Truly, Madly, Like Me - Jo Watson Page 0,150

from Bermuda for the wedding, my niece had been my flower girl. Samirah and my sister had been my bridesmaids. I didn’t even wear a wedding dress. I just wore my favorite casual sundress. There were no decorations, no proper seats for everyone. Just some hay bales and bright picnic blankets. We did it at sunset, my favorite time in the desert.

It was not an Insta-worthy wedding, it was not a Tweet-worthy, post-worthy wedding, but it was the most special day of my life. For a moment, like catching a shadow moving in the corner of your eye and turning around only for it to be gone, I swear I saw Harun sitting at the horizon. I liked to imagine him like that. Out there in the world, bringing other people together like he’d brought me and Mark together. I imagined him moving from place to place, the most unlikely cupid, creating love and connections wherever he went. That is how I thought of Harun in my quiet moments, when I missed him the most. But I also had a lot to keep me busy too.

Our animal sanctuary was up and running. It was nothing fancy, but it was perfect and our first inhabitant was a one-eyed ostrich with a deformed foot that was totally moody and hateful, but sometimes reminded me of Harun. I was very fond of it, despite the fact that he tried to bite me every time I was there. As Samirah had said, so fortuitous that the first animal we took in had one eye! “All the better to see you with,” she had joked. More soon followed. We got a feral stray cat whose back leg had been lost, so it made it hard for her to hunt and catch food. When she’d arrived, she was skin and bones, but now she was healthy and happy, even though she never let Samirah or me get close enough to touch her. A tortoise with a broken shell arrived, and Faizel had worked some DIY magic, managing to make it a cover for the part that was missing. And then our first dog arrived. I’d been waiting for this moment since we opened, I suppose silently hoping that Harun would have shown up, or a puppy that looked like him. But it wasn’t him, or his puppy. It was a small, fluffy white thing. A runt from a litter on one of the nearby farms that under normal circumstances would have probably been drowned.

“Severe angular limb deformity,” is what Samirah called it. Something that could perhaps over time be corrected with surgery, but it would never be perfect, and she would never walk normally.

I think Knuckles, as we affectionately called her, because it looked like she was walking on her knuckles, stayed at the sanctuary for exactly three nights before I brought her home and told Mark that we had a new pet.

Little by little, the sanctuary filled up with all kinds of animals that wouldn’t have had a chance at a life, if we weren’t here. And when I locked up at night and left to go home, I always got this tiny feeling inside . . . I felt just a tiny bit closer to my dad. For the first time ever.

But perhaps the strangest thing to happen to me since Harun left, was the message I’d gotten almost a year after the elevator accident. It was from the girl in the elevator who’d been knocked unconscious. I was out doing my monthly shopping in the next town over—there were just some things you couldn’t get at Jim’s, and once a month I made the two-hour drive to the town that had an actual small shopping mall. It was on these drives that I usually turned my cell phone on and FaceTimed my mom and sister. This had become our routine and I looked forward to it a lot. Sometimes I would go to my dormant social media accounts, and have a look at what was happening there. By the way, my very last post is by far my most popular post of all time. Kyle had launched a successful, motivational book about getting over a break-up and Finding Your True Smash Through Self™. He was back together with @Paige_Dreams_ and the two of them looked happy. Well, if their huge, live-streamed Insta wedding was anything to go by, or those gorgeous pics from their honeymoon in Bali. I sometimes also Googled Mark on those trips, to see what people were saying about him. His singing that day had caused a worldwide media storm, but on that same day ASO had also released a statement reminding everyone that using Wi-Fi was strictly prohibited and that perpetrators would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law if they did. This seemed to have kept most reporters and media away; there had been a few people who’d come to town looking to interview Mark, not to mention a few groupies. But they never found him. Everyone in town either pretended that they had no idea where he was, or they gave the wrong written directions. After going around in circles for a few hours with no GPS, most people gave up.

But on this specific shopping day I’d noticed a message in my Facebook inbox from a name I didn’t recognize. When I’d clicked on her profile to see who it was, I’d recognized her immediately. The woman from the elevator. And that’s how I found myself sitting in a coffee shop in Joburg, telling my entire story to the two women I’d shared an elevator ride with almost a year ago to the day. It was clear that Becca’s life had changed as much as mine had, and by the time I’d finished telling them my story, the coffee shop manager was glaring at us with irritation, because we’d been there for so long and they were trying to close up now.

“Do you guys want to come to my place?” Zoe said, the big red scar on her forehead moving as she talked. She’d been the one who’d invited us here, and was the one who had the last story to tell.

“Sure.” Becca got up and pushed her chair in. She was a famous writer. I’d actually read one of her books when I’d tried to become a #bookstagrammer. I’d even posted this cute picture of her book lying in a pile of carefully cut-out pink hearts. I smiled to myself. That life was a long time ago.

“Let’s go,” Zoe said, moving towards the door. I couldn’t wait for her to tell us her story, because I had a feeling that hers was probably going to be the craziest of all!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’d like to thank our wonderful veterinarian, Myra Marais, for all her suggestions and for keeping my fictitious dog alive in this book.

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