Sudden decisions

60 - My wife

Can

I stop the jeep in front of the address given to me by my father's private investigator. It has been more than a month since Sanem left and it literally felt like I was going crazy. I have closed down what was 'our' home for a very short time and moved to the shed, I can't stand being there, alone, where everything reminds me of her and I agonise over the idea of having stupidly left her there, alone, for days. I have focused all my attention on company business and plans for revenge while completely losing sight of the essential: her. And it was my own fault that I finally lost her.

When the campaign for Fabri's company was over, we organised a big presentation gala and I realised that I would have loved to have had her beside me at such an important moment for me and for the company. I missed her enormously because I came to realise that there can be no joy in my life if I cannot share it with her.
She has become essential to me in a way I did not think possible, I miss her in the agency, in the car, in our house as well as at the cabin. Everywhere I go there is her, or rather unfortunately at the moment there is only the memory of her and the deafening silence of her absence.

For days, later to become weeks, I had no news. She seemed to have vanished into thin air, the investigator even checked all flights out of Istanbul and at least I had the relief of knowing that she had not left the country.
However, I was worried to learn that she was alone, for the first time in her life, far from her neighbourhood and her family.
She is my wife, her father entrusted her to me by marriage so that I would take care of their erkenci kuş and I neglected her so much that she decided to fly away far from everyone and especially from me.

The only signal I received from her, if possible, alarmed me even more. A transfer arrived in favour of Fikri Harika for the exact amount Emre had given her, with the laconic reason: 'Sanem Aydin loan repayment'.
What does that mean? Where did she get all that money in such a short time? I seriously feared that she might have gotten into trouble to pay back that money that I don't care about even though I know I made her believe otherwise when I threw it back in her face heavily the moment I found out she had received it from my brother.

Only now do I realise how much harm I did to her, looking back I feel I did nothing but impose my will on her by first making a commitment to Nihat to ask for her hand in marriage and then making her experience all my anger and resentment for a situation that only came about because of her good heart and out of love for her family.
Only now that I know the whole truth do I realise how much I mistreated her, I accused and hurt her in every way and she did not deserve it, now I know this and I also know that I must do everything I can to make it up to her, apologise to her for everything I said and made her live.

With this in mind, I have therefore contacted an old friend to join me in the agency and be ready to take over as soon as I find out where my wife is. I want to take my time and dedicate myself only to her, to us and to our marriage.
And so, as soon as I received an address from the private investigator, I threw four clothes into a rucksack and set off to reach her, destination Gölcük.
The investigator discovered that Sanem had sold the formula for her perfume to Fabri and Pinar's company and had moved to Gölcük to work in their laboratories on the large-scale production of her perfume.

I was not happy that that perfume, what I somehow consider 'our' perfume, was made available to anyone when it was something so special to us. Selfishly I would have wanted it to be just her and mine, a unique bond, but I know that the time has come to set aside selfishness, to think of the other as an extension of oneself and put oneself in his shoes.
She used that money to repay the sum borrowed from Fikri Harika to save her parents' shop, she wanted to free herself from the shame of my accusation of being a profiteer, interested only in vile money. How can I judge her for that?
Now I am standing here looking at that boundary wall so high that I cannot see what is hidden inside it, even the gate is completely closed by metal sheets, and from where I am standing I can only see a gazebo set up on the roof of a low house. I grab the handle to get out of the off-road vehicle when I see the gate open and I am frozen by the scene before me.