Drops of rain started to fall in a humid April night as more and more people lined up the terminal. The mall was about to close to end the last minute hurdle of shoppers wanting to buy a thing or two. It was payday weekend.
As usual, I was at the end of the snake line waiting for my turn to get inside one of those commuter vans. My idle mind was completely absorbed by the Tolkien book about Numeronean wars while I kept a watchful eye on the arrival of the blue Bloody van. He’d be back in thirty minutes, I said to myself. By sheer estimation, I was more likely to catch the ride with him without putting up another excuse to wait for him. I did almost every lame excuse one could ever imagine from placing another call to an officemate to lurking inside the pet grooming shop. Sometimes, when imagination had gone dry, I simply let other commuters to go ahead and wait for him to arrive. But at this particular night, everything was just near perfect and it was zero effort on my part.
I saw The Wife come out of the crowd to get the boys and nailed them down to the bench. She was this doting mom who wiped the kids’ sweaty faces and put towels on their backs. That particular sight washed away my excitement to see Bloody again as I stood in the middle of the tired crowd frozen on my feet. I felt guilt surface and accuse me of trying to steal away their dad. How in the universe will I be able to do such wicked thing to a family who depended so much on him? While Bloody collected women since youth, he never really did abandon his family.
There in the middle of one rainy night I received my answers.
