Vanished Without A Trace

by Nava Dijkstra

"There is no line. It’s okay for me." Karina said.

  "You are on a holiday, Karin. Nothing will happen if you spend some time standing in line."

  They came close to Washington Square and looked at the town houses, the historic buildings from early of New York. Daniel was very interested in architecture, especially the European constru- ctions that combined German, Italian and English culture.

  "Why did we choose to come here through the construction site instead of going to the romantic Central Park?"

  "Because for me, thinking of you is a construction site," Daniel said, smiling. "I would have wanted to marry you at a construction site, and for me, it is the most romantic thing ever."

  "Would you have wanted to marry me?"

  "If you divorce Odi, I will marry you the next day."

  She smiled, "I'll think about it."

  56

  In the evening, Daniel sat with Alon and Gideon at the bar in the hotel and looked at the entrance the whole time. It was already twelve thirty, but Karina had not yet arrived. He felt an uncontrollable urge to call her, but unfortunately she was in the room with her husband and he was afraid to get Odi on the phone and be reminded of his foolishness of letting her getting away from him. Although they agreed to meet in the hotel that evening, she did not show up and did not even find it necessary to inform him. Daniel was surprised, especially after the great day that they spent together. He kept looking towards the entrance involuntarily.

  "What are you looking at the entrance all the time, who are you waiting for?" He heard Alon.

  "I am waiting for Karina." Daniel said.

  "I think she is on her way to the airport."

  Daniel opened wide eyes. Confused.

  "She left half an hour ago, maybe you catch her at the airport."

  "There is no need, she is already married." He smiled in embarrassed.

  "What married? She ran away from him three days before the wedding. She is just crazy like me," Alon said. "Do you want to tell me you did not know?" Alon was surprised, "You are her best friend."

  Daniel did not answer. He ran off and stopped a taxi to the airport. He believed that he could get there on time. The airport was a half hour away from the hotel. All the way there, he tried to call her, but her phone was disconnected. He looked at the clock. He could still get there on time and catch her waiting with her suitcase.

  "It will take an hour and a half," the driver said, "The highway is closed. We'll take the bypass road."

  "Damn!" Daniel cursed. There was no way he would get there on time. He tried to call her again, but there was no answer. "Find a way to turn around and take me back," he asked the driver after he realized he could no longer arrive on time.

  "Are you late for your flight?" The driver asked. "I do not understand how someone could do such a thing on the way to the airport. It's irresponsible." the driver said.

  Daniel was not in the mood to talk. He preferred to keep quiet. His head was occupied by his own stupidity in not realizing Karina was not married. He was angry with her for not telling him, but he admitted to himself that he deserved it because he never talked to her about his feelings for her. He consoled himself that he could talk to her about it after landing in Israel, within twelve hours. Twelve hours seemed very long.

  He went to the hotel where he was staying, and blinked when he saw Karina sitting in the lobby, staring at him. He came close to her with Tentative steps. He was having a hard time believing she was the one sitting there. "So you didn’t take your flight?" He asked, while holding her hand to make sure that she was really standing before his eyes.

  "No, did you forget we agreed to meet today in your hotel? I have been waiting for you for more than two hours."

  "I thought you would not come. So, I went to your hotel."

  "Misunderstanding." She smiled. "Any way, I needed to tell you something that I think you should know."

  Daniel was relieved. "I already know that you're not married. I can’t believe it. I chased you to the airport, and in the end you are just waiting for me here at the hotel?" Karina rolled in laughter.

  He pulled her to the elevator and kept kissing her until they reached his room, where they found themselves diving into each other with great passion.

  Daniel lay sideways and looked at Karina, who looked back at him with admiration.

  "Why did you not tell me you cancelled your wedding? Do you know how much I suffered?" He released a loud laugh. "Wow, I can’t believe it. You let me suffer for two months thinking I'd already lost you, and in the end you didn’t even get married."

  "You deserved it," she said.

