I shook my head. “I don’t know yet, but they were written to your grandmother.”
He looked down at the diary. “And this is her diary.”
I nodded. Guilty. Red handed. “I found it here, under the floorboards, behind this bed.”
He shook his head as if none of it was making any sense. And, to be honest, the more I heard it out loud, the more it seemed so jumbled. So improbable. “How did you know it was here?” he asked.
“I didn’t. I found it by accident.”
“Bullshit!” he spat. He looked angry with me now, and my pulse raced. “Stop lying. You’ve been caught. For once, tell the fucking truth.”
“What?” I was so shocked by his tone and the language he was using with me now. How had we gone from last night, on the chair, tothis?
“Come on, Becca, you’ve been lying to me since you got here, since the moment I found you climbing over the fence. Do you deny that?” he asked.
I looked at him. Emotion welled up inside me—mouth dry, tongue sticking to the top of my palate. I bit my lip to stop the tears. “No,” I said quietly. “I don’t deny it. I’ve been lying to you.”
“Thank you for finally admitting to that.” He paused for a while before talking again. “So you’ve been investigating my family since you arrived here, behind my back?”
I nodded. “I didn’t know it was your family until I saw you here.”
He turned around and looked out the window for a moment. “You know what’s worse than sneaking around behind my back? What’s worse is that you let me offer to help you with your research. I was offering to help you secretly investigate my family. Do you know how twisted that is?” he asked, and my heart plummeted. He was right. Of course, he was right about everything. And there was no excuse in the world that would make this okay.
He turned around and looked at me with sad, disappointed eyes. “Were you only getting close to me because you were researching me, or—”
“NO!” I cut him off quickly. “No. I’m getting close to you because I . . . I like you. I . . .”
“That’s a bit hard to believe.” His voice was soft and sad.
Deep remorse and regret washed over me. “I’m telling the truth. I didn’t know who you were when I met you. I didn’t know you lived here when I checked in. I didn’t know the diary was here.”
He sighed loudly and then shrugged. He clearly didn’t believe a word I was saying. And, suddenly, I became uncertain too. Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure if I was telling the truth either. I mean, what are the chances of finding the diary of someone you’re researching, in their house, because you accidentally booked into it? The chances are impossible. They are needles in infinite galaxies. And yet, here I was, finding them.
I started to feel panicky. I started to feel like I wasn’t there anymore, like I was stepping backwards into myself and the world in front of me was disappearing and dissolving.Was I lying?Had I known the dairy was here? Had I known he lived here? I felt like I couldn’t trust my mind anymore. It all seemed so strange and illogical. I took a step back and sat down on the edge of the bed again. My thoughts were spinning so fast, the facts and events twisting and turning in my mind, and, before I lost them forever to this strange confusion, I opened my mouth to speak . . .
“I found those letters in my handbag. The one that was ripped in the lift. I was on the way to a meeting with my agent—who, by the way, was furious with me and has been threatening to fire me. My new book is due in three weeks and I haven’t written a word and people are waiting for it.Do you know what kind of pressure that is?And they’ve paid me a lot of money for the book and I’ve bloody spent it all because I’m bad with money. I buy things stupidly that I don’t need, I buy things to make me feel better about myself, or to show people I’m doing well, or . . . I don’t know. So, when my agent asked me if I had written anything, I don’t know what came over me, but I said yes, and I read her one of these letters. And it was so beautiful and moving that everyone cried. And then I told her I was writing a book about two young people in love, telling the story through a series of their love letters. But I didn’t have the other letters and I couldn’t just make them up. I needed some context, some setting to get a sense of the characters. So I googled, and I realized that Willow Bay was where the letters had been written. And I came here, and—by chance, by accident, by fate, by I don’t know—I booked into this place and I found that diary under that floorboard. And that is the truth! That is the truth!” I finished and there was a deafening silence that I waited for him to fill. But, when he finally did, I hated myself a little more.
“Character?” he asked. “You called my grandmother acharacter,” he repeated slowly. “But she’s not. She’s a real person, who I loved, and who loved me, and who died.”
A tear slipped down my cheek. “I know. I’m sorry,” I whimpered, softly.
He shook his head. “I still don’t get this. Did you write your first book yourself?”
“Yes.” I nodded.
“But you’re stealing someone else’s story for your second book?”
More tears. “Yes.” The weight of the shame and guilt were almost too much for my shoulders to hold up, and it was crushing down on my skeleton.
“But your first book was so good—why would you do this?”
“Because I’m stuck. I feel paralyzed with fear. How am I supposed to write something as good again? What if I can’t? What if my first book was an accident? What if I’m not good at this? What if I fail? What if I really am who they say I am? A nobody.”
“Who says you’re a nobody?” he asked.
“Everyone. Me. My mom must have thought that or she wouldn’t have palmed me off to everyone else. My ex. My ex’s partner. I’m an unremarkable someone with the wrong name. Writing a book is the only thing I’ve ever done that has meant anything. And I am going to lose it all, and then who am I? Who am I?” I felt like I was struggling to breathe as I said it. I hadn’t actually said anything so personal out loud before. I’d thought it a million times, but I’d never uttered the words, and I was even more terrified hearing them out loud than thinking them in my head, late at night. I gripped my sides, because my ribcage felt like it was closing in on me.
“Becca, breathe,” I heard him say. His tone had changed a little, now.
