Author: fallensea
Category: Thriller
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Remember the day we visited Den Bosch and rode the boat around the canals? It’s one of my favorite memories from childhood, Rosalind had told me on the ferry to Wales after her graduation.
I did remember, even now. The day was grey and lifeless, a day that existed between better days. I’d gone up to Rosalind’s room to check in on her. She was playing a board game by herself, rolling the dice for all sides of the board. It was sad and lonely, and it broke my heart, more so than Daan ever had. I could sit and play with her, but I was a poor substitute for the siblings she did not have, so I picked her up into my arms and I carried her downstairs.
“Where are we going?” she cried happily, kicking her socks in the air. I hadn’t carried her in my arms since she was a babe.
“I’m taking you somewhere special.”
I put her in her coat and shoes, and then we drove. I had nothing planned. My plot was unrehearsed. Whimsy led us to Den Bosch, and then to the boat. It was long and colorful and lurid. With other tourists, we sailed across the canals under low medieval arches. Rosalind had taken it in with wide eyes. The rats that crept along the arches were her sisters, the wind her brother. She was ecstatic, but I had never thought such a small moment would shape the passions of her adulthood.
I remembered the way her eyes had closed as she listened to the wind, then popped back open, afraid to miss a detail of our journey. She was so connected, so sentient. Rosalind had been a young girl at the time, but she had achieved what every mother wanted for her daughter—serenity. To hear the wind, to see giants in small beasts, to allow herself joy. With her serenity came my sorrow. She no longer belonged to me. She belonged to everything that existed beyond me.
“Miss Cloet.”
An unreserved smile overcame me as I greeted Mr. Hartono. His frame was much leaner than when I last saw him, and his hair respectfully more grey, but so was mine. We had aged, the two of us, and we’d grown more confident in it. I could not look upon him as my former boss. He was an old friend. Family, lost in the madness of survival.
“Mr. Hartono, please, sit.” I gestured to the seat next to me on the sofa.
He complied awkwardly, seemingly embarrassed to be so close, but he soon settled with his shoulders raised high. “We have known each other for a long time, Miss Cloet,” he said honorably. “After all these years, Mr. Hartono is too formal. Please, call me Deddy.”
“Mr. Deddy,” I compromised, but he refused.
“Just Deddy. No one should have to address a colleague so ceremoniously after the age of fifty.” He signaled to the waiter serving the lobby. “I hope the drive was not too much trouble.”
“It was short,” I assured him. “How have you been?”
“Tired,” he said cheerfully.
“So nothing new.”
“No. Nothing new.”
“I was counting on that,” I admitted as the waiter brought a pot of hot water and an empty tea cup, which he set in front of Deddy, alongside a coffee for me.
“What’s this?” Deddy asked. “We haven’t ordered yet.”
“I have.” From my bag, I pulled out the bamboo tea box he had given me the day the shipping company had closed down. “It’s your favorite teas. They’ve aged, like us.” I handed him the box. “I kept it safe for you, as promised. I knew you would rebuild. It’s my gift to you. It deserves a place in your office.”
He took the box, withholding his emotions. Deddy was a temperate man, displaying only patience and warmth, where he floated, unwilling to show his other depths. “Thank you, Miss Cloet.”
“Storme,” I insisted. “I know tea isn’t like wine. The quality doesn’t improve over time, it lessens, so I don’t expect you to drink it, but there is a fresh bag of white tea inside. My daughter suggested the white tea. She lives by the leaf.”
“How is Rosalind?” he asked with genuine interest.
“Remarkable,” I answered. “Striking and remarkable.”
“Just like her mother.”
He spoke strongly, like malt. I took a contemplative sip of my coffee. Until now, I had never seen him outside the office, but we were colleagues in ways that went beyond a desk. He had helped raise Rosalind. He had helped raise me. But I wasn’t a child. I was a middle-aged woman. Everything that had made Deddy a noble boss, I now saw as making him a noble man.
“Is this an interview?” I asked, setting my coffee down.
