As she ran her hand over the jacket’s fabric, Grace encountered a surprising sensation—a papery, crisp rustle reminiscent of dry leaves. Though intrigued, she brushed aside the distraction, forcing herself to carry on with her search and found Tim’s phone in one of the jacket’s outer pockets.
He was driving. That’s why she had leaned back to reach for his jacket on the car’s back seat.
They had been on the road for about an hour, journeying back home after participating in Dan’s happy reunion with G. and, by extension, the rest of their family, following his successful stint in rehab.
Heading East, their car’s silhouette gilded ahead, outpacing the elongated shadows of the trees along the roadside that bowed respectfully in response to the gentle evening breeze. It was a picturesque drive, but Grace’s thoughts were elsewhere, completely consumed by the enigmatic, papery sensation she had experienced while rifling through Tim’s jacket.
“Strange,” Tim said, bringing her back to the moment. “I wonder what has necessitated a message from Krogga during a weekend?” From his customized ring tones, Tim knew who had sent the text message. Krogga was the chair of an international NGO in which Tim served as his Deputy.
Grace had’t managed to keep her concentration on Tim’s words nor on the phone in her hand. She was thinking… She knew Tim well. She knew his clothes. They’d been together all day…. Yet she did not know that strange, papery feel in Tim’s jacket….
They completed the sharp climb to the crest of the magnificent Rift Valley where they beheld the splendour of the setting sun, albeit through the car’s rearview mirrors. In another half hour, they’d be home.
“What sayeth Krogga?” Tim asked more directly, refocusing Grace’s mind back to the text message. Delicately, she retrieved her reading glasses from her lambskin handbag, slipping them onto her face with her right hand while cradling Tim’s phone in her left.
“That’s how you’ll warp your glasses, you know,” Tim remarked, ever meticulous about even little details.
“These are the cheap ones!” She replied. She understood his rebuke. She should have used both hands to wear her glasses. The tone in her voice communicated a lingering annoyance with his “meticulousness,” as she had nicknamed it. But, ever apt with responses to offside jabs, Grace repeated deliberately “…the cheap ones…. For situations like these.”
“Well noted,” Tim conceded. Their marriage was mature, and they could talk or argue without much strain. He extended his left hand and placed it on Grace’s lambskin handbag, which now rested on the seat between them. She knew what he was communicating. He had bought the bag for her, along with a lambskin belt for himself, “to be an ever present reminder that we owe our salvation — and our bond — to a Lamb; the Lamb of God.”
She started reading the text message aloud: “I fell in the bathroom and sprained my leg…” she paused to exclaim, “Oh, no, so sorry to learn of this!”
After the pause, Grace took her eyes back to the message. “He wants you to attend a partnership meeting on his behalf, now that he is indisposed.”
“That will be in Kisumu, right?” Grace asked, an area located in the opposite direction in which they were now heading.
“On Monday. Day after tomorrow,” Tim filled in, nodding to Grace’s question. He knew about the meeting — between their NGO and a new partner with whom they were launching a malaria vaccine. He hadn’t been scheduled to attend, but now he had to. “I’ll need to drive back tomorrow.”
“Or fly Monday morning,” Grace, the more practical one, suggested.
“Yep,” Tim agreed. “If I can get a ticket. Busy flight.”
As they descended from the summit of the Rift Valley towards Limuru, Grace clasped Timothy’s extended hand, her fingers tenderly tracing the contour of his wedding ring, a silent gesture of their enduring bond. Amidst the quiet hum of the car’s engine played the classic hymn “And Can It Be, That I Should Gain…” in a low volume. Their hands conveyed a depth of love that had weathered many storms.
When they finally got home, Grace got out of the car with her handbag in hand, and the clothes that had been placed in the back seat of the car. Tim didn’t bother getting out of the car, as he sped off to visit Krogga, and to buy a plane ticket to Kisumu. Grace watched him drive off, then turned to enter their home, the door swinging open with a familiar and comforting creek.
Upon entering their spacious, now empty nest, Grace dumped the stuff she’d ferried with her hands onto the couch, apart from Tim’s jacket. She had every intention of hanging it in their wardrobe, but as she held the jacket in her hands, her mind flashed back to the papery sensation she’d encountered when she’d run her hand over it. She instantly reached into the inner pocket and, with a curious tug, retrieved a flattened, dry rose flower.
Connected memories flashed through her mind: the dry red roses Tim had included in Terry’s wedding gift; the framed arrangement adorning Dan and G.’s wall; the scattered, dry petals strewn across G. and Dan’s family room floor, prompting Dan’s bemused glances as he tried to figure out the connection between the dry flowers on the floor and the framed set on the wall.
