Jonathan raked his fingers through his hair as he sat on the brown leather couch. Letters were scattered all around him and He was getting more and more frustrated and confused by every passing minute. Jonathan hadn’t moved from the hospital for two days straight. Him and Alice quietly taking turns to go to washroom or taking a nap. They still hadn’t spoken a word to each other after Alice’s outburst. After two days of starving, Jonathan had fainted and the doctors had sent him to rest at home. Still shaken up by the accident and Alice’s outburst Jonathan had managed to come back to his house and had collapsed on his bed. However he had been unable to sleep. In the beginning the memories which he shared with Liza kept haunting him and then when they began to fade his mind began playing the words that Alice had said, replaying them over and over again until he couldn’t take them. He accusatory tone of Alice echoed in his ears and he was reminded of the sins he had done. Unable to sleep he had begun reading the letters. It felt as if he was reading something that he shouldn’t, as if he was stealing Liza’s memories, taking them without her permission but right now they was the only things that tied him to Liza. So as he sat once again in his room, with his head in his hand he pondered upon the possibilities and circumstances which could have made Alice say those things to him. ‘You know what you have done, Jonathan’ said the voice in his head ‘and apparently Alice knows it too’.
Jonathan had never felt so insecure, his sister was angry at him and was blaming his failed relationship on some mistake he didn’t even know about. He wanted to believe that no one knew about his sins, that it was something else that Alice was talking about, there had to be something else. So he went through the past few days over and over again. His face turning sour as he remembered the pictures of Liza in some man’s embrace. He tried hard as he racked his mind for something which could have turned Alice against him but could come up with nothing except that one thing.
He began remembering the strange behavior of Liza since past few months, it was what had prompted him to hire a private investigator to follow her. He remembered her leaving the house without telling him where she was going and whenever he asked her she gave him some vague answer. He remembered her coming late to the house and telling that she was at some friend’s house. He remembered Liza trying extra hard to do something romantic as if she was guilty of something and was trying to make up for it ‘Are you sure it’s not your guilt that you are speaking about?’ piped up his consciousness. How had he been so sure about Liza’s infidelity? He hadn’t seen anything even remotely inappropriate and yet he had blamed her. He had jumped to conclusions without even considering that maybe something else was bothering Liza, that maybe she really was speaking the truth. He wondered if it had been his own mistakes that had led him to push down the blame on Liza. Maybe he just wanted to justify his own acts by blaming Liza of doing the same. Was it all just to assuage his guilt? Did he really leave Liza for nothing but baseless suspicions? Jonathan realized that his sins had left an impact on him. They had destroyed his belief in faithfulness, he himself due to his own acts had forgotten what love really was. He stood up and went over to the window and shivered as cold air hit him.
The sun was already down and now there was only pinkish glow in the sky left as a mute reminder of the bright day. He began picking up letters from the ornate box that was kept on the black glass table under the window and began going through them till he found a letter dated three months back. He looked at the letter curiously, it was written in sloppy hand writing and had tear marks on it. He wondered what had happened to Liza on that particular day. He took the letter and settled down on the floor resting his back to the bed and began reading it.