The Secrets We Keep

How did I get myself here? I asked myself as I snuck into my girlfriend’s home office, with the key to the locked drawer clutched in my sweaty palm. Opening the drawer, I took note of how the contents were arranged, to ensure that I would return them to their original state, after sifting through it.

Sure enough, there were new items in the drawer, including a wad of cash, and an ID that I hadn’t seen the last time I was in there. The name read Gabriella Santos. It matched the name on the birth certificate that materialized last week. I snapped a picture of the new items before locking the drawer.

Returning to our shared bedroom, I placed the key carefully under the pink felt in her jewelry box. I sat down on my side of the bed, pulling a black notebook out from underneath the mattress, and noted the addition of the fake ID. Yes, fake. You see, my girlfriend’s name was actually Sofía Martinez, at least that’s what she had told me on our first date.

We met online a little over three years ago. I was new to San Diego, fresh from a rough breakup, and had moved there for a new start. I wasn’t expecting to move on so quickly. Sofía’s magnetic personality was no match for my hopeless romantic heart. I knew her as Eva then; that was her name on her dating profile. On our first date, she told me her real name was Sofía. She had put a fake name online after having a bad experience, which I could relate to. Having dated both men and women myself, I knew the harrows of unsolicited messages from men coming at me. I didn’t blame her for making it harder to track her online presence, and I thought nothing more of it. Until now.

We fell for each other fast, the spark between us was undeniable. We began spending every waking (and unwaking) moment together. She met my parents early on, they adored her of course, it wasn’t long before we moved in together, and became loving fur mamas to our mastiff, Ruth. I never met her parents, they died in a car crash when she was 19. Since she was an only child, I became her family.

We settled into a blissful routine at home, the initial spark never evading us, even after our three year anniversary had passed. Most recently, I bought Sofía an engagement ring. I was waiting for the right time to propose, and was tasked with finding a place to hide it. It was when I was trying to conceal the ring, that I found the first hint that my partner was lying to me. Buried in the back of our closet, was a lumpy bag. Upon opening it, I found stacks of money. There had to be more than 20K worth of bills. I was so stunned by this discovery that I initially thought it was fake.

I asked Sofía about it as soon as she got home, almost comically, the disbelief clouding the seriousness of the conversation. She gave me some evasive answers, before landing on the explanation of coming into an inheritance from a distant relative. The next day, when I checked the closet, the bag was gone. Sofía told me she took the money to the bank. Things were tense between us after that night. Finances was an important topic between us as of late, as we were saving to buy a house of our own, with a yard big enough for our sweet Ruth to enjoy. I was upset that she hadn’t shared the news of the inheritance, as it would go a long way towards a down payment. We were lucky to be living in my parents’ summer home at no cost for the time being, but they were retiring soon, and planning to make this their full time residence.

I began pressing Sofía about her financial situation on a more regular basis. She brought in more money than my bartending wage. She was an accountant, and being good with numbers, she mainly handled the bills in our relationship. Frankly, she was the more responsible one too. After finding the secret money, I wanted to be more involved with our finances. It seemed that money wasn’t the only thing she was hiding from me.

It happened by chance that I found out she wasn’t an accountant. My car didn’t start one morning, forcing me to take public transportation. The route happened to go past a construction site, and I did a double take when I swore I saw Sofía on the site, not in her corporate clothes, but in blue work overalls, and a hard hat.

So began my trailing of her on the way to work. I’d take the bus that went past the site, to stay out of sight. Each day, I saw her there, at the same place working in a job that was clearly not accounting.

Then there was the day I found the key. I wanted to borrow a necklace I loved of hers, and I accidentally came across it. Having known about the locked drawer in the office desk, I immediately took the key to the drawer and it opened. At first, there was only cash in the drawer, and lots of it. The birth certificate and the ID came later.

It became difficult to view anything Sofía did without any suspicion. Little things I hadn’t realized before, like only paying with cash, or claiming that owning a credit card would only cause her to go into debt. I remembered the time she was asked for her ID at a restaurant, and she said forgot it at home. These events were so insignificant at the time, but the more I learned about Sofía, I realized the less I actually knew her.

