The Thin White Line

During his years of reporting from war zones and witnessing every imaginable kind of atrocity and then some, his love for Rami was the only thing that had kept him sane, kept him alive. Their eventual reunion would transform his life, give it meaning and order.

Matt didn’t know when he began to love Rami. One day she was all elbows and knees, the awkward nuisance he and Parm tried to exclude from their adventures, the next her flowing hips and ripe breasts made her someone he tried to find reasons to seek out. Overnight it seemed she went from being tolerated to being lusted after.

They had to keep their relationship a secret. She had female cousins who’d been shipped back to India to live in a convent until a suitable marriage could be arranged for less than dating a white boy. Despite, or because of, the no-touch-in-public, and never-be-seen-alone-together precautions, their passion became the benchmark from which all others would be judged–and found lacking.

At least for Matt.

Young, idealistic and in love they planned to leave behind the small town and small minds of Pitt Landing as soon as they could. They would embrace life and experience the world, maybe even change it.

Then Raminder’s father had a stroke and her commitment to her family meant she had to postpone her plans and stay in Pitt Lake. Tragedy struck Matt’s family as well. but it had just the opposite effect.

Returning from a wedding at which he’d officiated, The Reverend missed a turn on a rural road and rolled the car twice ending upright in a cornfield. His father was unscathed, his mother died instantly of a broken neck. Later it was revealed, at the reception following the wedding, the minister had toasted the happy couple excessively.

Without his mother as a buffer, the strained relationship between father and son was intolerable. After her funeral, Matt walked out of the church, caught the bus to Vancouver, and continued with his last year at university living in the dorms on campus and eventually getting a job in Toronto. Raminder was going to join him there when her father recovered, or the situation stabilized.

To Matt, their love superseded everything and everyone including family. Raminder’s reluctance to join him hurt but he had a new job, with new colleagues and assignments that took him to new places and showed him new things – terrible things. The calls became less frequent, life happened and for Matt, it included visions of bodies baked, butchered and blown apart. Through it all, he kept the hope that somehow, he and Raminder would reconnect.

Twelve years later they did, though it was not as pure as the dream.

She’d married, had a seven-year-old child and was separated from her husband. He was a drunk, suffering from post-traumatic stress, a stomach ulcer and unemployed. Despite their mutual disillusionment, the spark was still there, banked but not out. T

he next ten years, though at times difficult, were the best of his life. He cut back on his drinking, got healthy physically and emotionally, devoted himself to his new family and made a successful name for himself as in freelance investigative journalist.

Then something started to change between him and Raminder. He couldn’t pin it down, wasn’t sure it was entirely his fault but regardless, people you loved deserved better. He could do better, would do better, but first, he’d needed something to settle his frenetic thoughts.

Matt rummaged around in the freezer, found the Stoli and pulled it out. There was still a good two inches left in the bottle more than enough to do the job. He was about to add the contents into his coffee mug then stopped.

“Every journey begins with a first step.” He poured the vodka down the drain. It didn’t make him feel better, physically or emotionally. He wondered if he’d made a mistake.