Sudden decisions

58 - Somewhere out there

Can

She is gone.
I let myself slide down the door hinge to sit on the floor, rest my elbows on my knees and close my eyes. Her perfume still lingers in the room that has been hers for the last few days, those in which I let her go.

I bring my hands to my eyes, straightening my head against the doorframe. What did I expect? I mismanaged this whole situation from the beginning, but now I realise that I made the biggest mistake in these very days. I had slowly managed to get closer to her, thanks to my father's manoeuvres. Despite everything I had put her through in the last few weeks I had gained ground, she was more relaxed and it could really have been the start of a turning point for us and our marriage and instead I stupidly thought that the most important thing was revenge on my brother. I focused on working to save the agency and on the trap to frame Emre and my mother without thinking that what really mattered I had left it, alone and unheard, right here in this house.

The weariness of the last few days falls on me like a boulder and I realise I feel no relief at the idea that it's over, I have no one to share the bittersweet victory of having stopped Emre and Huma's plans with when it also meant seeing my brother taken away in handcuffs. The only thing that consoles me is knowing that my father seems to have faced this whole thing with determination and courage, he is strong, I always knew that, but I really feared that his health condition would not allow him to overcome the disappointment of what his son was trying to do against him and his agency.

I wearily get up only much later, when the sun is now setting, unable to make sense of what has happened and wondering what will become of me and us now. I open the French window of the living room and stop to watch the sun disappear over the opposite bank of the Golden Horn. It is a sight I never tire of watching and I know it was the same for her, the rapture with which she stopped to admire the view from this house was genuine, of that I have no doubt. As the sunset finally fades into night I decide to go back into the house, I run my gaze over remembering the peaceful hours we spent in this room setting the table and then having dinner with our parents. As I do so my attention is drawn to something lying on the table that I had not seen before, as I entered the house agitated. With a squeeze in my heart I see a velvet case and a note which I rush to pick up and the words I read make my heart tremble:

Can,
I don't think I can go through with this charade. For a while our parents will leave us alone, that's what I will ask my mother and what you should do too. Tell your father that we need to be alone, that we need to get used to our new life together so that we can spend the necessary time and then tell them the truth, that we realised we were wrong and that we are not meant to be together. This is the only sensible thing to do, they will have to come to terms with it somehow. I will be in touch in a few months with the necessary divorce papers so that then everyone can go their own way.
Hoşçakal, goodbye.
Sanem.

My gaze moves to the velvet case, I know what it contains, I have no doubt. I reach for it and in opening it I already know that it contains both Grandma Samihra's ring and the wedding ring. It is finished, she no longer wants any connection with me, she wants everything to be over between us soon. I snap the case shut and clench that note, which is the only thing of hers I have left, tightly between my fingers until it disappears into my fist. . Where will she have gone? From what she has written I can exclude that she has gone back to her parents, then? She can't ask anyone in her neighbourhood for hospitality or her mother would find out, so I can also rule out Osman and Ayhan. Who else? I realise I know very little about her life, or perhaps more simply, her life used to be enclosed within the streets of her neighbourhood and now I have taken her away from there leaving her alone, forcing her to stay away from her loved ones and the places where she grew up and loved. Damn me, another reason to despise myself, since I met her I have only been able to hurt her.