A Madness of Sunshine

by Nalini Singh

  The cop’s answer was indirect. “You probably have things you want to get from the big stores in Christchurch. If you want a ride there, come by the station around ten tomorrow morning—storm should be well over by then.” He was gone a second later, lost in the rain mere footsteps from the house.

  Anahera didn’t realize she was holding her breath until his headlights came on. The twin beams swung toward the ocean before she was faced with red taillights blurred by rain into smudges. Moments later, they began to fade into the distance, the cop heading back to the town he’d vowed to protect and serve.

  Long after he’d left, Anahera stood in the doorway of the home where she’d found her mother’s lifeless body, and stared out to the sea that may have taken a hopeful young life.

  31

  Will watched Anahera’s cabin be swallowed up by the storm and had to fight the urge to stop his vehicle and turn around, go back. He wondered what she’d do, if they could recapture that one fragmentary instant that could’ve ended the night a whole other way.

  He shook his head.

  No, going down that route was not an option; Anahera might’ve been away from Golden Cove for eight years, but her loyalties were openly divided. Putting either one of them in that position would further mess up an already messy situation. But at least now he knew—his body wasn’t dead. Because it had definitely reacted to Anahera with her prickliness and her anger and her presence that was as untamed as this landscape.

  Will wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He’d been quite comfortable being half-alive. He didn’t want to come back to full life. Especially not when a young woman was missing, he had a budding psychopath in his town, and the one man everyone thought a good guy might be beating his beautiful wife.

  He drove at a snail’s pace. He was confident of his driving ability, but he wasn’t so confident of anyone else who might have decided to venture out into the night. The world was an ugly maelstrom beyond the windscreen, the trees and native ferns hidden by a gloom that suffocated all life.

  Finally pulling up to a stop in his drive, under the carport, he got out. At least he wouldn’t get much wetter. The carport was connected to the house on one side, though the wind and rain continued to howl in from the three open sides.

  Going to the back of the SUV, he removed the items he’d hidden in the secure space beneath the spare tire well, then locked up and moved in the direction of the door into the house. Unlike most of the people in Golden Cove, he always locked his door, so it took him an extra couple of seconds to get in.

  Just as he was about to step inside, his mind on a hot shower and dry clothes, he got that crawling sensation on the back of the neck that said someone was watching him. But when he looked out into the blackness, he saw nothing. The storm was too violent, the rain coming down in slashing sheets.

  Will stood there unafraid, staring down whoever it was that thought they could intimidate the small-town cop. Maybe he was going mad, the dead little boy who followed him around ready to take his due. But Will didn’t think so—someone stood out there in the rain, watching him, wondering what he knew.

  Will was glad he’d put the watch and tin in a thick yellow plastic shopping bag earlier that night—his only aim back then had been to give the evidence a little extra protection from the rain. But now, even if the person watching had managed to spot his actions despite the terrible visibility, they had no way of knowing what it was he had inside the bag.

  The crawling sensation faded at last.

  Not entering the house until at least five more minutes had passed, he locked the door behind himself, then checked the lounge, kitchen, and spare bedroom. It didn’t take long—the place was no mansion, though, judging from their style choices, the owners had clearly considered it their castle.

  The two old-fashioned rifles mounted crisscross above the mantel had been lovingly polished and dust free when Will moved in. The first thing he’d done was to pull them off and check their status. As they’d been properly decommissioned and were now nothing but decorative, he’d put them back in place. Neither had he moved the overstuffed sofa upholstered in bright orange and black stripes. It wasn’t as if he ever sat in the lounge.

  The rest of the house cleared, he took the evidence with him into his bedroom. He was probably acting paranoid for a cop in a small town, but he’d been a cop in a much bigger town, and he knew that homes weren’t always safe.

  Homes were where people let down their guards and invited the monsters in.

  Which was why he locked his bedroom door, too, before checking to ensure his windows were locked. He wasn’t worried about himself—but he needed to take a hot shower, and he didn’t want the evidence stolen in the interim.

  After stripping with quick motions, he left the bathroom door open as he stepped into the shower just long enough to warm up from the inside out. The fire at Anahera’s had done a good job of chasing out the chill, but the damp shirt he’d put back on, while distracted by a moment that shouldn’t have happened, had undone that during the drive here. Stepping out of the shower only a couple of minutes later, he looked out at his bedroom to confirm nothing had been disturbed.

  No sign of an intruder.

  A fast rubdown to dry himself before he pulled on a pair of faded jeans and a gray sweatshirt, then he took the evidence and a pair of disposable gloves with him into the kitchen. There, he made himself a cup of decaffeinated coffee—any more caffeine and he’d probably be wired all night.

  Sitting down at his small kitchen table with a notepad, pen, and the mug of coffee on one side, he put on the gloves before emptying the plastic shopping bag. Leaving the watch in its evidence bag for now, he retrieved the tin box and looked at the rusted lock. It definitely needed a key. But Will didn’t have time to waste waiting on a locksmith and he had Matilda’s permission to open it. No court in the world would throw out any evidence he uncovered as a result.

