PART THREE, TWENTY-TWO
While I remained immersed deep in solving the puzzle of Tessa’s life, she seemed to have comprehended my thoughts running around her, for she suddenly opened her eyes. And as she looked at me from the window seat from her curled-up position, the same fear of the victim in the rice field was squatting in her eyes. She drew her legs closer to her body. And her face turned ashen, with perspiration rising up on the face and glistening around her throat. “A squeezing pain in my stomach,” Tessa whispered through clenched teeth, “as if someone is squeezing it in his palm.” * Things happened faster than presumed. Tessa lay in the taxi, her head on my lap, her limbs drawn up close to her body, eyes shut. Her mind perhaps shut too from the recent events of the trip. Marks of weakness had crawl
- Writer
