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Why is Becca’s absence impacting Sebastian now? I must be misunderstanding. Surely he isn’t intimating that he needs to find another woman to forget my wife.

Frowning, I turn the exchange over in my head and open the next drawer. Becca’s birth certificate and our marriage license. I set those aside for legal purposes, just in case. More file folders, some with magazines containing articles about romantic dream vacations flagged. I scowl. Becca wasn’t idealistic or starry-eyed. She rarely liked to leave home at all. Odd… I set those aside.

Under that I find a few notebooks. The top three are empty. I’m not surprised. Becca stocked up because she was forever writing notes and keeping lists. Given her OCD, she needed absolute order to function. I understood and often encouraged her. Now that I’ve experienced Nia’s laid-back, more natural organizational style, with a bit of spontaneity thrown in, I prefer it.

The fourth notebook, the one on the bottom, is filled. I scan the first few pages. It’s a journal of sorts. I had no idea she kept one.

On the first page, she wrote about being listless and confused. That entry is dated nearly a two years ago. On another, she mentioned resisting what she knew was wrong. I frown. What does that mean?

“What is it?” Bas asks.

“I’m not even sure. Hang on…”

I flip further into her entries, read a tad more closely. As time passed, she admitted to being unable to not notice “him,” especially since she saw him so often. That spring, she was thinking about him, wondering what he was doing, if he was happy or seeing anyone. By summer, she was fantasizing about him. She wanted him sexually.

I read that again, completely stunned. Becca, who could rarely stand intimacy, wrote that she twisted in her lonely bed with desire for him. She clearly doesn’t mean me.

Who is this guy?

By that fall, she confided to her journal that she was in passionate, undying love with him. She didn’t know how she’d ever fall out. And he had no idea how she felt.

My thoughts race as I try to discern who this mystery man could possibly be. All thoughts lead back to one person.

With numb fingers, I set the notebook down. “Sebastian, were you in love with Becca?”

He stiffens. “Why?”

I notice he didn’t answer the question.

“So, that’s a yes.” I rake my hand through my hair. “Holy shit.”

Suddenly, it’s hard to breathe. Shock does that to me. It mimics a stupor, as if the capabilities of my body are gobbled up by my brain when I have to process something blindsiding.

How did I never see what was right in front of me?

My best friend of nearly a decade holds up his hands as he backs away. “I never touched her. I never told her how I felt. I never gave her any indication… I respected you too much. But I couldn’t help how I felt.” He frowns. “H-how did you guess?”

“The pieces all came together just now. Once, you said you loved a married woman. And Becca’s journal…” I blow out a hard breath, wondering whether the truth will be a curse or a comfort to him. “I think she loved you, too.”

Sebastian pales, looking stunned and heartbroken. “She said that?”

I nod absently. “She didn’t mention you by name, but looking at her words now, it seems obvious.”

Maybe I should be angry or feel betrayed. Most people would, right? But shock still has me reeling, and I don’t see fury charging in to replace it once I’m over the surprise. Instead, the whole situation seems tragic.

If I’d known… If Becca had given me any indication she wanted someone else… I’m not sure what I would have done. I like to think I would have let her go. Why didn’t she ever speak up? If she was so in love with Sebastian, why did she come to me just after the holidays last year and tell me how much she wanted a baby?

“I wasn’t the only one who felt that way? Oh, god…” He sounds devastated as he falls against the wall like he needs the support to remain upright.

In retrospect, he sounded this devastated the day of Becca’s funeral. I thought his grief was for me. But it was for himself. For the loss of what he believed was unrequited love.

“Man, you have to believe me,” Bas implores. “I would have never let anything happen between us. Ever.”

My chest feels tight, my palms sweaty, as I reach for the journal again. I scan page after page, until I come to the answer. “Did you start dating Ashley last winter to distract yourself from Becca?”

He swallows. “Yes. I tried. I tried so hard… I jumped in with her—no safety net. I laid on the PDA so thick last New Year’s Eve at your party. I don’t know if I wanted to prove to myself or to Becca that I wasn’t ridiculously in love with her.”

He did. I remember thinking something was off with them. “Becca told me she wanted a baby two days later.”