Lacking Fragments: A Novel (Completed)

Maya's Favor for Secrecy III

It was exactly six-twenty in the evening when Annalise called through the telephone landline. My daughter and I were sitting on the sofa—each of us respectively doing a thing to pass time: watching television for one, playing game through GBA SP for another—in our mere living room. It was at that moment it rang, the telephone, when we were both silent. Although, with my daughter caught in her own virtual world, lost within the console's frame, I dealt with picking up the telephone signal myself.

     "Hello?"

     "Hi," replied the line, "honey, it's me."

     "Anna," I called her name. "What's up?"

     After that I whistled to get my daughter's attention. And Kiki heard me alright; immediately raised her head from the videogame, and then she looked straight at me. "It's your mother," I told her. "Come right here and just say hi."

     "Hi, Mother!" greeted from the sofa. "Where are you?"

     "Did you hear her?" I talked back. "She says hi."

     "Playing videogames, isn't she?"

     "As usual, she is."

     "Did you check the emails?"

     "Yeah, that I did."

     "No homeworks to be done?"

     "None. I checked the emails earlier this day. Around three in the afternoon," I answered. "And yeah, Kiki got no assignment due Monday."

     "You sure?"

     "I'm sure," I stated. "Besides, if I'm wrong and she does have one, we still have Sunday to do it."

     "Good to hear. Anyways, here's the thing. Don't bother her now if she's busy playing a videogame. Explain later, it can wait," she said. "As much as I don't want to, I'm not coming home tonight. Sorry."

     That time I wanted to say it's okay. That in all honesty, to me, it wasn't much of a big deal when she gets home late, or maybe next day already. And if she did do it, I knew something important is going on, in her respective professional life. Her own concern. I had never been against it. Ever since we were still an unmarried couple, Annalise and I trusted each other. Yes, we remained committed to one another— I had never cheated on her, not once; and so did she return that loyalty to me. Everything we compromised about was (and remains) frank solid. So, years passed, it wouldn't terribly affect us if she wouldn't come home tonight. It would be perfectly alright.

     Unless she did not call, which just she did. Because, to us as family of three, no calls mean expectation for dinner food. No calls mean there's a take-out dinner to await.

     But on top of that, in the light as a Senior Architect—a title which carries higher pressure for the profession—still, the last time I told her it was fine of her to skip coming home for one night, my wife, Annalise, had given me an attitude. A bitter one. She threw tantrums toward me that time; in simple words, she gets mad when I say such things; whenever I appear to her of somewhat unconcerned. Why, until now I hadn't had any idea. Perhaps, it seems to me, it could only be because of the things women can understand.

     So, instead, I asked and repeated her words, in way that I applied it as a question of concern. "You aren't coming home?"

     "You know why."

     "With the noise... pressured voices?"

     "From coworkers, yes."

     "I hear them clear from here," I said. "Chattering."