Secrets

At twenty-one, Diana has two goals in life. First, she needs to acquire her independence from her controlling father by finding a job to support herself. Second, she wants to find her mother. Why had her mother abandoned her? Wasn’t she worth loving?
Her first work assignment leads her straight to the past she’s tried to forget. Pierced and tattooed, Ron Pearl turns out to be the subject of her project. Afraid that he would bring up her past actions, she is dumbfounded when he treats her kindly and helps her.
Although Diana had shunned him in high school and betrayed her best friend, Ron can see that she had changed. She’d lost the haughtiness and acquired some humility. Ron has high hopes for his date with Diana. She’d been his dream girl in high school. He even tells his mom about their date. It’s a positive. They both need something good in their lives. Since his father left them when his mother was diagnosed with cancer, life hadn’t been easy.
The date may have had ended in a fight, but his instincts proved right. Visiting the hospital one evening, he discovers Diana with his mother. The two have been playing with makeup and talking about who knows what. His mother glows with happiness. Diana has no idea how much that means to him. But he makes a big mistake when he takes her on a dumpster dive.
She knows about his hoarding, but she never imagined that it entailed scavenging through filthy garbage. Giving him an ultimatum, she is devastated when he chooses the trash over her.
Mathieu, Diana and Hercules’ father, keeps a tight rein on his children because he loves them. He half believes that. The truth is no one will hurt Mathieu Rainville again. Two decades ago, he’d fallen in love with Diana’s mother, Arianne. Young and immature, she’d abandoned him, his son and their baby daughter. Instead of dwelling on his heartache, Mathieu focused his energy on his work and his two young children. No one woman would ever get close to him again. No one would get close to any of them unless he approved. After years as an anti-social antagonistic young woman, Diana starts dating a pierced, tattooed, freak. Luckily, she doesn’t seem too pleased with him after their first date, but she keeps seeing him which is unacceptable.
Finally done with being controlled by his father, Hercules, tells Diana how her mother came back for her but was turned away by their father. He decides to find her and bring her to Montreal for a confrontation which will tear the small family apart. Does this mean there will be room for new members like her mother and Ron? Diana will decide.