  First, however, he found his camera and took photos of everything. A small ruler from the junk drawer acted as a scale marker.

  He’d continue to document as he went.

  Next, he decided to grab his toolbox and see what he could do with the lock. It didn’t take much to break it. Putting it aside, where he’d eventually place it into an evidence bag, he carefully opened the lid. Then, though he wanted to immediately pick up the book on the top, he grabbed the camera instead and took several photographs of the contents.

  Only once he’d documented everything in situ did he pick up the bronze-colored book he’d seen, the word Journal written in curly gold writing across the front. Someone had also pasted small heart stickers around the edges of the word.

  Will ran his thumb over one of the stickers.

  It was such a girly thing for a young woman as beautiful and as experienced at handling men as Miriama appeared to be; some part of her, Will realized, was still a girl. Dreaming of hearts and flowers.

  Jaw hard, he checked the first page, then the last one in which she’d written something. A glance at the dates confirmed this was Miriama’s most recent journal. It appeared to span a year, beginning about six months after Miriama would’ve turned eighteen. From the amount of pages filled, it was clear she hadn’t journaled every day.

  He went back to the first entry. It was a short one:

  Hello, new journal. We’re going to have some wonderful adventures together. I feel it in my bones. Love, Miriama.

  She hadn’t made another entry for a week. That entry was a chatty one that talked about working in Josie’s café and her application for the internship.

  . . . I know I probably won’t get it. Kyle’s also applying, and everyone loves him. Sometimes I wonder why they can’t see through him. Is it just that beautiful face? Are people really so taken in by looks? Why can’t they see that he manipulates everyone around him? Anyway, I’m going to try. I hope it doesn’t mess everything up.

&nbs
p; The next three entries were all about the internship and how difficult it was to get through to the interview stage. After that began a week of entries one after the other.

  He gave me a watch today. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever owned in my entire life. I couldn’t believe it when he opened the box and showed it to me—it sparkled in the sunlight, rainbows coming off it. When I stared at him and said, “Are those diamonds?” he just smiled and slipped it onto my wrist.

  “Only diamonds for a diamond,” he said in that sweet way he has of talking. “Do you think you’ll be able to wear it?”

  Of course I’m going to wear it, but I knew what he was asking. “No one will think it’s real,” I told him. “I’ll tell them I picked it up at a flea market while I was in Christchurch.”

  I keep on admiring that watch. It’s so pretty. He makes me feel so pretty, so loved and wanted. I asked him if I could get an engraving on the back of the watch with our initials, but he told me I shouldn’t, that there was too much risk the wrong person would see it. I know he’s right, that I shouldn’t ask for things I can’t have, but I love him so much.

  Will made a note of the date of that entry on the notepad. It would make it easier to ask the watchmakers and jewelers to search their sales records if he at least knew the date by which the watch had already been sold.

  That done, he read through until he found the next entry of interest.

  We had the most amazing day yesterday, spent it all with each other. The only bad thing was that we couldn’t go out because he might’ve been recognized. It’s a big city, but it’s still not such a big city when you compare it to all the other cities in the world.

  Even I might’ve seen someone I knew.

  He says one day, he’ll take me to faraway places like London and New York and Paris. He says no one will know who we are there, that we can laugh and hold hands on the street and dance under the stars.

  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.

  Can a relationship survive without names? Without an identity?

  Will frowned, realizing he’d made certain unconscious judgments about Miriama. He’d thought her pretty and talented and sweet. But he’d never realized she thought so deeply, saw so clearly—for one, she’d seen Kyle’s real face when the young man had fooled everyone else.

  Eyes gritty, he glanced at the time that glowed on his microwave and knew he should go to bed. But he
couldn’t put down the journal. It might not give him a name, but Miriama may well have dropped other clues. And he wanted to know two things in particular. Deciding there was no way he could read through the entire journal tonight, he flipped forward.

  There. Three months and two weeks ago.

  I’ve ended it. This time, forever. I have a life to live and that life needs to be out in the open, under the sunlight. I need a partner by my side, not a ghost no one knows, no one sees.

  Two weeks after that came the second entry Will was hunting.

  Dominic asked me out again today. This time, I said yes. He’s gorgeous in that nerdy, cute way, and he looks at me like I’m a goddess. He also has ambitions just like I do.

  He told me he knows I don’t want to be stuck in Golden Cove forever. He doesn’t, either. He has a three-year plan. After he completes his contract here, he’ll have enough experience to get work in a larger town, from which he’ll eventually move to a city practice.

  And after that, he says he’ll look for international opportunities.

  I’m going to try.

  Dominic is perfect.

  Something about that entry struck Will as “off,” but maybe it was just the idea of Miriama making a list and ticking boxes. She’d called Dominic gorgeous, but the words she’d written about the doctor had been without passion, holding none of the terrified joy that infused her entries about her previous lover. Maybe that was a good thing—the girl was smart enough to know she was on the rebound.

  Will flipped to the very last entry in the journal. Along the way, he caught sight of an entry that had his shoulders bunching.