The sun pierced through the clouds - forcing Matthias to squint against its rays.
Where is she?
He checked his watch repeatedly, the chronometer ticking down the seconds until her projected arrival. She was late... they were never late.... it was impossible to be late.... this was history... it was set and defined it was... THERE! There she was, exiting the police station. The building's pillared entrance standing guard behind her, a stone escort to witness her departure.
He'd practice this moment so often, how'd he'd introduce himself, a chance meeting in a bookshop or perhaps as she was getting her morning coffee — a soft bump on the shoulder and then a natural progression into a chat. But it was never supposed to be like this, blood stained, shocked scared, traumatized by a stranger's death. Matthis shook his head sharply. Deal with the now — not the distant past or the planned for future — now. Deal with now.
Slowly, cautiously, Matthias approached her and in a genteel tone he murmured her name.
"Cecilia…"
She turned with a small scream. Her dark brown eyes haunted by fear. Her hair, usually pinned neatly into place was a bedraggled mess around her face.
"D-d-do I know you?" She stuttered, as she struggled to keep herself together.
"Yes... No... well.... not yet, but you will."
Her look of fear cleared instantly and turned to a look of annoyance. Her spunk, her father Henry's flair for life, asserting itself. Matthias breathed a sigh of relief to himself. She wasn't broken, she would recover, she was Henry's daughter after all.
"Look, I don't know who the hell you are but stay the fuck away from me. I have had the very definition of a shit day and I don't need some psycopath assaulting me infront of a police station!"
A tang of fear crept across Matthias tongue — he was ruining this... "Your father sent me... he told me that you would need me... here.. today." Matthias blurted out desperately.
"That's impossible. My father's dead."
"He told me before he died. Look it's complicated and I know I must sound completely insane right now. But I'm asking you to trust me, when I know you have absolutely no reason to at all."
Cecilia stood there frozen on the steps of the police station, staring at this handsome man in the grey pin striped suit, a look of pleading in his grey eyes. Something about him was somehow familiar but she couldn't place how or where or when. What that something was danced just out of reach of her tortured mind. So she responded the only way she knew how, with a challenge. "Prove it. Prove that you knew my father"
Matthias put one foot on the steps leading up to her, approaching her cautiously as the wounded animal she was.
"When you were six you knocked over your mother's doll house because you wanted to see what was inside. You father took the blame... for the doll house.. he said he had done it so your mother wouldn't get mad at you. And then the two of you sat and glued all the parts together all afternoon to fix it."
"How do you know that . NO one knows that. My mother still doesn't know that."
Matthias took the last step to stand even with Cecilia.
"Henry told me.. he told me to tell you... today... in this moment because it would be the only way to prove that you could trust me."
He felt her staring at him, her brown eyes narrowed as she surveyed him from head to toe. The collar of his suit jacket suddenly felt suffocating as a tinge of panic started climbing up his spine. He had one shot... just one shot to fix time... to undo everything that had gone horribly wrong. And there she stood, Henry's daughter. So lost and befuddled, and looking so fragile and helpless as if she could break at any moment. He found himself wanting to enfold her in his arms. To soothe her that everything would be alright even if it was a lie... She was sweetness and tart. Even now, looking as if she would shatter, he could see the strength in her in the way that her back never bowed and she never backed down from the stranger that approached her but continued to stare him straight in the eye. It was so easy to see Henry, his lost friend, in the woman standing before him. She was, in every conceivable way, his daughter. He extended his hand towards her.
"Cecilia... I am asking — "
Suddenly the crack of a gun shot rang through the air exploding the side of one of the stone pillars behind Cecilia. Matthias threw himself at Cecilia to catapult them both behind the pillar for cover.
Time was up. The game was on whether she wanted to play, or not.
©2020 by Leila Ghaznavi. All rights reserved.