The Pen Warriors – Post #7

Read the previous chapters here:

Prologue || #1 || #2 || #3 || #4 || #5||

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Too Late For Atonement – Chapter 6

The festivities were over and so were her vacations.
Full 10 days had gone and she had not yet heard a single word from her father.
Even this year he didn’t show up.

Back home, rested on a couch with feet rested on the coffee table in front of her, Jennifer was carelessly clicking next button in gallery mode on her DSLR. She was looking at her clicks of the festival.
Looking but not seeing. Like AF point focus mode of her DSLR which she often preferred, when she needed to focus on a point of interest in the frame while blurring the rest.
Unlike her camera, her mind didn’t have multiple focus points. Her mind was focused only on her was father’s absence.

She needed to pack her bags. Train to take her back to hostel was due tomorrow morning.
Placing the camera in the bag she started towards her room.

“Why do I always keep coming back here?” She thinks out loud as her words drown the sound of creaking stairs while she climbs up to retire to her room.
“This place shouldn’t even be called as home. It never was.” Jennifer kept talking to herself, letting out the thoughts which were burning her heart.
“Dad never had time for us. I know mom used to stay awake and then would doze off in the wee hours waiting for him to come home. He rarely did. I know you used to cry mom! You never said it, but your eyes always did. I read them like an open book!” She said as if her mom would speak up, coming alive from the photo that hung where the stairs ended.
She stopped there in front her mom’s picture. A tear rolled out of mixed emotions of sadness, loneliness and anger.
“Thank you God that you ended all her pain, but you took away the only person that made this house my home.”
Another tear kissed her left cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her hand.
She looked at her pinky finger, which had the ring which mom gifted her when she was young.
With the turmoil of emotions reaching its brim, she turned left to reach out for the room’s doorknob when the light in her father’s study caught her eye.
A faint hope that her father was back home lifted up her spirits. She walked swiftly towards the study, almost half-running. But her hopes shattered when she walked in and found it empty.
May be one of the housemaid forgot to switch off the lights after daily cleaning, she wondered. She turned back to switch off the light and walk out when an old diary caught her eye, standing out differently than the other books on the shelf.
She stopped. Emotions took a back seat as curiosity took over.

She pulled out the old brown diary from in between the comparatively new books.
“Dad kept a diary??” She murmured to herself, “It wasn’t like him to keep a diary”.
She flipped the diary open. The front page said in his dad’s familiar slant uncouth handwriting-

This diary belongs to Joseph Kurien.

“So he did keep a diary! That’s very strange thing to do for a person like him. He gets time for the diary but not his family!” She thought aloud sarcastically.

She glanced at the old grandfather’s clock in study.

22:10

She had whole night to read it but then she had to pack her stuff too to catch the morning train. May be she should take the diary along with her.
Not a bad idea, she thought.
She got up and switched off the lights and walked towards her room.
She was randomly flipping through the pages of diary while an envelope fell down.
She bent down to pick up the envelope.
It was addressed to her dad in neat cursive handwriting.
This beautiful writing seems to belong to a woman, she thought.
She pulled out its contents. There were two old photographs of a baby. One photograph showed a newborn baby in lady’s arm whose face wasn’t visible as the photograph was deliberately torn.
Other was just the picture of the baby smiling.
The smile reached her heart and she smiled for a moment. But soon the next thought that popped in her mind stole her smile.

This wasn’t her photograph for sure. Her dad wasn’t ever a family person, so keeping photographs of his daughter and wife in his diary was out of the picture. Moreover if it was them, why was the photograph torn.
It the question that made her stop was, who was the baby and the lady in the photographs!

“One cannot serve two masters. 
He will love the one, and hate the other”
The verses from her pocket bible echoed her mind again.

She flipped the photos to get some clues. She did get one.

On the back side of one of the photographs, same slant handwriting said-

Meet her once.

She looked the photo closely for more clues. And finally got another. At the bottom right corner of the photo was printed the date when photo was taken.

23.06.2003

Approximately nine years back, her quick maths told her.

She could no longer hold her desire to read the diary. She has to read it and know the truth if it was there written in his dad’s own words. Her gut told her what she was about to read might change her life forever.

She switched on the lights in her room. Her neat and tidy room stared back at her. Those beautiful pictures of backwaters of kerela didn’t calm her as they usually did. Nor did the fact that they were her own clicked photos. For now they just brought back the memories of her parents bickering in the houseboat when they had gone for their  so-called family vacations.

She dismissed all the thoughts and sat down on the couch by the window. It was a dark . She searched for the date in the diary, close to the date on the photo. Neither did she had the time not the patience to read each page.

Soon she found what she was looking for.

Page written in blue ink with date in upper right corner- 25.06.2003

Two days after the photo. Not bad, she thought. She read further.

I met her daughter today. Or should I say my daughter.

Those words took her breath away. No matter how much she hated her father she could never have imagined to be cheating her mom. Did mom know? Furious she read on.

She is beautiful , adorns the looks of her mother. But she has my black eyes that shone brightly when I took her in my hands. I still remember two years back when I met her mother for the first time. She looked same today. I had fallen for her the moment I had seen her. I know I shouldn’t have but then her beauty was irresistible. And then the day she told me that she decided to have our baby, I almost drank myself to death. But today seeing the little one I lost my heart again. But I can’t commit to her even now. I have a reputation here. I should break all the ties with her and leave no clue for anyone to discover. Yes, that’s the only solution to my mistake. For heart is a fool but mind isn’t.

She stared blankly at the page she has just read. She didn’t know what she was feeling- hatred, anger, sadness, revenge, vengeance or all at once. She picked up her iPhone and felt like throwing it away and along with everything else that her father gifted her on her birthdays, the only day in the year he showcased his fatherly love.

She threw open her travel backpack and put in all the stuff she could think of. Packing all her stuff, she dialed her travel agent’s number on her iPhone.

” Yes, Jennifer speaking.”

“Sorry to disturb you at this hour but it’s urgent. Cancel my ticket to Mangalore and book me a flight to Mumbai as soon as possible.”

After a minute’s pause, she spoke again, “You shouldn’t be bothered about the reason.”

“No my dad won’t ask why because he is dead-“She said last three words clenching her teeth and hung up.

“- because if you are not I will kill you Mr. Joseph Kurien“, she completed her sentence fuming.

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Wondering what will happen next??

Read next part here  #7 || #8 || #9 || #10 || #11 || #12 || #13 || #14 || #15 || #16 || #17 || #18 || #19 || #20

Stay tuned for the ride of twists and turns that await you…….