Lucas called Matt again. This time, the call went through. Matt answered but neither man spoke immediately.

“Matt,” he finally managed.
“Where is Tare?”

Matt’s answer came calmly.
“She is with me.”

Lucas closed his eyes. For a moment, he could not make sense of the words. Then anger pushed through the shock. He demanded to know how that was possible.

Matt reminded him that he had buried Tare. Lucas had stood there while they lowered her into the ground. But there was something Lucas did not know. Tare had never been dead. Her condition had deteriorated rapidly and she stopped responding. The doctors believed she had died. But before her body was taken to the morgue, Tare regained consciousness.

Matt also told Lucas that test results had revealed that Tare was being slowly poisoned. Someone had been deliberately putting arsenic into her system and the doctors needed to understand what was happening.

They also had another concern. They had noticed Lucas’s lack of interest in his wife’s condition. His visits were infrequent. His attitude was detached. He did not behave like a husband whose wife was fighting for her life. So the doctors asked Tare if there was anyone she could speak to apart from her husband. She gave them one name.
Matt.
Her childhood best friend.

Matt flew into the country as soon as he was contacted. He stayed only briefly and he made sure Lucas did not know he was there. But the moment he saw Tare, something inside him broke. She was slowly disappearing before his eyes.
She was weak. Frail. Barely holding and at the verge of death.
Standing beside her, Matt realised something… he had always loved Tare.
He had simply mistaken it for the love he felt for a sister. He had known her for so long that loving her had become as natural as breathing. He had never questioned what was beneath that bond until he saw her fighting for her life.

Not long after he returned abroad, the news came that Tare had died. Matt flew back. But by the time he returned, something extraordinary had happened.
Tare had regained consciousness as she was being wheeled to the morgue. She was alive.

Matt took charge of everything and Lucas’s lack of interest made it easy. Lucas did not demand to see Tare’s corpse. He did not question what had happened. He did not insist on examining her body. He simply accepted the death.
Matt did the opposite. With the help of the doctor, who had by then become his friend, he arranged everything Tare needed to recover. A temporary apartment was secured for her with a nurse. She remained there while she regained her strength.

After the supposed burial, Matt went back to Lucas and asked for Tare’s personal effects, including her documents. Lucas handed everything over without hesitation. He had no use for them anyway.

When Tare was finally strong enough to travel, there was little difficulty getting her out of the country because her visa was still valid. She went to Scotland. She went to Matt. Somewhere between surviving death and learning what it meant to have someone genuinely stand by her, Tare began to see Matt differently. He had always been her best friend. Her confidant. The person she had loved like a brother.
But love had a way of revealing itself.

Matt had been there when she was helpless. He had fought for her when she could not fight for herself. He had crossed borders to make sure she survived. He had protected her when the man who was supposed to protect her abandoned her.
Tare’s feelings changed, and when they eventually married a few months later, she knew she had made the best decision of her life.

Lucas had not known any of it. He had simply moved on. He had married another woman. He had complained about her. He had compared her to Tare. He had regretted everything. And all that time, the woman he believed he had buried was alive and building a new life with the man he had once called his buddy.

When Matt finished telling him everything, Lucas exploded. He accused Matt of betrayal. He accused him of stealing his wife. He threatened to deal with both Matt and Tare. He threatened to sue them.
He insisted that Tare was still his wife and that Matt had no right to marry her.

Matt listened.
He allowed Lucas to scream. Then he asked him one quiet question.
How had Tare been poisoned?
Lucas stopped. The anger disappeared from his voice. He stuttered. Then he went silent.

Matt warned him to be careful with the threats he was making because if Lucas wanted to start asking questions about Tare’s supposed death, the poisoning was one question he might not want anyone asking.

For the first time, Lucas had nothing to say.
He had acted as if he was the one who had been wronged but now there was something else hanging over him. The unanswered question of who had been slowly poisoning Tare… and why.

Lucas wasn’t himself after that phone call with Matt. His indifference had made him a terrible husband but he was not a killer. He had never wished Tare dead.

Matt mentioned arsenic and something jolted inside him. Suddenly, he remembered something he had never considered important. Edna, the woman he had married after Tare’s supposed death had once told him about a cousin who was a doctor. According to her, the doctor had recommended some medication that could help Tare recover. Lucas had accepted the drugs without asking questions and added them to Tare’s medication. He had trusted Edna, believing she was simply being thoughtful. Tare had been too ill to notice the new additions.

Now, the truth began to settle heavily on Lucas. He might have been careless, selfish and unfeeling and Edna had used his indifference to get poison into his wife’s system.

He decided to confront her. He asked to meet the cousin who had supposedly recommended the medication for Tare and Edna denied ever having such a relative. He then confronted her about the drugs but she stuttered, contradicted herself and tried to argue her way out of the situation. She had no convincing answer. The woman who was usually loud, bold and quick with her words looked genuinely unsettled.

Then Lucas showed her Tare’s wedding photographs. Tare was alive. She had survived. The poisoning had not achieved whatever she had intended. Edna looked shocked. She was visibly shaking.

The following day, Lucas returned from work to find his home almost completely stripped. Edna had probably come with a moving truck because she cleared all his belongings, only his personal effects remained.

He had been blinded by Edna’s voluptuous figure particularly her full breasts and generous curves and like most men, he had foolishly mistaken her physical appeal for the qualities that made a good woman. He had failed to appreciate Tare’s character and the quiet dignity with which she carried herself. Tare had been ten times the woman Edna could ever hope to be, yet he had treated her as though she were a burden.

Now he had lost them both: he had lost Tare to his own indifference and Edna had left him with little more than the clothes on his back.

He sat on the floor in the middle of his empty apartment, surrounded by silence. The full cost of his choices starring him in the face. He had traded a good woman for a lie and now he had to live with the consequences.