Page 65 of The Secret
“It’s been a relief to clear this up, Dan. I worried for a long time that something had happened to you.”
I put my shaking hand on the arm of the chair in preparation to stand. My skin crawls with what we did together, how I was so in love with him, when he was somewhere else entirely.
“Wait.” His hand shoots out to my arm. “You’re going? We still have so much to say.”
I’m not sure I want to find out any more about his family, his little girl. I shake my head.
“Can I see you again?”
“I don’t think that would be a great idea, do you?”
“What? Why? Is it so hard to forgive?”
I gape at him. “The fact you didn’t tell me you had a wife and child?” My voice is incredulous.
“What? What do you mean, a wife and child? What are you talking about?”
I swallow. “Your family? I saw them waiting for you after the meeting.”
“What family?” He stares at me frowning. “Wait … you mean Nisha and Benny?”
God, they have names. Of course they do. I close my eyes. All I can see is her blonde curly hair, so like his. Someone is sawing a knife through my abdomen.
“You mean my half-sister. My father’s child, Benny. Now my ward. And her nanny, Nisha.” His voice is urgent, soft.
Someone has doused me in icy water. My eyes pop open, and his face swims for a second, and when I focus on him again, tightness hovers around his eyes. The conversation twists and bends in front of me.
“I don’t understand. They were at the meeting …”
“Nisha and Benny,” he says, more firmly now. “When my father was shot, we all had to go into hiding. My mother died a long time ago …” He hesitates. “My father had a lot of affairs. And I mean alot… Benny is his child from one of those relationships and was living with him when he died. A woman he got pregnant who left her with my father.” His face goes dark. “He didn’t care about anybody, me, my mother, but least of all Benny. But she had a wonderful nanny, Nisha, who’s been a kind of surrogate mother to her. She’s always lived on the farm, but we had to take them someplace safe.”
He peters out, blinking. “You thought I had awife?”
Shock is pouring through my body like ice in my veins. I can hardly process what he’s saying.
“You thought I’d done all these things with you … and I had awife?” He laughs incredulously. “What?How long have you thought that? All this time? Three years?”
I shake my head, gulping. “Only since I saw you in South Africa.”
“But Benny is four …”
Oh God, I was right about her age.I close my eyes, but they pop open again when he exclaims.
“Oh my God! You thought I had a wife and child when I met you in Congo?Liss! No!What must you have thought of me! No wonder you didn’t want to meet up when I contacted Brian. My God, it’s all making sense now.”
His eyes are wide and panicked. “I’ve been with no one since.” The words tumble out of his mouth, eyes tighter now, pleading.
“What? No way.” A flash of hot and cold runs through me. All my failed relationships.Ramesh. I’ve been with other people since Dan. Of course I have—I thought he was gone. The woman at the nearby table shifts in my peripheral vision.
He glances off to the side, jaw clenched. “What we shared, Liss, nothing else …” He shakes his head. “I told you I’d wait for you. I made you apromise. You went to the Philippines, I think? I thought that perhaps you never came back?”
He followed what I wasdoing? A small incoherent noise creeps out of my mouth.
He frowns again, chewing his lip. “Wait. Have I misunderstood this whole conversation? You thought I was asking you to … to … like some arrangement?”
“Yes.” I croak out.
He laughs, collapses back in his chair, and laughs manically, causing more people to turn around. I’m not sure I care.
