January 2023

by Shauna McCahill

"Today is going to be a day of completion."

Miranda Peters, a thirty something stay at home mom and wife knew this upon waking as the
early morning light diffused its way through the bland beige mini blinds of her bedroom.
Husband at work, children at school, she had time to reflect and to prepare.

There have been many emails and phone calls up to this point, in stolen moments. There have
been impromptu visits lakeside, and random gifts exchanged with no forewarning. It has been in
existence for eighteen months now, this emotional affair they have been engaging in. Miranda
preferred to think of it as destiny's hand on things. Although the rest of the world probably
would not see it that way. Now, finally, the moment is arriving, swiftly, without second thought
given. Miranda thinks to herself of the one thing she is certain of, in the midst of all the
surrounding uncertainty. A force has been pulling her towards Devon since they were twelve
years old.

"Devon."

Ah, just to speak his name brought exquisite chills and private, sensuous thoughts to her mind.
Recollections of sticky adolescent fumblings in the corn field, stolen sweet kisses in the hay
forts that they would build together...childhood magic and innocence, curiosity. Such stirrings at
so delicate of an age had begun for her. She remembered them very well. Now coupled with an
adult woman's experience and awareness of her own body's desires, as well as her own
imagination's capabilities. It was nearly more than she could deal with.

He with his steel blue eyes, boyish grin, bare chested athletic physique. He always did know just
how to get to her and how to leave her longing for more. The past six months in particular had
been a time of preparation, all leading up to this day.

Miranda had been living a quiet and nondescript life for many years now. Long suffering
husband, two well behaved kids, new cars, square house...americanized hopes and
americanized dreams. But where was the passion? She needed the passion. And she missed it.
This very thing is what Devon had come to embody for her. He was himself a divorcee, parent
to one child, a hard working guy by all accounts. On the surface, he too appeared to ascribe to
the apple pie life style and ambitions of small town USA. But on the inside, Miranda knew, there
lived a beating heart. A heart so full and ripe, and a soul, intense and erotic in its motivations. It
matched her own succinctly.

Their correspondence had begun harmlessly enough. She hadn't been seeking anything illicit
at the onset - only a friend or two to quell the loneliness inside...and to be understood. Miranda
and Devon went back such a long way - playing on the farm as kids until her family had to move
because of the business. Racing horses meant living life as a caravan of gypsies for most who
felt the call. After twenty five years, for Devon to just walk back into her life so seamlessly...or
rather, for her to be transported back into his...surely fate had played a hand, Miranda
believed. And to think it had been Sam's decision to move Miranda, the kids and himself back to
her hometown. Sam knew she had grown up in Lakefield. He didn't however, know about Devon.

Over the course of a year, emailing jokes back and forth had grown into penning heartfelt
letters of hopes and dreams unrealized, passing unfulfilled. Letters became phone calls late at
night when Sam was asleep, or early in the morning after the kids had left for school. Then after
the move occurred, the inevitable came to fruition...in person visits by the lake, a secret
rendezvous at the coffee shop. No, they had not made love. They had kissed, they had gazed
into each other's eyes...but they had not cheated per se. Ah but who were they kidding? The
thought is essentially the same as the deed, isn't it? This Miranda knew as she rested her
delicate fingers on the cheap plastic blinds covering the window.

How many times had she imagined Devon kissing her, and not having to stop? So often she
envisioned fingers groping, bodies writhing, musky sweat dotting the landscape of the air they
breathed in so heavily together, embracing. How many times had she touched herself in the
most private of areas as thoughts of Devon hovering closely above her filtered through her
mind? Often enough that when Sam reached for her now, she was repulsed at the thought of it.
Often enough in fact, that she felt she was betraying Devon in some foreign way on those rare
occasions when she felt guilty enough to say yes to Sam's perfunctory advances.

Now it had all come down to this. Eighteen months of building, eighteen months of not knowing,
but wanting...finally it had drawn them here. Sam is at work. JoJo and Melinda are at school.
This would be the day of questions answered, passions heeded, truths told.

"I am doing this for myself. I am doing this because I have to. I am doing this because
everything, absolutely everything in my life up to this moment, has been leading me here."
Miranda grappled with her thoughts out loud to no one, and to anyone. The secret didn't need
to be kept any longer.

She collected her keys, took a quick gaze in the mirror on the wall and glanced around the
shadowed bedroom a final time. She picked up her purse sitting on the Victorian chaise next to
the front door. She paused for a moment and remembered the little hodgepodge store in
Lexington that she and Sam had purchased that chair in, while on their honeymoon so many
years earlier. It was a happy memory, yet it vanished from her mind as quickly as it had come.
Thoughts like that were simply an intrusion to her now.

Miranda knew this at her core. That part of her life was over. That happiness was hers no
longer. Feeling as if she had chosen one life over the other, feeling as though all things would
be different, and better, from here on out, braving whatever lay waiting before her...watching
her whole life up to this point fade away like some far off waves on the ocean's horizon...

Miranda turned the handle and slipped through the front door, locking it from the inside.

She pulled the door taut behind her. And she did not look back.