Chapter 74

Luz.

“Luz, are you okay? You’ve gone very pale,” Jomari says.

Luz can barely register his voice. Her mind is spinning. What she sees cannot be true. It’s impossible. It’s against all the laws of nature.

Jomari takes her hand.

“Luz? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he says, squeezing her hand.

Yes, Luz has seen a ghost, or maybe just a man who looks uncannily like her late fiancée.

“I’m okay...it’s just that this man looks like someone I knew...”

“Who?”

Jomari’s tone is alarmed.

“My fiancée. But he’s dead. It must be someone else who looks like him.”

Jomari’s hand stiffens.

“But he’s standing at the gate of your home and he’s looking at you.”

Jomari’s suspicious tone is like a punch in her guts. She looks hard into his eyes and sees the demons of his past pushing at the gates of his present. Jomari’s mistrust is not personal against her. It’s the echo of the hurt he suffered when his fiancée left him for his brother.

“I’m not your ex-fiancée. I have never lied to you. If I told you that I haven’t dumped my fiancée or cheated on him, but he died, that’s the truth. Do you trust me?” she asks him firmly.

“Yes, I do,” he says. “Anyway, we’ll find out soon enough who the guy is and what he wants because he’s coming towards us.”

While Luz stares at Crisanto’s look-alike Jomari pays the taxi driver. Shivers run down her back. This guy even walks like Crisanto. Luz is frozen.

Jomari is already at her car door and offering her his hand to help her out of the car. But Luz’s legs don’t move. He helps her out with an arm around her waist. Luz feels the tension in his muscles. She can tell that he’s ready to fight to protect her.

Luz finds herself out of the car. She can’t take her eyes off this man who is walking towards her, smiling uncertainly.

The taxi drives off, leaving her standing next to Jomari, who is holding her protectively with his arm around her waist.

“Hello. I’m sorry to surprise you like this...”

Luz screams because even the man’s voice is Crisanto’s. Jomari holds her tighter and shifts his body between her and the stranger.

“Who are you?” he growls at the man who’s upsetting her so much.

“I’m Luz’s old fiancée.”

Something fierce and dark flashes across Jomari’s eyes as he looks between Luz and Crisanto. Luz doesn’t blame Jomari if he doubts her and thinks she’s deceived him. This looks very bad on her.

“But I thought you were dead...” she rasps to Crisanto.

All those times when she had dreamed of Crisanto turning up at her doorstep, miraculously delivered from the pirates and the seas, she had imagined being ecstatic when it happened. But now that it’s happening for real, she only feels upset and angry. Angry because it’s taken so long, upset because she’s now in love with someone else, and sad because this is unsettling Jomari.

“The pirates held us hostages and asked for ransom. But the company didn’t want to pay the ransom and told all our families that we had died. So the pirates kept us as their slaves. But a year ago, I managed to escape.”

Luz’s heart goes to him. The carefree young man doesn’t exist anymore: there’s a new sadness and weariness in Crisanto’s eyes. Luz feels guilty for feeling angry at him for turning up out of the blue and rocking her new life. Because he must have gone through a hell that she cannot imagine.

“Do your parents know you’re alive?” she asks.

“Yes. When I escaped, I went home. It took me a year because I was on foot and without money, but I eventually found my way back. I also went to your parents, looking for you, but you weren’t there. They gave me your address here.”

“They haven’t told me anything!”

“I know. I asked them not to tell you.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to come and see you first—see for myself if you had found someone else... and I see you have.”

***

Nurul

Nurul has avoided Daniel all day, but now it’s evening and she can’t avoid him anymore. If he doesn’t find her in her room, he will get worried and will search for her until he finds her, or he’ll raise the alarm with the rest of the household. Since Luz’s kidnapping, everyone in the villa has been on edge. So Nurul is staying in her room.

She’s brushing her hair when there’s a knock on her open door and Daniel walks in. Now, if her door is open, he doesn’t wait for her to say “come in” anymore but just steps in. He just knocks to announce his presence.

“Hello,” he says with a smile.

Nurul smiles back.

He frowns.

“What’s wrong?”

Clearly, he now knows her well enough not to be fooled by a smile that comes from a troubled heart.

“Nothing. Everything is fine.”

“Are you well?” he asks quietly, as if afraid of a negative answer.

“Yes, very well.”

She smiles to reassure him but her smile falters when she sees the bulge in his pocket. It’s got to be the box of an engagement ring.

Sadness marbles Daniel’s expression.

“Maybe this is not a good time. I wish I could choose a better moment—take you out for a meal or on a trip—but we haven’t got time. I’ve got to do this now.”

A shiver runs down Nurul’s back. She is sure that he’s going to propose. She also hasn’t failed to notice that he said he’s “got to do this”.

Clearly, he doesn’t want to marry her. He’s just doing it out of duty, because she’s carrying his baby and because it will be easier to get a visa for Italy together if they are married.

Nurul is devastated. No matter how much she loves him and wants to be his wife, she can’t accept his proposal.

He drops on one knee and pulls the box out of his pocket. He opens it. Yes, it is a ring, just as Nurul had guessed, and it’s a beautiful one too. It must have cost a lot of money—surely more than he should have spent. In fact, he shouldn’t have spent anything at all, because Nurul is going to turn him down.

“Nurul, I love you. Will you marry me?” he asks her.

He’s not even smiling. Nurul’s heart sinks.

“No, Daniel. I can’t.”

“Why not? I thought you loved me too...”

He looks stricken.

“I do, but I can’t accept you marrying me out of duty or pity or as a favor. I don’t want you to marry me just because of the baby, or the work permit, or for any reason other than you really wanting it. I don’t want you to marry me just because Luz suggested it to you.”

Daniel stands up again and frowns in confusion.

“What’s Luz got to do with this?”

“Hasn’t she told you that we’ll have better chances to both get work visas if we get married?”

“I haven’t seen Luz since the staff meeting. I’ve heard that she was looking for me but I was at the jeweler’s to buy this ring. So you thought that I was proposing because of the work permit?”

Nurul nods.

“No, Nurul, I didn’t even think about visas or other practical things like that. And I’m not asking you to marry me because of the baby either. I decided I wanted to marry you from the moment I said yes to sleeping with you. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise. I have always thought that I would sleep only with the woman I married, but I thought that marrying you was impossible.”

“Impossible?”

“Yes. You have been married before and divorce wasn’t allowed in the Philippines, so I wouldn’t have been allowed to marry you. But this morning I read on the news that yesterday our House of Representatives voted a new law that recognises divorce. You and I will be allowed to marry.”

“You didn’t think that we could get married in another country, where divorce and remarriage are allowed?”

“It didn’t come to my mind. I just pushed the idea of marrying you out of my dreams because I didn’t want to wish for something that could never come true. Please, Nurul, come with me to my hometown, meet my family and marry me. If I seem a little sad, it’s just because I had hoped to propose at a restaurant, or in front of the sea, or somewhere more romantic than here and now. But so many things are happening around us that I decided that waiting for the perfect moment wasn’t worth the risk of losing you.”

He looks sincere and Nurul’s heart melts.

Nurul laughs, cries and hugs Daniel, all at the same time. She has never been happier.

“So will you marry me?” he asks her, a little confused.

“Yes, of course, silly man.”

And she kisses him.