I took a bus, a subway and a bus to avoid the rain yesterday, only to remember – as I was walking the final stretch home at the end of a very long day – that I had forgotten to take my keys. So I’m locked out, in the rain.
I have somewhere important to be by 6 o’clock – it’s 5:30 and I’m outside my house shivering. I can see my set of keys through the front window, spread out on the console in the living room, taunting me.
How could I forget to pack my keys?
Lots of swearing flows out of my mouth for the next minute. Maybe longer.
I finally get wise and hail a taxi. “Dundas and Ossington, please” – only my destination is actually one block south at Queen St., but I don’t remember this as I jump into the backseat of the cab and start tapping on my phone.
So I keep heading to the wrong intersection in this taxi and, like most people in these situations, strike up small talk with the driver.
He noticed the sign on my lawn he says, the one that reads “For Sale”; he asks me about it. We talk real estate, neighborhoods, the city and our mutual disdain for unethical real estate practices in Toronto.
So we talk some more.
And then the conversation heads this one way that I didn’t expect – “Murdered”, he says, “my niece was murdered recently, back home.”
It’s bugging me a lot right now that I can’t remember quite how the conversation went there, but I’m just going to keep writing this story as I remember it:
She was engaged, betrothed to a young man.
They were a good family for her to marry into
“because you always marry the family”, he says.
Her father felt he knew them so well.
Then one day, he didn’t.
A missed dinner date between families. No answers, many questions.
They simply don’t show up as scheduled.
The bride is heartbroken.
“The first bad sign”; I can see his serious eyes in the rear-view mirror.
She, the jilted bride – his sweet niece – later confronts her suitor.
She asks why his family stood her up.
He screams a threat.
This is common, she thinks, and dismisses it.
No more engagement.
Everybody lets it go.
Then.
She doesn’t come home from work one day.
Panic for everyone, including the would-be groom.
Days later, a body. Her body, lifeless in a field.
3,000 people at the funeral. It makes headlines all over the country.
The ex-fiance is there also, shoving his fists into the air
he proclaims that he will bring justice, find the killer.
Then one day, the truth comes out: the killer is found.
He is the killer.
Her family dies again.
***
“He’s in jail now” says the driver as we pull over to stop, “back in my home country; what happens to him in prison is not up to the rest of us.”
My taxi ride is done as his story comes to a close. I pay, we say goodbye and thank each other for something more than just a ride and fare.
As he drives away, I check my phone to confirm where I’m supposed to be next and finally realize I’m a block shy of my real destination.
I hail another taxi, still dazed from the story I’ve just heard about a young woman killed at 21. I think about 3,000 people mourning her loss, together; I think about what I was doing at 21; I think mostly about not being dead.
“One more block south to Queen Street”, I say to the new driver, right before he asks me how my day has been so far.
She Works Alone. 