I have this knot in my belly when I imagine that, all hot and needing and wanting. I know this is wrong. I know Auntie would be so disappointed in me for coveting another woman’s husband, but how can I help it when he’s so wonderful? Surely, God wouldn’t have put him in my path if I was meant to stay away from him?

Each time we’re together, I’m torn. I love him like he’s another part of me, but I also go to church with Auntie and I promise not to commit a sin. And yet I sin with him with every kiss, every touch.

The next time she’d written about her lover, it was in a fast flowing hand, as if she’d been jotting things down quickly:

I told him today that I wouldn’t see him anymore. Last night, I had a dream and I dreamed that God was so angry with me. Surely, it’s a sign. God himself is talking to me.

There was a smudge on the last line, a droplet of liquid having fallen onto the page and melted the ink.

The next relevant entry was only a week later and longer, more detailed:

I have no willpower around him.

He came to see me as soon as he could, and he held me and he said, “You know I can’t breathe without you. You’re my air.”

I tried to tell him about sin and about following God’s commandments, but he said, “How can this be a sin? We love each other. Our love is honest. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Then he pressed his forehead to my own and he cupped my face and he said, “I’m the one who’s the sinner, Miriama, not you. I fully accept that. I’m the liar. But I’ve never lied to you.”

I believe him.

I love him.

And this sin is what we have.

The next two months of sporadic entries were mundane, technical jottings about her photography, funny comments that made Will want to smile, and only the occasional note that she was seeing “him” that weekend, or that “he’d” messaged her “the sweetest thing.”

But the next entry that focused specifically on her -relationship—-dated six months -ago—-had a bleaker tone:

I love him too much to walk away, but I’m starting to think about where this will lead. He tells me I’m young, that I have the time to wait, and for him, I won’t be selfish. I can wait. But today Auntie was talking about a girl she knew who’d been taken in by an older man. He never married her, not like he promised.

And I wonder if that’s going to happen to me.

But then I look at the watch that he gave me, a watch that’s worth thousands and thousands of dollars, and how can I not believe him? He picked this out personally, risked everyone finding out about us.

Surely that means something, surely that means he’s committed to me.

But I still worry. And I’m sad. Especially when I see Josie and her husband walking down the street, their hands linked and their little boy walking between them. I can never walk like that with him. Not for a long, long time.

Will turned the page to read the final entry for that week.

He’s asked me to meet him again. I will, of course I will. When I’m with him, nothing else matters. I think I need to trust him a while longer and see where this goes. After all, we’ve made it this long.

If anyone had known, they’d have said we wouldn’t even make it a month. But we’ve made it for ten now, and we’ll make it another month and another and another and another. We’ll make it until he’s free, until he can be mine.

32

Will put down the journal and thought about what he’d just read, making a few more notes on his notepad. Miriama’s married lover had been wealthy and, for some reason, couldn’t divorce his wife to be with Miriama. Maybe he’d been stringing Miriama along, as she’d feared, or maybe it had been because he had ambitions that wouldn’t allow for a scandal, especially one that called his image as a family man into question.

Again, he told himself not to focus on Vincent. The other man’s crush had probably been exactly -that—-because Vincent would have to be one hell of a liar to have pulled off an illicit affair under the town’s nose.

And Daniel still fit all of the parameters; throw in his history with Keira and he fit them even better. Then there was the fact that nothing Miriama had written so far told him whether or not her lover had been an outsider or a local.

He refreshed his coffee before he turned the page into the world of a girl so beautiful and so full of life that she’d glowed like sunshine. As the entries -continued—-closer together -now—-she never once mentioned the name of her lover, as if keeping their secret was so ingrained that she didn’t dare utter the truth even in her private journal. Though the secrecy seemed to weigh increasingly heavily on her.

I wanted to shout his name to the heavens today. It was such a sunny, clear, -blue--sky day and I wanted to swing myself around and around in a circle and shout out how much I loved him, but even though I was alone on the beach, under the old cabin where Ana used to live with her ma before she went away to London, I didn’t do it.

I’m so used to keeping his name secret that I sometimes wonder if I remember it. And then I wonder if he remembers mine. Or do I only exist for him behind the closed doors of hotel suites where no one knows us, and I check in under my own name and he just comes up to my room, no record of his presence.

When I use my credit card to pay for the room, I always think about the money he gives me to make sure I can clear the payment. Always cash. No trail. I don’t exist anywhere in his actual life. He only exists in mine in the pages of this -journal—-and even here, he doesn’t have a name.