  "When are you planning to tell me?" He asked while the beautiful smile she loved so much filled his face.

  "I thought I shouldn’t tell you until I was sure you loved me."

  "Didn't I ever tell you that? Okay then, I didn’t know it myself."

  His answer made Karina slap him. "Won’t you ask why I cancelled the wedding?"

  "No. I don’t care." He said with a smile.

  "Try to be interested anyway."

  "Because you love me?"

  "No."

  Daniel looked at her with a surprised smile. "You're lucky that I'm just happy, otherwise, I'd throw you now from here over your refusal." He turned his eyes from her face to his hands that were touching her belly.

  "I can’t believe it. So many things are happening to me lately." He kissed her lips gently.

  "Are you complaining?"

  "No. I'm the happiest person on earth." He answered while his face was close to her face.

  "I wanted to tell you on this happy occasion, that I am also ready to be your wife."

  Daniel could not stop his laughing. "Ready ... Are you ready to be my wife? No wonder, you’ve been ready for seven years."

  "So, where am I today?" Karina said with a winning smile.

  "Where would I be today if I had not met you?"

  "It is not a problem. I would have found you, believe me."

  He looked into her eyes, "You know what? I believe you."

  End

  ALSO BY NAVA DIJKSTRA

  COLORS OF THE SHADOW

  SECOND TIME'S A CHARM

  TIME TO FORGIVE

  SECOND CHANCE FOR LOVE

  Part one of

  Colors of the Shadow

  By

  Nava Dijkstra

  1

  The atmosphere in the old truck was grim. The Zarian family sat in silence, as if they were strangers to one another. The father sat in front next to the driver. He looked hopeless. Sadness and pain were evident in every line and wrinkle on his brown face─several seemed to be distinct only from the last couple of days. His black wavy hair that was always well-groomed was disorganized, as if he left the house in a hurry and did not pay attention to it.

  Fifteen-and-a-half-year-old Sherry was sitting in front of her sisters—Esther, who was twelve-and-a-half-years-old, and Tamar, who was eleven years old. Esther moved her legs back and forth restlessly. Her big black eyes were converged on a certain point in space, and her teeth were nailed to her crumpled lips. Her black straight hair was ponytails over her head. It highlighted her narrow, egg shaped face and prominent cheekbones. Tamar and Esther looked more like their father and Sherry looked like her mother. Sherry’s eyes were brown like honey and her lips were thin. Sherry inherited her straight black hair from her mother. Despite her narrow forehead Sherry liked to keep her hair short with bangs. She had an inclination to art of any kind and kept her room decorated accordingly. Esther occasionally caught Sherry’s eye and was reminded of the considerable distance between them, stemming from their father’s unconditional preference for Sherry.

  The father didn’t hide his regard for Sherry from the other sisters. In Esther’s point of view, all these were nothing compared to his exaggerated admiration for Sherry’s paintings, and his absurd prophesy that Sherry would hit the horizon in the art world. It would have been easier to market Esther in Hollywood as an
acting match of Marilyn Monroe than to fashion Sherry as a Rembrandt. But Esther was not recognized by her acting abilities which were much more impressive, in her opinion, than Sherry’s silly paintings.

  When news came that they should leave their big and spacious house in Isfahan, a large city in Iran, and move to an abandoned warehouse in the garden of their father’s acquaintance, in the same city it was Sherry who exhibited maturity and courage, while Esther responded with childish tears. In comparison to Sherry’s benevolent behavior, Esther was stiff and inconsiderate. She, however, understood her father’s distress, but the fact that she got the news the day before departure while Sherry knew it a week before, intensified her resentment towards him. Her father’s explanation that he did this to keep her from emotional distress only made her angrier and her behavior towards him meaner and insensitive. No one judged her for it.

