everything. J.B. doesn’t know that,” she added quickly. “I said that Grange only mentioned that there was a romance gone bad in the past.”

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    Marge drew her hands over her mouth. “It was much worse than that, Tellie. It was a nightmare,” she said heavily. “I’ve never seen J.B. like that. He went crazy after she died. For three months, he went away and nobody even knew where he was. We couldn’t find him. Dad cried…” She took a steadying breath. “I never understood what happened, why she did it. J.B. thought it was because they’d had an argument about her giving up her house to live with us. They parted in anger, and he didn’t know what had happened until her best friend called him and gave him the news. He blamed himself. He lived with the guilt, but it ate him alive. Dad was so kind to him afterward,” she added. “They’d had problems, like some fathers and sons do. They were both strong willed and domineering.” She sighed. “But Dad went out of his way after that to win J.B.’s affection. I think he finally succeeded, before he had the stroke.”
    She looked up. “Did Grange have any idea why she did such a desperate thing?”

    Now things were getting sticky. Tellie hesitated. She didn’t want to destroy Marge’s illusions about her father. And obviously, J.B. hadn’t told his sister about his father’s interference that had caused the tragedy.

    Marge realized that. She smiled sadly. “Tellie, my father never cared one way or the other about me. I was a girl, so I was a disappointment to him. You don’t need to spare my feelings. I would like to know what Grange told you.”

    Tellie took a deep breath. “All right. He said that J.B.’s father came to see the girl and told her that if she married J.B., he had enough evidence to put her fourteen-year-old brother in prison for the rest of his life.
    The boy was involved in drugs and part of a gang.”

    She gasped. “So that was it! Did he tell J.B.?”

    “Yes,” she said. “He did. Apparently Grange only just found out himself. His father only told him when he was dying. I’m sure he was trying to spare Grange. He’ll go through his own pain, realizing that he provided your father with the reason to threaten his sister.”

    “So many secrets,” Marge said, her voice thready. “Pain and more pain. It will bring it all back, too. J.B.
    will relive it.”

    That was painful. But it wasn’t all Grange’s fault. “Grange just wanted to know the truth.” Tellie defended the stranger. “He thought J.B. put his father up to talking to the woman.”

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    “My brother doesn’t have any problem telling people unpleasant things,” she replied musingly. “He does his own dirty work.”

    “He does,” Tellie agreed.

    She frowned at the younger woman’s expression. “What are you not telling me?”

    She shrugged. “Jarrett let something slip.”

    “J.B.’s secretary? Did she? What?” she asked with a lazy smile.

    “J.B. wasn’t at the graduation exercises, Marge,” Tellie said sadly. “He was in a meeting with a businessman and his attractive daughter. He made Jarrett cover up for him. She was really upset about what he said to her. She was more upset when she found out that the present he wanted her to buy was for me, for my graduation.”

    “Wait a minute,” Marge replied, frowning. “He lied about being at the stadium? He actually did that?”

    Tellie grimaced. “Yes.”

    “I’ll strangle him!” the