me.”
“When did you find out?” Will asked.
“We’d been dating a couple of days shy of three months when she came to me all nervous and said, she was sorry, but that her birth control looked like it had failed. She was pregnant, and did I mind very much?”
His laugh was wet with tears. “Mind? I was ecstatic. I thought that meant she belonged to me now. I promised her we’d marry before she began to show, so none of the gossips would have a go at her. I said I’d give her a proper proposal, not cheat her out of anything. I already had the ring, knew how I wanted to ask.” The echo of happiness weaving through his voice.
Will didn’t interrupt. Sometimes, the best way to interrogate someone was to just let them talk. And it looked like Dominic de Souza had been waiting to talk for a long time. Unlike with Vincent, it wasn’t bragging. It was a desperate catharsis.
“I was so excited that we had this secret between us. I felt as if I’d burst if I didn’t tell someone, but the only other person I could talk to about it was Dr. Symon.” He played compulsively with the bracelet. “I resisted for a week, then finally picked up the phone. He congratulated me after I told him that Miriama had shared the news. I didn’t want to put him in a tough situation, wanted him to know I already knew.”
Will nodded, though the two men had been skirting ethical lines at best at that point. Still, if it had ended there, everything would’ve been fine and Miriama would still be alive.
“I was joking about how I was acting like all the silly expectant fathers we heard stories about in medical school. How I had the same fears and the same worries even though I knew Miriama was young and fit and probably in the best condition possible for a woman to give birth.”
“You were happy.”
Dominic’s smile was twisted. “I was. That’s why it took a little while for it to sink in when Dr. Symon said I must’ve gotten Miriama pregnant the first time we were together, for her to be three months along.” He stared at the bracelet with a fixed gaze. “He was doing that nudge-nudge wink-wink thing between guys, congratulating me on my prowess. And he was so involved in it that he didn’t notice I’d gone silent.”
Dropping his head, he said nothing for long, wind-lashed minutes. When he looked back up, tears—silent and hot—ravaged his cheeks. “I hung up soon afterward, then I went through all our photos together just to be sure I wasn’t wrong. I knew I wasn’t wrong. But I had to be sure, you see, I had to be absolutely sure.”
His breathing was uneven now. “I always took photos on our dates. And I took a photo the night Miriama and I first… when we were first together that way. It was of the two of us sitting on the beach, her hair blowing back in the wind while I wore this goofy look on my face. Just after that photo was taken, she put her arms around my neck and kissed me and said, ‘Let’s go to your place.’ ”
One hand dug into the sand by his side, clenched hard. “I’d been hoping, but I’d never pushed because I knew how much her faith meant to her. But that day, the same day she got back from an appointment with Dr. Symon, she said yes. And I didn’t know how brainless I was then, didn’t know how she was using me. I was happy.”
“Why?” Will asked, so that Dominic de Souza could no longer lie to himself about ending the sunshine.
“Because she already knew she was pregnant,” he said. “Before we ever slept together. I wonder how she planned to explain the baby to me when it arrived two months early. Did she think I’d buy a premature birth story? I’m a fucking doctor.”
“According to her journal,” Will said, “she thought you were a good man, a man she could have a future with, a man she was starting to love. I think she would’ve told you the truth if you’d given her a chance.”
Dominic turned eyes mad with grief toward him. “Please don’t say that. Please don’t say that.”
“Tell me what you did, Dominic.” It was time. “Miriama deserves that. She trusted you not just with herself, but with her child.”
Dominic’s entire self just crumpled. “After