“You mean she was confined once in a mental hospital?” he asked, gripping the steering wheel tightly.
He saw Alibata nod from the corner of his eye. “She was with her mother when they had a car accident years ago. Since then, she constantly cried and asked for her mother. I couldn’t bear to hear her cry, so I asked Simmy to pretend to be Aurora.” Alibata sighed again. “Simmy pretended to be my wife for years just to make Azora happy, until one day Azora’s condition improved. Then, I gradually introduced Simmy to her, explaining who she really was and that her mother had passed away.”
“Simmy… is she?”
“Yes. The woman behind me during the hearing.”
“She’s not here.”
“She’s gone to Oslob. We had an argument.”
Lamech fell silent. After a moment, he asked again, “What happened after?”
“We discovered that Azora had amnesia and her mind altered her memory. She didn’t remember her mother’s face, and the face of Aurora in her mind was just a fabricated image based on Simmy.”
“What?”
Alibata smiled bitterly. “The face she remembers as her mother’s is Simmy’s face.”
“But she’s seeing Simmy –”
“She can’t tell the difference. I once showed her a picture of Aurora, but she didn’t recognize it. When I edited the picture and replaced Aurora’s face with Simmy’s, she claimed it was her mother. But when I showed her a real picture of Simmy, she identified her as Simmy. Essentially, all her memories of her mother’s face have been altered to look like Simmy. But she can’t differentiate what’s real and what’s not. When Simmy wears Aurora’s clothes, Azora mistakes her for her mother. But when Simmy wears her own clothes, Azora recognizes her as Simmy, her mother’s friend.”
“That’s… complicated.”
“Indeed.” Alibata sighed deeply. “That’s why I can’t seem to donate Aurora’s dresses and things. They’re the only things that remind Azora that she had a mother. Without them, she might completely forget that Aurora Briones once existed in her life.”
Lamech tightened his grip on the steering wheel. He glanced at the woman sitting blankly in the back seat. He cleared his throat. “What if… a man asks for your daughter’s hand in marriage? What will you do, Mr. Briones?”
“I can’t give my broken daughter away in that state. Her husband won’t like a wife who can’t perform her duties.”
“But if she’ll be back to her former self?”
“No.” Alibata shook his head. “I don’t want her to go back to her old self. Her old self was a broken girl, shattered to pieces because of what they did to her. I want her whole, I want her to see the life ahead, to hope for tomorrow, to have a good life.”
“Mr. Briones –”
“I want Azora to experience the life that I did not experience. A life colorful enough to hope for a brighter future.” Alibata smiled softly but with bitterness. “I couldn’t give her that. I failed to give her the life she should have experienced. Maybe, you can give it to her, Adam.”
The car got stuck in traffic, and Lamech looked at Alibata. He was staring out the window, his brow slightly furrowed, and his lips pressed together.
“What do you mean, Mr. Briones?” he asked cautiously, thinking he might have misheard.
Alibata turned to him. His gaze was serious, no hint of a joke. “If you want her, I can give her to you.”
Lamech gave a forced smile and laughed. Sweat began to form on his forehead under Alibata’s scrutinizing gaze. His heart pounded as if he were a high school student asking for permission from his crush’s father. He swallowed hard.
“Mr. Briones, I think –”
“I think you like my daughter.”
He closed his mouth at this statement. Was it that obvious that he liked Azora?
After a moment, Alibata laughed. Traffic started moving again, so Lamech drove the car forward. He breathed a sigh of relief.
He secretly scolded himself for stuttering and sweating earlier. Hadn’t he graduated from being awkward? He was past his calendar age, so why was he still getting flustered?
He had courted several women before, and they all liked the engineer. He had never chased after a woman before. But since the first time he saw Azora, it was as if his long-dormant feelings had been awakened.
He never thought he would have to wait until he was past the calendar age to find the woman meant for him. If Azora was indeed meant for him.
“You’re old now, Adam. You should find a wife,” Alibata suggested.
He laughed. He had said the same thing to himself when he turned twenty-five. But now that he was over thirty, he still didn’t have a wife.
“Can’t find the right one.”
Alibata laughed. “You shouldn’t look around too much. Maybe you’ll find your wife when you look back.”
At that moment, he glanced up at the rearview mirror and nearly stopped the car when his eyes met Azora’s. Just like before, her gaze was blank, but he noticed a slight furrow in her brow. It seemed like she recognized him. He cleared his throat and quickly looked back at the road.
“Marry my daughter, Adam.”
“Mr. Briones –”
“What are you saying, Dad?” interrupted a soft, weak voice.
His ears felt like they were floating on clouds upon hearing Azora’s voice again. It had been months since he last heard her speak. And even though she was harsh to him back then, he didn’t know why her voice now gave him a strange thrill.
His lips formed a straight line, and his brows knitted together. He had made his decision.
Azora would be his wife.