Twin Rivers

Prologue

How do stories become?  So many ways.  Some in ways incredible, some prosaic.  Some end as they begin; the reader knowing what is to follow.  Some never end even when they do.

 

It was one lazy afternoon just like the other afternoons I spent in the past two weeks of summer vacation.  I had nothing particular to do.  From where I was sitting, and that was the open porch of my Aunt Tara's villa in the farm,  I saw two teenage boys wading in the brook, a couple hundred meters or so away.  They were my cousins, Jake and Mick, fourteen and sixteen.  I was fifteen.  As the only girl among seven cousins, I had no choice but be left out.  Of course they showered me with so much attention, including giving me the choicest frogs and snakes from their collections,  but it was not the same as having another girl to play with.

 

I gathered my hair at the back and tied it with a handkerchief.  I felt comfortable wearing my hair in ponytail because I disliked hair getting into my eyes. Drops of rain fell on my face even as I saw the boys scampering toward the garage.  I went inside and felt the invading darkness, as the torrential onslaught gathered momentum outside.  Aunt Tara looked up from her cross stitch project on her lap.  "Are the boys in?"  "Yes, Auntie.  They're in the garage."

 

Aunt Tara was my mother's youngest sister and was only ten years older than me.  My cousins and I loved to be with her because she was just like a big sister to us.  I was about to sit beside her when a framed picture on the wall at her back caught my eyes. I knew it had been there all the time, but I just did not have the interest to notice it then.  Funny how an afternoon downpour aroused in me such curiosity.  So I knelt instead on the sofa and bent forward on the wall.  It was a photograph of a young man and a young lady marching inside a church.  It was probably a wedding ceremony.  A poem was written on the picture.

"Fate brings together

Two souls so near

yet so apart

To share a moment

in time and space

that history can't unmake.

 

But what future holds

For two so proud;

so indifferent

Who tend to seek a destiny

to his or her own heart's content?

 

Ah! Time shall be judge

For when the fullness

of time shall come

The dream will burst

to life."

 

"Auntie, who is this couple in the picture?" I asked without taking my eyes from the framed photograph.  "That's Dawn and Aldrich," Aunt Tara answered as she turned and glanced at the picture. "Dawn. You mean Aunt DC?" I smiled with the sudden knowledge.  "Yes," Aunt Tara replied.

 

Aunt Dawn was Uncle Carl's older sister and was endearingly called DC by family and close friends.  Uncle Carl is Aunt Tara's husband.  Aunt DC was now living in Australia.  She had been there for the past sixteen years.  I had not seen her all my life.  But the old folks always spoke about her.  She was well-loved and well-remembered.  Although she was not a blood-relative we had learned to address her as "Aunt", in-absentia.  After Aunt Tara married Uncle Carl, they went to Australia and had another wedding ceremony so that Aunt DC could attend. I had always been curious why Aunt DC could not attend the Philippine wedding.  But I never asked.

 

"What happened to Aldrich?" I settled down beside Aunt Tara.  The storm raged outside and the sound of occasional thunder sent shivers down my neck 

"What do you mean what happened?" Aunt Tara reached out for a yarn. 

"Well, they had a picture together, and somebody wrote a poem about them.  They should have had something going on between them.  But Aunt DC is still single.  So what happened to Aldrich?" I repeated my question.

"Nothing. Like your Aunt DC, he is unmarried. And you know him."  The last sentence made my forehead wrinkled in a mock attempt to remember.  But I could not connect the name to any face.  Aunt Tara smiled at my reaction. "He is the big boss of Twin Rivers Ventures."

"H-hopper Monteazul? I can't believe it!"

"Yes, he was your Aunt DC's Aldrich. He is more known by his nickname 'Hopper' which he got when he was still a young boy flydusting the surrounding plantations"

"I only know him by that name. I doubt if people ever know him by his proper name. Even our teachers call him Hopper. He was guest speaker during the academy's foundation day two months ago. So self-confident and so dignified. The students were awed by his presence. The presentor called him a Living Legend."

"Yes. For Twin Rivers Academy, he is a living legend. He was the only student who became world champion in Tae Kwon Do. And that was during the time when Tae Kwon Do was just beginning to get known in the Philippines."

 

I glanced back at the picture. Yes, exactly the younger version of Hopper Monteazul, President of Twin Rivers Ventures. So, his real name was Aldrich. I folded my arms across my breast as a cold gust of wind passed thru the window. 

 

"That's the same personality he exuded even in his younger days. They were a perfect match, Dawn and Aldrich." Aunt Tara paused for a moment, then continued with that poetic eloquence that always added emphasis, if not sacredness, to anything she said. "But their story had no ending.  No fulfillment, no consummation.  Like a storm cut short at its wildest fury leaving nature in utter silence. Theirs was suspended in time . . . Nobody wants to read an unfinished book. But the half that was told had a beauty of its own that people who knew it never wanted to forget.  Would you care to know?" 

 

The mystery was inviting and my heart yearned to know. The wind blew outside.  It would be a long, rainy afternoon.  "Sure."  I grabbed a pillow and curled beside her.