Ezra Azra--Molly's Prize

By the middle of the afternoon of that day, Molly was so stressed out that she was on her fourth cup of tea.

In addition to the problems she had to cope with, there was the concern that since she had to have sugar in her tea, she was at risk of overdosing on sugar. With righteous religious fervor she avoided artificial sweeteners.

The most serious problem of that day was that it was the eve of the anniversary of her younger adult sister’s disappearance.

The downtown building she was in had been attacked and burned to the ground by rioting mobs in City-wide political riots. After the destruction, remains of many persons had been discovered, but the fire had been intense enough to have rendered biological matter indistinguishable from inanimate ash and rubble. Officially, it was decided to keep the investigation open indefinitely, and the building site established as a memorial park.

In the last year, Molly had checked in once a month at the forensics department of the Police Station to enquire. No progress had been made in the DNA examination of the charred remains of the victims.

Scientific forensics was yet unable to establish even the number of the victims beyond three; except that there were many more than three.

The second problem for Molly on that eve was a letter addressed to her sister. Molly read the letter. It was from a Business Company notifying her sister of the approaching expiry date of a first prize winning ticket in a lottery. The notice stated that the winning ticket had to be submitted before the prize could be granted.

Molly’s brain became dizzy. It was fortunate that she was sitting at the kitchen table drinking the best warm-to-hot tea when she read that notice.

There was nothing unusual in Molly’s sister having bought a lottery ticket. The sisters did that regularly, individually and together. With both their teachers’ salaries they were barely managing to be debt-free. Now on one salary, Molly was feeling the burden; she would have to move into a lower-rent apartment soon.

This time, where was the ticket? Was it on Molly’s sister in that burning-down building?

Molly had yet to muster enough will power to attend to her sister’s possessions in their home. Had she done so, she might have discovered the winning ticket.

Molly’s dizziness decreased a little when the thought occurred to her that, perhaps, Kerid knew.

Kerid had been with Molly’s sister at a Conference in that ill-fated downtown building the day-before that day he left the Conference to return to his teacher post overseas.

Kerid’s family had lived on the same road as Molly’s and her sister’s family in an overseas country. The three of them had attended the same schools and University, before Molly and then, years later, her sister had emigrated.

Before Kerid had unexpectedly re-appeared in their lives in their overseas country, Molly had not seen, or heard from Kerid for many, many years.

In those years the friendship was so close that Molly and her sister in their teens and older, often gambled with each other, in their games of cards and other, about which of them would sooner or later marry Kerid.

Her sister sometimes offered to trade her win for a wish that both of them, together, would marry Kerid, sooner or later, and live happily ever after in glorious sin.

Of course, they were careful that Kerid was totally unaware of their playfully silly designs on him.

The protective elder sister in Molly often engineered matters to allow her little sister to win Kerid as the prize in their games.

Sometimes in later times Molly felt obliged to win whenever she detected that her sister’s ‘easy’ wins in their games of cards and other, were stoking confidence in her sister to approach Kerid with a declaration and an offer.

Sometimes in those later times, Molly felt a twinge of guilt at, albeit most fleetingly, the wish to be Kerid’s choice of her, instead of her sister. It was this guilt that obliged her to volunteer for the role of Kerid whenever they played Snakes And Ladders, her sister’s favorite game. It was her sister’s insistence that one of them play Kerid.

Her sister was extra tickled whenever that big snake ate Molly’s Kerid.

And so, because of the fun memories of Kerid, it was not a total mystery to Molly why her thinking of Kerid was wholesome, on the eve of that first anniversary of her sister’s disappearance.

Molly’s dizziness faded away completely within minutes the longer she engaged the possibility that Kerid might know about Molly’s sister’s lottery ticket.

Nonetheless, Molly was a little, and for only seconds, puzzled why she felt uneasy at the thought of phoning Kerid about that prize-winning ticket.

The uneasiness was because if Kerid had the ticket it would be because Molly’s sister and he had bought the ticket jointly; in which circumstance Molly would gain nothing from her sister’s win.

On the other hand Molly found herself warming up to having a reason to speak to Kerid, again.

Although she did not remember the first time she had this feeling, it was when both she and her sister had tried to persuade Kerid to remain in the country, and let them find him a teaching post in their town. While he had apologized for declining their offer, he observed the three of them should keep that option open for the future.

She decided to phone Kerid the next day.

Would Molly have dared to contact Kerid had she known a few facts about Kerid and her sister, before her sister had disappeared?

That on the day of that fatal downtown fire, Kerid and her sister had been on their way to be secretly married in the City’s downtown marriage license office before Kerid was to fly overseas later that very day. That marriage did not occur because the City riots had separated them on their way. While they were separated, Kerid had been obliged to fly away out of the country; she had returned for refuge to that ill-fated building.

Molly was totally unaware of all of that when she had decided to phone Kerid. That decision came with a nagging apprehension of not knowing Kerid’s feelings in his memory of the next day’s anniversary.

The third problem on that eve for Molly was a letter addressed to her sister, from the Government’s Revenue Department. By the time Molly paid attention to the envelope, she was so stressed out by the problems that she was struggling to cope with, that she dared to be reckless the moment she saw the return address. It occurred to her that the Government had not received the previous year’s Income Tax from her sister!

Molly, somewhat delightfully vengeful, knew she was not obliged to get involved in her sister’s tax problems with the Government. Her sister and she had a joint bank account. If she arranged with the Bank to remove her sister from the account, the Government would never have access to her sister’s money.

There was a flavor of defiant triumph in her decision to not open the Government’s letter addressed to her sister!

She drank the rest of the tea in that fourth cup and took particular pleasure in the relief she experienced pouring into her.

For the moment, she ignored the thought she was dangerously on the brink of pouring herself a fifth cup.

She took especial pleasure in the urge to phone Kerid before the end of that day, the eve of the anniversary of her sister’s disappearance.

Minutes before she could phone Kerid, she had to sign for a registered letter from Kerid, delivered to her by the National Post Office Service.

Her heart thumped and raced so fast, she had to sit at the kitchen table! She poured herself a fifth cup!