A Life Beyond Us novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Green Notebook

Bridget went out to the car to find her phone charger, and she took her time.

I stood at the sink with my back against the counter and my arms crossed over my robe.

Tom stayed where he was, with the folded blanket against his chest.

"The back of my closet," I said. "Behind the winter boots."

"I was packing up your apartment. I found the box and I knew it was yours because it had your handwriting on the lid."

"And you opened it."

"I opened it, and I read it standing in the closet for an hour."

"Seven years of it."

"Not all of it. I stopped when I got to the last page."

My face was burning.

I had written things in that notebook that I would not say to a priest.

Things about my body, and what I wanted done to it, and how I wanted it done.

Things I thought were too strange to be mine.

"What was the last page?" I asked.

Tom looked at his hands.

"A list," he said. "It was headed 'Things I'll never ask for.' It had eleven lines."

"I know what it had."

"The eleventh one said you wanted two men at once. Both of them patient, both of them wanting you, neither one jealous."

I covered my mouth with my hand.

Hearing it in his voice, in my own kitchen, was worse than reading it.

"You never put names on it," Tom said. "Not a single name. But I'd known you since the second grade, Maura, and I thought I knew who the second one was."

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