“No. You already have the position, which we should discuss,” he said with a hint of reluctance, a reluctance I understood.
“That’s not necessary. I won’t be accepting your offer,” I told him.
It troubled him. “May I ask why?”
“Because if I do, the next time we meet will be in an office, and then it will only be in an office. I’d much rather we meet for dinner, on level ground.”
“I would too,” Deddy answered. “I’m certain I always have.”
***
Deddy proposed to me a few months after our reunion. When teenagers ran away together, they called it young love, but love was always young, no matter the age of the heart burdened by it. I was convinced I loved Deddy. It wasn’t in the reckless way I had loved Daan and Anton—it was subtle. Many loves in life were subtle: The love of old movies. The love of wishes in a fountain. The love of a restful bed. Loving Deddy subtly didn’t diminish our relationship. It made it durable. Everlasting.
“So when is it happening?” Rosalind asked after I declared my engagement. I thought I heard a fleck of fallback within her, but it was hard to tell with Rosalind.
“Next month. In Indonesia.”
“I guess my invitation got lost at sea.”
“There are no invitations. We’re not inviting guests. It’ll only be us, and you know us always includes you. Us is you, more so than anyone else. I need you there. Deddy wanted to leave for Indonesia as soon as I agreed to marry him, but when I told him you were off next month, he had no hesitations postponing. You’re a daughter to him.”
Rosalind bypassed the sentiment. “I’m off, but I agreed to do a seminar in Florida. I’ll only have a week in between to travel—if I get all my paperwork done. If I’m held up for any reason, I might not make it.”
“It’s worth the risk. Email me your schedule, and we’ll plan the ceremony around it.” I looked over at Franklin, who sat by the radiator after chewing the food I had laced with his arthritis medicine. The radiator warmed the stiffness out of his bones. “I wish we could bring the old guy.”
“He’ll be okay. Are you leaving him with Richie again?”
“Yeah. Richie lets him sit on the sofa with his heating pad.”
Rosalind had asked the question, but I should have realized her concern for Franklin was a misdirection. “Mama, I don’t want to tell you not to get married. I have a lot of respect for Mr. Hartono. He’s a great guy, and I know he’ll treat you well, but are you settling? I don’t want you to settle. It’s okay not to love again. It doesn’t make you bitter or damaged. Sometimes, not loving is survival.”
I agreed with her, but it didn’t apply to me, not anymore. “If I were settling, I would have pursued a relationship with your papa. I’m not settling. The opposite—I’m giving myself the man I deserve.”
“I guess I’ve been in enough bad relationships to understand that. I bet Mr. Hartono was really clumsy when he proposed.”
“He’s a lot more self-assured than he was when you knew him. He has a sense of accomplishment with the new company.” I paused. “But yes, he was clumsy. His hand shook so bad, he could barely get the ring on.”
“He was excited,” Rosalind mused, brightening. “Since you’re moving in with him, will you be selling the house?”
“No. I’ve already signed the deed over to you. The house has always been yours. I bought it for you. Now the paperwork says so too.”
“Mama, you didn’t have to do that. You need your own assets. What if you end up getting divorced, like I did? The law—”
I stopped her. “Like I said, the ho
use was always yours. As your mother, my logic surpasses yours.”
“That makes no sense, but thank you. The house means a lot.”
“You mean a lot,” I told her, as emotional as the day she was born. “I’ll see you in Eden.”
***
Indonesia
The tiger followed me with his jewel-like eyes, his mane defiantly rigid. There was no need for him to hunt me, to stalk. I was a toy he could easily grab off the shelf, and yet I felt no need to run. I was memorized by his beauty. If the fence of the sanctuary was not between us, I would have gladly gone to him, sacrificing my life for a moment to touch transcendence.
He was not the first Sumatran tiger I had seen, nor was he the first I had been so close to. My day at the zoo with Anton had denied the sanctuary that privilege. I remembered the sense of doom I had felt that day behind the tiger enclosure, a fate foretold, but the tigers weren’t my fate. Deddy was. A man from Indonesia. A man from the island of tigers. And he was not my doom. Such sentiments were reserved for Anton.
