... to remind me that once I was a taboo, even if in my own mind
what's it all about
Miriam Andes seemingly has it all ... work, family, friends, and the children at the Center keep her fulfilled even after she unwittingly walks out on Ray. But that all changes when Scottish golf course architect Sinjin Hunter opens up a foreign world, awakening her body and mind in ways unexpected. With no idea that her choices have always been shaped by her mother's secret past, Miriam walks in her mother Laura's shoes ... leaving Laura to wonder if it would have been better to have no secret at all. House in shambles and relationships strained, while her sisters follow as if she were a pied piper, Miriam tramples the line between needs and wants, pushing away all that she actually wants closer.
But she wants one thing & one thing only.
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excerpts
"I think you've got it." She's not forthcoming and he should leave it alone. There's fire in her eyes, a fight within. A lot more than what he bargained for when he first saw her and was drawn by the swing, her hair, the fact that she's alone. His brain tells him to walk away and hope he can get out of there without another word. One more word, just one, would be a risk.
Miriam hits balls, paying attention to her stance and grip even though she's also paying attention to the man whose words she can barely understand.
He tees up another ball, but just can't help himself, "How long have you been playing?" Wants an excuse to find out if she is what she seems: forbidden.
She hits a ball, and right through the swing asks: "What is it that you really want?"
A gorgeous stranger gone . . . but at least now she can freely hit balls.
Driving range | Released
"Because I'm trying to save you."
"You have the agenda?" She flares her hands open. "What's up with that?"
"Shield up. That's what's up."
"With Rob? A shield's for cleavage." Miriam sweeps her hair to one side and gathers it at the neck.
"Said who? A shield's a shield, to keep you from looking."
"But he's a guy. What could I look at, or not? Is his shirt open to his bellybutton?"
Lisa tilts her head back and groans.
"Ok, OK. I'll go."
office | Released
"You can't remember his name? The restaurant owner, the sportscaster, the lawyer perhaps?"
Laura drops her napkin on the table. "Cristina!"
"There's always a mystery around her and I'd like to know what it is." She turns from her mother and looks directly at Miriam. "You go out with men then they disappear, but there's always someone around, almost immediately, as if waiting on wings."
Miriam scoops sweet potatoes onto her plate, then slams the plate on the table. "You spend way too much time paying attention to what I do, so let me save you the trouble, OK? Because there is no mystery to any of it!"
Sinjin wants to look at them and pierce the sudden outburst of passion that has settled over the table, probably over something he said. But he will have to wait, for now, and keeps his gaze on the otherwise perfect dinner table.
Thanksgiving dinner | Until You
After a bit of perseverance, she does more than verify that it was in San Diego. Sandy discovers that her parents married while her mother was pregnant, but so what? She slides the credit card in her pocket and cleans out the history and temporary internet files, logging off before her instincts encourage her to also do a search on Kenneth Andrews.
Sandy searching | flesh of my flesh
a secret
Laura Andes, Miriam's mother, left home to bring back a wayward sister, but instead fell scandalously in love, shattering her future and the future of those whom she loved most. She returned home years later: married, with three girls, and an aching secret. To atone for the passion of her past, a past one of her daughters begins to unravel, Laura has led a quiet and subdued life, showing nothing for it but sad brown eyes and three daughters who control just about every aspect of their lives.
song of songs 8:12
"Are you from the Scottish Highlands?” She sips the whisky, swishing the still in her mouth.
"Yess, my ancestors reputedly from one of the aulder clans."
"Any famous Highlanders I would know?"
"Macbeth was a Highlander."
"Macbeth? He wasn't a figment in Shakespeare's imagination?"
"Macbeth MacFindlaech rruled Scot-land for seventeen yeears."
"He wasn't a figment?"
"No," he leans in, wanting to talk about something else, to not talk at all, "are you per-haps a figment of mine?"
"I am real, very much of the flesh." She takes another sip, letting the whisky pool in her mouth before savoring it again ... but it still tastes like glue.
It isn't
long
before
Miriam has
to
acknowledge
she has
never
wanted anything
so
much
Highlanders like only two things naked
The desire & pursuiT
then the anger and frustration, make her think that perhaps
getting what she wants
may not give her what she wants
How it
Happened
Where the original idea came from I couldn't tell,
but years later, widowed, I found myself alone in ways unexpected. One morning, while visiting family, I awoke with the need to write. So I put notes and dialogue accumulated through a couple of years (I have always traveled well prepared). Understanding what it was like to have no one with whom to live days and nights and everything in-between, it was a wee bit natural, and fun, to make Miriam a woman with desire, yet no desire, for a man.
Sinjin was originally English,
but that morning he became a Scot. I had been to Scotland years before and was infatuated (which I continue to be) with the country. He had always been a golf course architect ... golf and Scots. It made so much more sense!
more difficult to come by was the crux
of the novel. It occurred to me in the midst of writing, after hearing a song, as I was writing sin rumbo ni sentido (without direction or sense). Once incorporated, and made to work and flow, I had doubts. What if a different decision was made? A more realistic and sensible, though much harder to make, decision? So I wrote a second unfolding. I will ask for advice and, if plausible, will also offer the alternate decision and slight changes to the last chapters.
The ending remains the same, the characters do not.
Shall update.
originated
| sometime in 2005, perhaps 2004
begun
| with fervor in 2007, finished end of '08
published
| in 2012 after innumerable edits
I wrote this novel after Like a Blue Thread, which was born out of scribblings on a notepad, ramblings of anger and despair. This one, though, I meant to write.
© Inés Santiago 2019-2022 | all rights reserved | member of The Authors Guild
I wrote this novel after Like a Blue Thread, which was born out of scribblings on a notepad, ramblings of anger and despair. This one, though, I meant to write.
How it Happened
SINJIN WAS ORIGINALLY ENGLISH,
HARDER TO COME BY WAS THE CRUX
It isn't long before Miriam has to
acknowledge she has
never
wanted anything so much
Where the ORIGINAL idea came from I couldn't tell,