Owned by his Guilt

Chapter 4

She walked away without a glance. Outside, the air felt thin. Her legs almost gave way under all the sorrow and terror bursting into her in a single rush.

She lay the palm of her hand to her heart, and breathed in pain. She got into her own vehicle and drove to her old apartment.

She had been home just yesterday but the house was a foreign house, as if it were possessed by some merry stranger who had been here in the good old days of his life.

Slamming the door behind her. There was a lingering smell of that of her in the living room, the sliver of tincture of lavender, a whiffle of the cologne that Derek used, that was unable to be washed off the couch.

She was throwing her little travel bag on the door, she stood in one spot and stared at the photos on the wall - graduation day, hospital shifts, lazy Sunday photoshoot with her boyfriend.

She entered the bedroom very gradually as though she had come to encroach upon her own existence.

Her clothes were still well-suspended. Dresses she had purchased with her first doctor paycheck, scrubs were folded like her mother had folded her school uniforms when she would get home on an exhausted evening due to her night shifts. With shaking fingers she touched the fabric.

Mom would never like this, she said to herself. Her mother had been an advocate of choice. In stubborn daughters. In romance that had no engagements.

She packed only the necessary things in her bags, including medical license, passport, journals, some textbooks, her favorite sweater. She dithered on a framed picture of her and her mother at the beach, both giggling into the sun and then lightly wrapped it in a scarf and she put it into the bag.

Her phone vibrated.

Dad.

A second later she looked at the screen, then said. “Hello?” Are you in the apartment? his voice, sharp, impatient, already clipped, inquired.

“Yes. I’m picking up some things.”

“Good,Be back by five,” he said. “We’re having dinner.”

She paused. “Dinner?”

“With your fiance”he said as though it were of some business appointment, and not with the man she was to spend the rest of her life, as his wife.

The phone was squeezed in her hand. “Fiancé? I believed-- I believed it was simply a plan that was being discussed”.

“It is discussed. It is settled,” he replied. “He will be joining with us this evening. You will dress properly. You will be polite. The moment has come not to play dramatics”.

Her heart began to pound. “Who is he?” she asked. “What’s his name? What does he do? How old is he? You want me to marry a man I never even saw.

Her father said “he is of a respectable family”. “That is enough for now.”

That cannot suffice with me, she said to herself.

There was something of a pause on the line, after which he spoke bitterly. “You are not in a negotiating position young lady. Be home by five.”

The call ended.

She was still standing there with the phone held by her ear a long time after the phone had gone dead, and her apartment was all too small, all too quiet, all too heavy.

A stranger.

A fiancé.

Dining as a business deal. She gazed about at the life she was being ripped away as the couch where she slept after 36-hour shifts, the kitchen where she danced barefoot with music playing, the bed where she wept into when residency almost broke her. Here she had found her refuge. Her rebellion. Her evidence that she was capable of creating her own life.

She was now being called home as a child, called home to meet a man whose name she did not even know, whom she was expected to smile and act like she was not being traded like a commodity.

She shook her hands and zipped up her bag. When she got to the door, she looked back one last time, and her eyes took a permanent photograph of the apartment, the battered floor, the bent picture frame, the small balcony where she had drunk her tea at sunrise after her night shifts.

Then she said goodbye and she did not know if she was speaking to the apartment of the girl she was or the girl she was. And then she went out and closed the door.

Five o’clock was coming. And here was the man who changed everything. She gazed long enough at the black dress and then put it on. It was like a sadness, a sadness over her mother, her freedom, her decisions.

The cloth fell all around her body as though it belonged to her, and curled just below her knees. Simple. Elegant. Controlled. The type of dress her father was okay with.

The type of woman he had wanted her to become. She was standing before the mirror and shaking her fingers to secure the fastening at the back.

Her image was doubtful with lips pushed together in a line that attempted to appear calm. You resemble a person who is getting married for the proper reasons, she thought sarcastically.

She twisted her hair into loose curls and waves with one side tied back. She had been soft and delicate in her make-up, foundation to mask the fatigue, a touch of blush, lipstick of the colour of dried roses.

Once her mother had explained to her that black was not sadness, it was power. She had to borrow all the power she could tonight.

This was going to be a formal, not family, dining room. The chandelier light was picked up in crystal glasses. Silverware had been set like military precision.

Her father was sitting on the table, inscrutable. A woman sat beside him. She was elegant in a manner that you could say she had been born in years of affluence and confidence- made dress, some tracery of diamonds, hair sleek and smooth.

Her vision of her brought her to a genial smile that was restrained, a bit professional. "You should be her," said the woman, reaching out her hand.. I am so glad to see you at last.

She forced a smile. “Welcome. I’m glad you could come.” “I’m his mother,” the woman said. And I so much have heard of you. A doctor—very impressive. My boy admires ambitious women. Her father replied, he will be late a bit. Work detained him.

Naturally, his mother answered in a natural way. “He detests lateness but business does not wait on the man”

. She nodded but her stomach went tight a moment. Business first, she thought. Always.

They took their seats. This food was dispatched, but no one touched it. Everyone talking about her--families, heritage, investments. She responded when she was addressed, smiling nicely, as a guest being notified before being purchased.

As the maid was about to take up the servants lids, we heard footsteps in the corridor. Confident. Unhurried. Heavy with presence.

The door opened.

He entered at a time when dinner was on the point of being opened. He was a tall man, taller than she supposed he should be--shouldered broad with the strong and muscular physique of a disciplined and controlling man

. His suit was a black one, and it was perfectly fitted, which fitted a figure that was chiseled to the same extent as it was by money and practice.

He was a handsome fellow with a face--striking, a sharp jaw, straight nose, dark eyes which seemed to see too much. He looked dangerous. He looked unreal.” I am sorry”, he said in a deep calm voice.“Traffic.”

Her father pointed towards the table. “You’re just in time. We were about to start.” And over he went--and then it struck her. Her breath stopped.

No. It couldn’t be.