Gone Girl..

*Tring*. A pause for 15 seconds.
No response.

*Tring, tring*. Another pause for 45 seconds.
Yet no response.

Finally, the mother dug through her bag and produced the keys from under a pile of cosmetic products, a huge wallet and other items of hygienic importance. She inserted the key in the keyhole and found the door locked twice.

That was unusual, the door was never locked twice unless the family was out. She keyed the second door after the main entrance gate and found that locked twice too. Again, it was unusual.
Grabbing the small hand of her 8 year old daughter and engulfing it in the warmth of her own, she carried a small gift from her mother and entered the dark house.

Well, if the doors weren’t an indication enough, the lights confirmed the obvious; there was nobody at home.

When she felt her daughter loosening her hand from her hold she told her, “Don’t switch on the light of your room before the kitchen ones, sweetie.”

Her daughter nodded in the dark which went unnoticed by the mother and the daughter went ahead to obey the instructions given to her. The mother was swimming in the pool of her own thoughts, wondering why the house was empty on a Sunday night at 10.30 pm. However, she dismissed them and went ahead to the kitchen.

There, she clicked the switch on and found everything to be normal. She looked at the small temple in the room, bowed her head and silently prayed for the prosperity and safety of the family. The minute she turned on her heels to head to her room, she saw the door of the last cabinet of the right platform of the kitchen protruding out. Couple of weeks back, the door had been unhooked off its hinges and there was always a difficulty in closing it after it had been opened. They stored their glass crockery in that cabinet, the most expensive ones. 

“Oh lord, this messy person. He just can’t stop reorganizing things to get rid of his boredom”, she thought.
She went towards the cabinet, opened it and found it empty. Since she was familiar with his habit of shifting things, she did not pay much attention to it, adjusted the door and walked away to the main room.

Another indication –neglected.

She then moved on to place her and their daughter’s shoes in the shoe cabinet. When she opened the door, she found a section empty. But she couldn't place what was absent in that cabinet. She had always had a low sense of observation and did not have sufficient amount of patience to absorb the details. 

So, she placed the shoes on the rack, checked in on her daughter and quickly headed to the washroom to attend to nature's call. 

Another sign –unattended. 

When she entered the washroom, she found the products haphazardly scattered around. It was odd that the product stand was in a mess. But she just rearranged them well and did not pay attention to the lack of products in the tray.

A cue –unidentified.

When she came out of the washroom having attended to her needs, she went ahead to switch on the lights to her room to change into comfortable clothes for the night.

And the minute the lights of the room came on, darkness enveloped her in his blanket.

From the other room, the daughter shouted, “Mom, I am hungry. Can you cook something for me?”
No response.
A pause for 10 seconds.

Impatiently the daughter called out again, “Mom!!”
No response yet again.

Her grumbling stomach made her utter her final cry, “MOMMM! I IS HUNGRY”.

The daughter knew she may have annoyed her mother by now but silence was not what she had hoped to be the response to her restlessness; an angrier, annoyed remark of her mother was what she was fearing. She timidly approached their room, afraid of the consequences of her screaming fit. The daughter wasn’t looking and hence did not expect that she would crash into the rigid body of her mother.

“Mom?” she said a concerned voice. The daughter had yet to notice her surroundings.
She went ahead and grabbed the mother’s hand to gain her attention, but the warmth from her palm that always felt like mild sunshine was not what greeted her. Instead, a chilled, icy feeling welcomed her sending a shock down her spine.

The daughter looked around and absorbed her environment but could barely understand the situation. The only thing she could understand was the light in the eyes of her mother was slowly dimming away and that her cheeks were losing all color, turning pale.

Their daughter’s father’s cupboards were open and it was completely empty just the way her heart felt at the moment after her witnessing this sight.
The clothes, accessories, documents, all gone just like the faith she had in their relationship till now.
Everything else that was unnecessary was laying on the ground like the trust that she had in his love for her.

He was gone.
Her husband, gone.
Her everything, gone.

He had abandoned her and their daughter.

Their young daughter tried to assimilate the context but failed. She was utterly confused and could not form coherent sentences to ask her mother about what was happening. The daughter wandered to her own room leaving her mother standing there, consumed in her own thoughts.

  

Moments turned to minutes which molded into an hour when finally, a pang of pain shot through her body and finally realization and acceptance hit her like a wave. It swallowed her and she lost her bearing causing an agonizing cry to leave her throat. She clutched at her heart and collapsed on her shadow hoping that it would catch her as it had been her constant companion from the beginning.

Hearing the cry, the daughter ran to her parents' room and saw her mother cowering away in a corner where the light from the room reached the least. Unable to decode the reason behind her mother’s reaction and having no idea how to console her mother, to stop her tears, she walked slowly to her.

Wrapping her tiny arms around her mother, she tried to emit some warmth to her and provide her protection from the cold tendrils of the darkness and shadow that she did not know had wrapped around the heart of her mother. 

But the mother was too numb to feel any comfort, too detached too soon to feel anyone’s presence. The bullet of his betrayal had shot her right in the chest and her hopes of a family, hopes of a strong familial bond had been trampled upon by him.

She had accepted weeks back that they were going through a rough time, however a step so drastic was something she had never anticipated or imagined. She believed that they could work their way through, achieve the dream that she had decorated in her mind.
However, at the end she and her daughter, sat wrapped in each other, in that corner where they tried to find solace.

Only silence, sheathed them.
Only silence, was their condolence.