“What happened next?” Martin asked. He slipped
the hand that wasn’t holding his briefcase into his pocket. He was thinking
about how her encounter with Joseph was in a way, her doing. Of course, he
didn’t say anything about it. She might get confrontational and defensive.
“I ended up stepping out onto the street just
after the light turned green, and there was a vehicle coming right toward me. I
froze when I saw it,” Anita paused, a small, grieving smile shaping her lips.
“I should have been dead.”
Martin
was moved by the amount of emotion he saw in her eyes when she finally looked
back to her. He hadn’t expected this woman, Anita, to accept or even understand
the gravity of the situation she’d put herself in.Her understanding came to him
with great surprise, because whether or not he was able to respond to such a
statement, he couldn’t have told her what would have happened if she were hit.
“Well,
there was one thing I forgot to mention,” Anita’s face lit up a bit, as though
she’d moved on from the fact that she knew she shouldn’t be alive. “It was a
few minutes before I ended up on the street, but I actually bumped into the guy
who ended up saving me. That’s the only reason I really had any idea what he
looked like at all. That time, he also prevented my fall, but we stood in front
of each other for a brief moment before I went on my way. He looked so…
unusual,” she admitted.
It
took Martin a long moment to completely understand what she just told him. But
when he did, he experienced a moment of utmost clarity. Everything suddenly
seemed to make sense, but at the same time, he became frustrated.
That she’d seen him before the accident was
incredibly significant. It meant that neither of them was relying on a memory
that was potentially botched by a traumatic event. Though neither of them could
say that her state of mind was much better before the incident, it was at least
a bit more credible. What got Martin’s heart racing was that it was that the
image Anita had of her saviour- be it Joseph or not- wouldn’t be something
fabricated. She might have seen Joseph after all, and it was time to either
confirm that fact, or eliminate the possibility. Things seemed to be falling
into place.
Martin placed his briefcase on the nearby bench
and opened it as carefully as he always did. He unclipped a file divider from
one side of the case and began sorting through it, eventually pulling free a
folder, the one he was given from his Director. From it he took the picture of
Joseph, flipping it around so she could see it. Before he asked his question,
she gave him an answer with her eyes: her eyes widened with what Martin understood
as recognition.
(To Be Continued Tomorrow…..)
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