Page 71 of The Affair
My visits to William’s house have become a daily occurrence. What started out as a friendly gesture has become a balm for what ails me.
I don’t think there’s a single thing he doesn’t know about me. I can’t seem to stop talking when I’m around him. Perhaps it’s nerves. I just feel such a flutter when he’s near—like those schoolgirl crushes I had so long ago.
When we’re together, he just sits in his recliner, gently rocking back and forth, and listens as I go on and on. He’s not much of a talker.
He’s told me stories about George. Lots of them, in fact. But when it comes to his own life, I know very little. I’ve heard this and that through the grapevine over the years but nothing directly from him.
It’s as if I’m speaking to a total stranger.
So, I guess the question is … can a woman fall in love with a man she doesn’t know?
Because I fear that’s what’s happening.
Our relationship has turned into something so much more. My afternoons with William breathe life to my old bones. In a time where I’d come to believe love was merely another word for obligation, I find myself wanting again.
Longing for more.
Can something so wrong be so right?
Could William have been brought to soothe the loneliness? Or is this just temptation meant to distract a fragile, old housewife?
All I know is, something inside of me has awoken, and for that, I am irrevocably changed.
But how do I know he feels the same?
And if so, what does it matter?
Believing in love doesn’t make it real.
My nana’swords haunted me that night. Her pain stayed with me long after I closed my eyes to sleep.
Believing in love doesn’t make it real.
She’d fallen for a man she could never have.
As much as I felt her struggle, I also couldn’t help but think of the man sitting in the nursing home just miles away as she’d written those words.Had he deserved this?
It was such a delicate situation—one I was only experiencing from the pages of a journal long since written. Who was I to judge the past?
Would my grandfather have understood? Would he have wanted her to be happy in the end? Or would he judge the very idea of his brother and wife together in any capacity as nothing less than adultery?
My grandmother’s words always had the ability to dig into my emotions, and I could pull similarities from my own life. Reading this journal was like looking in the mirror sometimes.
Maybe it was human nature—our innate ability to connect with everything we saw—but knowing she had fallen for a man she didn’t know… I felt that on a deeper level. One I couldn’t shake.
Was history repeating itself?
“There’s that face again.”
Looking up from my bed, I saw him standing in the doorway of my bedroom. His smile was as bright as the morning sun filtering through the window, and he looked a hundred times better than the night before.
“Have you figured out what it means yet?” I asked, remembering an earlier conversation regarding this particular facial expression.
“You must be mulling something over. Something important or deeply intriguing.”
Stepping forward, he caught notice of the array of things scattered across my bedspread. I’d awoken early that morning, plagued by the words I’d fallen asleep to, intent on figuring out how it all related to my own life.
“I see you’ve got your nana’s journal out again. And… is that our high school yearbook?”