  Sherry reached and put her arm on the shoulder of her other sister, Tamar, while playing with curly and soft ponytails. In response, Tamar raised her deep black eyes toward her. She was happy about the family trip that had fallen on her so suddenly. Sherry’s eyes turned to Esther’s sad face again, and she felt pity for her. She tried again to catch her eyes, but Esther turned her head to face the road.

  The truck stopped next to a luxurious house, and Esther’s face suddenly brightened. She jumped from the truck and stood still, widening her eyes. The switch that her father prepared for them was not so bad after all. She started to run happily towards the house, but was abruptly stopped when she heard her mother calling her name. She looked away from the beautiful house and turned towards an ugly structure that was standing at the rear side of the yard. She understood that this was the tabernacle waiting for them—a disgusting warehouse that could never be a place to host any of her friends. Suddenly, a girl who had always been surrounded by friends found herself to the brink of great loneliness.

  The sight in front of the warehouse was even more difficult. The entrance served as a living room, housing a bed and a faded blue table with worn out feet. At the back stood a rough and cracked wall that turned gray from dust. There was a low entrance leading to a small kitchen next to the girls’ bedroom. It was a small-size chamber containing the small cabinet with a hinged door that threatened to open up and block the entrance to the room. Nylon sheets were pasted to cover the huge gaping breach along the wall. Even Sherry couldn’t hide her shock.

  Esther ostentatiously left the house and sat under the tall strawberry tree wiping her tears. Her dream to be a Hollywood actress was severed in a moment. How could she imagine herself walking down the red carpet in a miserable house like that? How could she believe in dreams? How could she dream at all? Until then, anyone who looked at her knew that she was blessed with a talent in acting. No one would believe in the acting ability of a girl who lives in the servant’s quarters behind the house of a wealthy family.

  Her mother walked towards Esther. She was wearing a wide-brimmed dress that showed off her full figure and her short height. Despite Sherry’s similarity to her mother, Sherry’s height was evident and her noble gait was from her father. Her mother sat down beside Esther and put her hand on her shoulder without uttering a word. Her father did not notice what was going on with his daughters, and Esther’s stormy exit from the house did not prevent him from continuing to present the miserable room to Sherry. He opened the window and smiled at the sun. Sherry stood close to him, looking at his smile and kept quiet in a deadly silence. All she asked in her heart was for him to leave her with her grief. Suddenly, his voice cracked. Sherry watched her father’s protective mask crumble as his face clenched with the air of restraint. She finally realized that even her father, with all his business skills, would struggle to rise from the low point to which he fell.

  Sherry sat in a bed that created a screeching sound. She had no strength left to encourage her father. Three days ago, when he realized that his father would not retract his demand to vacate his beautiful home, he sat down and talked about it with Sherry, explaining the nature of the conflict and their need to move to a small apartment. He won her encouragement, but she was unaware that their new home was not so much an apartment as it was an inhabitable warehouse.

  Sherry felt a burning sensation rising in her throat, threatening to break out. The smell of mildew increased the feeling of nausea. She quickly approached the open window and took a deep breath, but the nausea she felt seemed to be augmented. Her breakfast bubbled into the lawn. As she was wiping her mouth, she noticed a boy watching her through a wide-open window. She looked at him, embarrassed that he had to watch the humiliating spectacle. Still embarrassed, she overheard Ester’s roaring yells as she entered back into the room, slamming the closet door on her way. “How can the three of us live here? There’s no space. I’ll die here...” Her yells brought her father back to the room. His face resembled the expression of a child who was caught off-guard. Sherry closed the wooden shutters and sneaked another look at the boy who was still curious about the new tenants living in the warehouse, screaming and throwing up in the well-tended garden.

  Sherry reached Esther to hug her, but Esther pushed her away. “It’ll be all right,” Sherry promised. “For the moment, our grandfather is very upset with our father, but you know that he will not let us live in a place like this. Perhaps he will find the person who stole his diamonds and everything would be like before. You know how much he loved us. It is just a matter of a few days.”

