The Disappearance – A Short Story

It was an extraordinary autumn morning. He’d lived in the city for nine years now but it had never rained this time of the year. Today, however, a soft shower bathed the city. He was not particularly fond of rains. But the cool drizzles were a welcome change in the autumn heat. And well, it had got to mean something. It simply had to. Why was all this happening now?

He put on his shirt and stepped out. A cool wind blew over his face and caressed his tense thoughts from last night. She had said things he never believed she would. The unexpected revelations clambered into his heart, and every word choked him. The drizzles quickened pace while his pace slowed down as he walked along the street, soaked inside and out.

How long had they known one another? Five years? Six? But he felt as though he had known her longer than that. A blissful smile escaped his lips as her words climbed to the surface of his fading memories. ‘I didn’t want to lose you’, she had whispered.

Had their circumstances been different, he would’ve been the happiest man alive. But knowing the things she’d kept from him, he felt paralysed. Why did it have to be this way? Time. It was always time that played the devil. But was it on his side this time? He was soon going to test.

Arriving on the Bradford Street, his spirits lowered some more. Her Porsche Cayenne was absent from the driveway. He had half a mind of walking up and knocking at her door when something caught his attention. The pots of lavenders that lined the sides of her apartment stairway were strewn haphazard. Some broken, the mud from them spilled across the way. A quick glance showed they hadn’t been watered for weeks.

She loved those lavenders more dearly than anything in the world. What had happened then for her to abandon them that way? He tried to remember if she had mentioned on the call about being away. He couldn’t recollect anything for his joy in the aftermath of her revelations were too great to remember anything trivial.

To be continued…

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