LIBERTY EPISODE 10: GRACE DAVID'S CORNER

LIBERTY
Episode Ten
The rain drops hit the windscreen and his wipers did a wild dance in their attempt to fight them off. Aimlessly he drove around the city, twice he almost got killed because he couldn't concentrate. Finally exhausted both emotionally and physically he parked beside the road at Jabi lake and trudged dejectedly towards the troubled lake as the rain  continued dropping softly like delicate marbles. He walked with his hands in his pyjamas' pocket and was oblivious of his lonely surrounding. Stopping before the body of magnificent water he let the first tear drop and tasted its saltiness that won't be diluted by the rain.
"Chide!" He cried hardly hearing his voice above the sound of the wind that plastered his clothes to his frame.
He was his lovestruck self ten years ago, all spruced up and ready for a Valentine date with Chide. She had conceded after a lot of persuasion from Becca, her bodacious weirdo of a sister but now he stood beside his Mercedes steaming in his best suit and holding a bouquet of useless plastic roses while the sun set and darkness fell over the city. He watched with disbelief as the lights came on in her family's bungalow as it dawned on him that Chide had stood him up in the most cold hearted way possible. Turning his back on the house he was torn between going to the dark imposing gate, give it a loud knock and face whoever or whatever answered and driving home in defeat. Just then he heard the gate opening and turned around to find her small frame advancing towards him. Something caught in his throat as he took in the simplicity of her pale blue knee length dress and ballet flops. He should be angry instead he found himself wondering how someone could be so beautiful and not know it.
"Hi", he hailed with a silly grin that made him feel even sillier than the suit had.
" Hi," she replied without so much as a smile and asked innocently," have you been waiting for too long? "
He chuckled, "four hours long, I was about to call it a day when you showed up,"
Then he saw it. A fleeting mischievous grin that disappeared as soon as it had appeared, and smiled knowing she had kept him waiting on purpose.
"I was caught up in a vortex of ideas I had to put on canvas but Becca broke my door and almost dragged me out by the hair,"
"Remind me to thank her later," he laughed and opened the car door for her. She hesitated a little before sliding in like a tamed cat with a trapped look in her eyes that pulled at his heart.
The drive to the restaurant, a five star affair was quiet until they packed before it and she wouldn't step a foot out of the car.
"You don't like it here?"
She shook her head slowly and looked down at her fingers which were presently pleating her dress in her bid to avoid his gaze.
"My bad, I should have asked where you would want to go, the place would be packed anyway, so where do you want to go?"
"Jabi Lake, "
He wondered why she had choose somewhere so shabby compared to a ritzy restaurant but isn't that what she had put him to since their meeting? Wondering.
The lake that night was one beautiful shimmering jewel as the lights illuminated against it. He spread his handkerchief on the concrete for her and sat beside her afraid to even touch her. She was silent and had a foreboding expression that warned him off but he loved her and he knew it with a certainty that was quite foolish.
"Why do you persist?" She whispered with a distant look in her eyes.
He hesitated pondering his answer and taking her tiny quivering hand in his said looking into the deep pools that were her eyes, "because you are all fair my love and there is no spot in you,"
She gave a startled laugh and in a bid to mock him told her horrid tale that set his heart racing.
"I was born to a father who didnt want me and my mother was ostracized from her family so she stayed with a distant relative until she birthed and weaned me then she died one cold morning leaving me to the whims and caprices of my aunt who decided one day before my thirteenth birthday that I was old enough to pay for my stay on earth and sold me to Hagar, a woman with a special talent for evil who specialised in satisfying the desires of pedophiles but when I was eighteen I managed to escape and fate pushed me into Mrs. Simeon and her husband's arms, they had been on a business trip to the east and for the saints that they are they took me under their wing and loved me out of my nightmares and dared me to dream, to paint for myself but just last year Becca stole one of my paintings and passed it on to her friend who owns Epiphany gallery and that was how you met me Preacher's kid, do you still feel that I am all fair?" She gave an uncertain heartrending laughter that made him grip her hand tighter.
"You are all fair my love and there is no spot in you," he repeated this time more fiercely and watched the tears cascade down her cheeks.
Ashamed of her own tears she slid her hand out of his grip and looked away, "I was nothing to my father, my aunt, why do you force me to be something?"
He gathered her in a warm embrace that she accepted without a fight and she let herself cry her heart out. That evening he had felt her real warmth and beauty and had loved her more than before her confession. His parents had reluctantly accepted her but afterwards loved her like the daughter Constance refused to be.
Now he wondered about her. Why would she hide something as huge as a thirteen year old child from him and worship him as her love and salvation as she would always say? The betrayal pecked at him until he felt he would lose his mind, his Chide had shot him straight in the heart and left him to bleed. His love for her had truly blinded him and had slapped his eyes open eventually. Then the truth of their childlessness hit him. He was the problem, the weak link!