“Have you heard from Rosalind yet?” Deddy asked as we left the sanctuary by jeep, taking the muddy wetland roads back to the affluent resort where we were staying in Sumatra.
“No. I can’t get through. I hope it means she made the flight.”
Rosalind had arranged to fly into Indonesia a few days before the ceremony, but as she predicted, her paperwork had not allowed it. Nor had it allowed the flight after. If she wasn’t on the flight that had left yesterday, the journey long, she wouldn’t make the ceremony. I had called her numerous times to confirm that she was in the air, expecting her to call back during her layovers, but she never did.
Deddy put his hand on my tanned knee, left bare from the slit in the skirt of my sundress. “If she doesn’t get here before the ceremony tomorrow, we can postpone. A mother should have her daughter near on her wedding day.”
“That’s very kind, but it’s okay. We traveled all this way and paid all this money. If she doesn’t make it, we can always have another ceremony back home.” It was what Rosalind would want me to do, but it did not match how I felt. Practicality meant very little to me. I wanted her there, the way a stray wanted a home.
“As long as you’re happy, Storme,” Deddy said. He moved his hand off my knee to swipe a mosquito on his neck. “These damn things. You think I’d be immune to them.”
I laughed. “You didn’t grow up here. The antidote is in the island, not your blood.” I thought of Daan, of how he referred to Rosalind as his blood. “Do you regret not having children?” I asked.
“I regret not having the courage to ask you to dinner when we were younger, so that we could have children together; but if this is how God intended it to be, then no, I don’t regret not being a father.”
“You are a father,” I corrected. “To Rosalind.”
“If I am someone she trusts, then I am honored. I have always loved her like she was my own, but I’m not sure she would consider me a father figure.”
I did not know either, but if she didn’t, I hoped she grew to.
The evening passed, then the night, allowing the Eastern sun to rise upon my wedding day, a flame wavering against the humidity of the lush rain forests. My calls to Rosalind continued to go unanswered. Sitting out on the balcony of our room, I drank my morning coffee and picked at a slice of mango, the phone close.
“It’s time for me to leave,” Deddy announced, meeting me on the balcony in linen shorts and a white tunic worn by the island’s wealthiest. Anything heavier would have been death in the tropical heat.
“You look very handsome,” I told him. “Very distinguished.”
He was pleased by my compliment, but he glanced nervously at my phone. “Does she know a driver is waiting for her at the airport?”
“I sent her a message last night.”
“Then I look forward to seeing you both very soon,” he said optimistically, and with a traditional bow, he left me alone to prepare.
We would marry in the open breeze of a mountainside with the jagged green valley as our backdrop. A minister and his wife would ride up with Deddy, and once I was dressed, I would follow in a chauffeured jeep, preferably with Rosalind, but I was losing hope she’d make it.
The water full of perfumes as exotic and luxurious as the island, I bathed in a tub twice the size of my own at home, and then I put on my white strapless wedding gown. It was plain but classic, accenting my curves with the lightest of fabrics. As I stood on the balcony once more, stalling for Rosalind under the shade of the palm trees that surrounded the resort, I realized it was the first time I had ever worn a formal dress—one meant for romance and wine.
A knock on my door summoned me back inside. “Your driver is waiting,” a friendly concierge informed me.
“Thank you,” I said, disappointed.
The journey up the mountainside did not sway my disappointment, but I found joy in the scenery. Deddy and I had been in Indonesia for two weeks. I’d seen plenty of mountaintops and valleys, jungles and rivers, but today the sky seemed a much more calming blue, like my kitchen. It gave me serenity.
“Here we are,” the driver announced, parking the jeep a short distance from where I was to wed. The road, which overlooked the valley, would be the aisle I walked down to my husband.