Going to bed at night began to feel like going to bed with a stranger. The distance growing greater with each new lie I uncovered about my partner. I could feel the love I felt at the beginning of our relationship begin to dissolve into mistrust.

It wasn’t until my colleague told me about an episode of Dateline she watched about a woman who was unwittingly married to a drug dealer, that I started to put the pieces together. The unexplained large sums of cash, the lies, the similarities between the storylines were uncanny.

I’m too trusting, to answer my question of how I got myself here. I had been in too many relationships where I was burned by my partner. My high school boyfriend told everyone intimate details about our relationship after I broke up with him, a situation that was hard to recover from in a small school. My first girlfriend cheated on me with my best friend. This was the reason I moved out to San Diego in the first place. A trail of broken trust had led me here. I thought my luck had turned around when I met Sofía, but it turned out she was the same as the rest. Our relationship was formed on lies. That was the most disheartening part of all of this, the fact that our relationship was seemingly built on honesty. I found myself falling so far out of love, I could barely remember the good I saw in Sofía when I first met her.

Today, I ended the cycle. I had been collecting the evidence in my black notebook, and I turned it over to the police this afternoon. When I came home, Sofía was in the living room with a guilty look on her face. Could she have known what I did?

“I found this,” she told me, holding the velvet box that housed the engagement ring I had bought before all of this. I was mute, with everything going on, I had put the idea of proposing out of my mind.

“I know about you, Gabriella” I stated coolly, emphasizing her foreign name.

“You do?” She sounded surprised, vulnerable, but I remembered she was a stranger to me and did nothing to comfort her. “Justine, know that I’ve been wanting to tell you so badly, but in order to protect myself, I couldn't tell anyone.” She was holding herself tightly and I could see the tension in her jaw.

“It’s a little late for protecting yourself now,” I scoffed at her. She looked at me with pleading eyes before confessing.

“You know my parents died when I was 19. What I didn’t tell you, was that it happened when I was living in Honduras. There is a lot of unrest in my country, and I had nowhere to go. I fled the country, and came to America. But Justine, I didn’t come here legally. I’m, I’m undocumented.” I was stunned. She told me she grew up in San Diego. “I’ve been trying to find a way to stay here undetected. The money you found - I get paid in cash, and I don’t have the identification to open a bank account. I know you wanted that money for a down payment on a house, but I used it to buy the proper identification I’d need to stay here. I’d have to change my name to Gabriella. I didn’t get to pick the name, but it’s pretty, you like it right, Justine?” She asked desperately. I said nothing.

“I know it’s a lot to take in, but I’m still the same me. I couldn’t tell anyone I was undocumented. I couldn’t risk being deported. I almost have everything I need to remain here in America. Then we can buy a house. We can get married,” she finished in a whisper, handing the box with the ring to me.

The blow of her words hit me hard. My mind was whirring, I had been wrong about everything. She hid the truth to protect her, not to burn me.

“Please say something, Justine,” She pleaded, tears in her eyes.

“Come here,” I rasped, opening my arms for her, and she embraced me tightly. She felt like the same woman I fell in love with. I closed my eyes, breathing the familiar scent of her in. I could help her, we would be okay.

I pulled away quickly, “I have to make a phone call.” She looked at me questioningly. I couldn’t tell her about the notebook I had dropped off at the police station earlier today, the one that had every bit of evidence they needed to know that my girlfriend was not a drug dealer, but in fact an illegal immigrant.

I pulled out my phone the same moment there was a knock at the door. Ruth rushed to the door, barking loudly.

“Immigration, open up,” an authoritative voice boomed. I looked at her, panic stricken.

“How did they find out?” She looked at me, alarmed. My heart sank, it was me.

“Sofía Martinez, you are under arrest for illegal immigration.” Tears blurred my vision as they placed cuffs on her.

“I’m so sorry,” I sobbed.

“You?” She gasped, the look of betrayal piercing me.

“I’m so sorry,” I kept repeating. They pulled her out through the door and into a car. Ruth sat by the window howling long after they left, while I stood, stunned, rolling the velvet engagement box over and over in my hand.