“Ah, I understand now,” Dan had said. “Old habits die hard.”
Grace and Lina had simply looked at the flowers on the floor, then at the framed version.
Tim and G. had exchanged glances. “Some habits never die,” Timothy had said cryptically.
At which Lina had commented, “Some are re-learned late in life.”
What was the mystery of the dried flowers? she wondered.
Grace brought the red beauty to her nose and inhaled the fragrance of the dry rose. It still emanated a pleasant scent. Must be one of those that had been on the floor, she thought; the ones G. had been drying in the hospital. But why had Timothy carried one of the flowers?
She caught herself just in time, pushing aside the growing sense of unease that was stirring within her as she grappled with these questions, and made her way into the kitchen. Try as she might, Grace couldn’t shake off the persistent thoughts around the dry flowers and Tim’s connection to the mystery as she prepared dinner.
As she chopped and rinsed the salad greens, another realization dawned on her: Terry’s wedding held immense significance for Tim, so much so that they had cancelled their trip to Israel just to attend. And then, there was the curious gesture of slipping dry red roses into their gift for Jim and Terry—without telling Grace. Why? Grace’s mind swirled with speculation, leaving her heart fraught with a sense of disquiet foreign to her in her many years on earth.…
But when Tim came home two hours later, and they sat over dinner, she was unable to raise the subject. She would sound accusatory, she realised, and she didn’t want to. She was just confused. She had never needed to suspect Tim of infidelity. She knew that whatever connection there was between him and G.’s family was in the past. “A teenage fad,” he had said as he explained the flowers. They had not maintained contact. Tim did not even know Terry and Jim until very recently! So why was this going on?
No…Tim had so far conducted himself honourably in the short period they had interacted with G. and her family. The hospital visitations, her husband’s rehab, the attendance of Terry and Jim’s wedding, and Lina. What was she missing?
“Regrettably, the flight is fully booked,” he remarked, his fork expertly navigating through the neatly piled salad leaves on his meticulously arranged plate. “It appears I’ll have to drive after all.”
“That’s a long drive,” Grace said.
“I called Jim,” he said. “He offered to drive so we could go talking.”
“Practical mentorship!” Grace remarked.
***
When Tim comes back home from the board meeting, Grace resolved, I will face him.
In the 24 hours that he had been away, Grace had arranged her thoughts enough to make a logical decision: a confrontation, if it got to that.
Lina had been a great help, surprisingly, during this inner turmoil. Grace had called her and discussed the flower saga they had witnessed together in Dan and G.’s house.
“I haven’t gotten over the surprise of never having heard of Tim’s childhood fad,” Grace had told her in a careful nonchalant tone, cautious not to stir up a storm in a teacup.
In her usual, teasing manner, Lina had replied, “Neither had ‘weee’ heard of Tim prior to the land case.”
“Land case?”
“Yeah,” Lina had explained, “you weren’t there… the day he came to support us in court. We had lunch at Beth’s later after the hearing.”
Grace now remembered the land case; the woman who’d called on phone and Tim had explained her as “a lady whose family land was grabbed and needs help.”
Tim hadn’t told Grace when he went to “support” them!
“So that’s when Tim’s reconnection with his past started?” Grace asked Lina, speaking her thoughts aloud. “And his teenage fad?”
“It’s mid-life crisis, by my reading,” Lina had said casually, “triggered by the memory of the teenage… eh… fad.”
They’d laughed about it.
As a counselor, Grace was well-versed in the nuances of midlife crises and nostalgia-induced behaviour. She understood how memories of past loves or fleeting fads could trigger peculiar actions, leading individuals like Tim into a realm of self-reflection. The danger, she knew, lay in the impulsive decisions that often lurked therein.
But what could have prompted Tim to delve into this nostalgia? Grace found herself grappling with, and couldn’t shake off, a gnawing self-doubt—could she be the cause? It was unsettling, but appeared to be the only reasonable conclusion: a dissatisfaction within their marriage…with her.
Grace is battling with questions about her marriage. Should she confront Tim and get the answers she seeks? Will Tim willingly offer them?
Stay tuned for the next installment: Grace Wrestles with the Dry Roses Saga, Part 2 to find out.
If you’ve been following the series but missed the last installment, here you go: Terry’s Intrigue Over The Dry Flowers Part 2
Disclaimer: All characters, locations, and events depicted in this blog post are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual events or locales, is purely coincidental. This work is created for entertainment purposes only and does not intend to portray real individuals, organizations, or occurrences
Haron Wachira 