We were not alone. A straggler waited for me, wearing sweatpants and a tank top, her hair disheveled. “Rosalind!” I cried. I tried to jump out and run to her, but my dress would not allow it.
She came to me. “It really is Eden,” she said, helping me down from the jeep. “I made it, straight from the plane.”
“Right on.” I gave her a hug that crushed the fabric of my dress, reminding me of a time when she was a little girl in need of comfort after a bad dream, and I was a young mother with only peasant blouses and denim to wear.
Taking me by the arm, Rosalind walked me down the aisle and gave me away to Deddy. In his vows, he promised to watch over Rosalind as unconditionally as he did me. I believed him. He already had, for many years. At the end of the ceremony, after our union was officially declared, the minister’s wife handed him a package, which he handed to me, his own wife. Inside was a parasol with a gold dome and pink canopy the color of cherry blossoms, identical to the painting that had once hung in his office.
“A parasol,” he said, opening it over my head, “so that you are protected, all the sweet days of your life.”
***
“Where are you going?” I asked Rosalind the following afternoon. She stood in the lobby of the resort with a worn rucksack over her shoulder and hiking shoes on, refreshed. I didn’t know how she could look so pert. We’d drank tuak, a palm wine, well into the morning.
“I’m going to travel for a day or two. I won’t be far.”
“Without me?”
Rosalind folded her arms across her chest, but she smiled, the way a teacher smiled at the ignorance of a pupil. “Mama, you’re a newlywed. You need time with your husband. I’ll only be gone a couple of days.”
“Deddy and I have been together on this island for over two weeks. It’s our turn to spend some mother-daughter time together. You leaving is not what I want.”
“It’s what you’re going to get. Trust me, this is the best wedding gift I can give you. Mr. Hartono is your husband. He needs to come first.”
“You will always come first,” I decreed.
“This isn’t about me. It’s about you and him. I’ll be back soon.”
She had decided. Unless I was willing to leave my husband behind and join her, there was no talking her out of it, so I kissed her on the cheek and wished her well, knowing I would be unsettled until she returned. “Be safe. If anything happened to you, I don’t think I’d survive.”
“I’m a mistress of the sea. What’s a few mountains and wetlands compared to the rage of the ocean?”
“That doesn’t help,” I muttered. “And the ocean doesn’t have tigers.”
After Rosalind left, I joined De
ddy for a late breakfast in the restaurant, but his stomach took a turn, and he excused himself to the room, insisting I stay downstairs and enjoy the resort.
I had never had a massage or tasted caviar, but neither interested me. Instead, I went to the beach. The water was crystal blue, the sand warm against my feet. It was stellar. I longed to wade in, to absorb the water as if I were a tree drinking from its roots, but I did not.
A primal part of me, as primal as the tigers, would not allow it. It knew my lightheadedness was not from the tuak I’d drunk the night before, that the sweat dripping down my back was more than the heat, that convulsions were working their way up my spine. It knew that if I went into the water, I would pass out, and I would drown.
Standing on the beach, I raised my face to the sun and breathed the island in, forgetting that even in Eden, people got sick. People died. I closed my eyes, and I fell into darkness.
***
Sleep gripped me and dragged me down into a bottomless chasm where I was surrounded by an uncomfortable bliss. Existence bore no weight. It was golden and clement. I was immortal. I didn’t want to be. I wanted life, so I clawed my way out, to a sleep less merciful, where I was soaked in sweat and layered in fear and pain. At times, I felt myself waking. I could see a harsh light, hear the static of people, but then I’d slip away again.
In the middle of fighting off savage creations in my dreams, Rosalind called out to me, her voice an antivenin, and I finally woke.
“Mama!” she gasped, grabbing my hand, which had an IV sewn into the wrist.
I was in a hospital, sharing a ward with other women, some with children running around their beds. It was noisy and intrusive, but it was sterile. The equipment was modern, including the monitor I was attached to, displaying my vitals as if it peered straight into my organs.
“What’s wrong with me?” I asked. It hurt my throat to speak.