  “Few days? I can’t stay here even for a minute!” Esther yelled, causing her mother to stop the housework and enter the room in a panic. “How will I be able to live through this for a few days? If I disappear, don’t look for me. More than anything else, I want to die. It’s not only that I’ve lost my friends because we moved to a new place, but I may not be able to invite anyone here because of my embarrassment. I will never have friends. If we don’t move within a few days, I will run away. I won’t ever want you to look for me.”

  “Try to relax,” her mother said in a soft voice.

  “Why should I calm down? How is it possible to relax here?"

  Her father sat in bed quietly and looked at Sherry apologetically.

  “Why are you asking Sherry to forgive you?” Esther detested. “It’s always about Sherry. You need to ask for my apologies. Sherry loves these conditions; they will influence her muses. She will paint you an amazing picture of emotions here. She does not care where we live. For her, the important thing is that she has papers and colors. I’m the one who needs an apology for not being able to be an actress. Who will hire an actress who lives in a musty warehouse like this?” Esther went out, slamming the closet door. This time it was submissive to the smash and let loose from its hinges.

  “At least it won’t interfere with the entrance,” Sherry joked, trying to amuse her father a little bit.

  “This is the first day. After a week, it will be easier,” her father said.

  Sherry thought that even after 10 years, it would not become easy.

  At night, Sherry laid down on the double bed next to her two sisters, looking at the peaceful face of Esther with no traces of turmoil left. Her cheeks slightly blushed from the heat, and her lips were reddish, even as she was sleeping. ‘It’s a miracle,’ Sherry thought, that Esther actually fell asleep quickly, as she turned from side to side in bed, unable to find a comfortable position. Or perhaps it was not the inconvenience that bothered her, but rather her brain, that a while ago accepted the new reality. Now, she found the ability and the time to segregate in sequence one reflection after the other to an intensity that she could carry.

  Sherry kissed Esther, taking advantage of her sleep. There was no way her sister would let her or anyone else kiss her, for the risk of saliva remnants on her smooth cheeks was too worrisome. Across the door there were whispers. But her parents’ words sounded clearly. “How did they enter into the room without anyone seeing them? You were home all day. Even if someone came in, how did he know where the key was?” Her
father asked.

  “Maybe you didn’t notice then, and someone saw you?”

  “I never hide the key to the safe before locking myself into the room. Aside from us, nobody knew where the key was hidden. It has to be someone who knew that from the previous week. We bought diamonds with all the money we had; someone who knew that we were going to run away to America.”

  “Your brothers knew that we were going to run away. They also knew that you bought diamonds.”

  “No, not even my uncles who are working with us. It’s true that no one besides my brothers could enter the house without a problem, but there is no way that they stole the diamonds. If they stole them, they would have returned them right away. They wouldn’t have watched my father throw me out of the house like a dog. They couldn’t watch my father suffer. They are not the thieves… no way. I can still build my life once again, but my father is not young anymore.” He sighed loudly. “The first thing I’ll do tomorrow morning is get us away from this place. I’ll ask for a loan from my brothers, leave Iran, and open a small business in the U.S. I’m familiar with this market; I can handle it faster. I’ll go to Itzhak. I do not have the courage to go to Shmuel. It would be like an admission that what happened is a punishment for taking you away from him. I will try to go to Itzhak first; I’m sure he’ll give me money. But, if he refuses, I will not be ashamed to ask Shmuel.”

  “Do not humiliate yourself. Don’t you dare ask for money from your brothers. If they want, they will come by themselves and offer you help. Wait for a few more days and we’ll know what to do. We’ll find a way to survive.”

  “I can’t wait until they offer to help me. I will not let you and my daughters live in a place like this. You deserve to live in a better place. You have no idea how hard it is for me to think that you have to clean the house of Nazir and work for hours in the kitchen in exchange for living here. I’m so sorry and so ashamed that I turned you from a divine painter and talented jewelry designer to a maid and cook.”