Four days short of the week, I received a reminder of an invoice that was posted to my joint bank account 8 days following the death of my wife (age 42).
It was a car rental.
I went hurriedly there like crazy and presented her photo to the clerk.
This woman, pale to the centre, replied, I was here.
She was with a man, who called her a Birdie.”
I was still, in that spot. My wife Alina was killed in an accident. Closed casket. They were burned to ashes, they said. But I had recognised the corpse with her bracelet and her gold locket. The hospital, the coroner, the police–all of them had told me that it was she.
What then was this?
Is that certain? I was dry as I repeated the question to the clerk.
He nodded. “Positive. She smiled like that with the dimple and she giggled like she was in a nice spot.”
A fine spot?
I went away, unstrung. Alina would also experience depression. She had been exhausted, worn out, by the repetition, motherhood, and the pretense that everything was okay. However, I never thought that she would orchestrate her death. There was no sense in that. She was fond of our son, Kadeem. She loved him. Why should she go away?
But here was that name–Birdie–clanging back and forth like a pinball.
On the following day, I deposited at the police what I had discovered. They said that it was most likely a coincidence. I saw a woman resembling my wife, the same features, people project grief. I so nearly believed them.
Almost.
Until I remembered something that never set right.
Four days before the crash she had asked me, do you think that you could forgive someone, or do you think that I would be able to forgive them, if they needed to disappear in order to survive?
She was philosophising, I supposed. I believed that she was referring to a film that we had seen.
I was mistaken.
I began to dig. I scanned our house cameras, the cameras we never used often. One had pirated some footage, as the system was half-busted. Alina had stepped out in the early morning hours of 1:47 a.m, on the night preceding her so-called accident. She did not have her common robe on. She was wearing jeans and sneakers.
She had a duffel bag over her shoulder.
The shot taken two minutes later displayed a man waiting at the end of our street. He unlocked the passenger side of the door. She entered.
She did not return.
I shook at it. I was partly sick with the betrayal, and partly glad–that she might not be dead. That perhaps, perhaps, I might find her and get the truth.
I took the track of car rental. The said rental had been deposited in Alabama, at almost 600 miles. Not a single camera. No name given- simply pre-paid and abandoned. But a helpful agent recalled something strange: a woman inquiring about bus routes, and bearing a map on which Willow creek was circled.
It was not much, but it was something.
Willow Creek was a town, so small, it nearly did not exist in Google maps. I went there the weekend I was driving. I said I was on a job trip to Kadeem. He did not ask too many questions–he was quieter of late.
Grief has a different way of messing up with kids.
I spotted a cafe not far off the bus station. It was ragged and congenial. I presented the picture of Alina to the barista. She flicked her eyes and replied, OH. Birdie.”
The same name once more.
She arrives there each Thursday morning. And gets the same–black coffee and banana bread.”
“Is it alone that she comes?”
The girl shrugged her shoulders. Sometimes an older man. Perhaps it was her father?”
Her dad?
The father of Alina passed away when she was fifteen years old. Unless…
Provided that was the lie.
I tarried three days.
I noticed her on Thursday morning.
She came striding in as though nothing was wrong. Hair shorter. A bit slimmer. Yet it was she. My wife.
I never walked up. I only looked on. She was reading by herself. Calm.
I was unable to breathe.
At last I got up and walked across.
“Alina.”
She froze.
Gradually she lifted her eyes. She looked instantly tearful. She opened her mouth, and in it was nothing.
You are dead, I said.
She swallowed. “No. I escaped.”
We chatted four hours. She said it all to me.
It turns out that some years back when neither of us knew each other she got involved in a risky relationship with a man who trafficked in women. She had run away, renamed herself, created a new life. However, she has a glimpse a couple of months ago of the past. A person who knew her.
That was why she was fearful, paranoid, deaf.
She didn?t tell me because she did not want to involve me and Kadeem in it. She believed that they would quit searching the moment she died. That she would be able to be free.
She told how she had been rescued by a man, the one who addressed her as Birdie, who was no longer a working private detective, but one who helped the women to disappear out of those rings.
I was eager to be back every day. But I would not risk it,” she answered.
“And Kadeem?” I asked.
Her face cracked. I am considering him every second.
And sat down and were silent.
Then I said, You can not be away all the time.
During the next few weeks, I did not harass her. However, I did what I could. I connected her with an attorney who was knowledgeable when it came to laws on witness protection and relocation. She began to use her own name–her own real name before the others, not her false real name, invented to deceive society.
Three months after, she returned home.
She had gone to a park and met Kadeem. At first at a range. One day, he saw her and he ran into her arms as he knew, as he always knew.
We are still not all together again. That type of split does not mend in an instant. But we speak. We co-parent. We reconstruct, step by straight step.
In some cases, people are gone not out to do you harm… but, to keep themselves alive.
When your loved one is behaving off, ask. Listen. Dig deeper.
You never know what type of pain they have to carry in silence.
❤️
