But how long has it anyway been for our relationship to grow? Hardly a day" Martha kept giving herself excuses to escape the question for whether Matthew was in love with who she is or simply interested in how she looks or what assets she had got.
"Who gets intimate with his girlfriend on the very first day of relationship? Also, what would happen if I deny him to have those intense moments and turn a deaf ear to his silly jokes? Would he still love me the way he used to do when I would give in to his desires and laugh at his jokes? Huh, poor Martha and her fancy tale of getting loved unconditionally.
Ugh, these sessions of self-speaking are good but I am way too much into them than I should be. I need to speak to someone.
Not either of my parents for sure but someone else.
There are two people I need the most right now. Not both appearing at once but the presence of either one of them would be fine, super fine actually" Martha missed those two people badly.
Even only seconds ago she was giving opinion on how one of those two people wanted her for lust and not really loved her.
The other one of the two people she had thought she was going to meet soon but that unexpected turn expanded the distance between her and that other person.
She couldn't bear moving forward with no scenery or human settlements at all on either of her sides. All there was to see were the mundane faces of her parents and the green bushes that flanked both the sides of the motor car.
She made an attempt to finally ask her mother since addressing her father would only make her mother answer to her query. "We have been traveling into these fields for so long mommy.
How long will it take to reach to the person whom we'd be supposedly meeting today? In fact, after meeting this friend, think about how long will it take to return back to the road we need to take to meet grandma. That road alone would take us another half an hour to reach grandma's place" she sputtered everything that came on to her mind in one go.
Now she awaited her mother's response, most probably she was expecting her mother to say that it is going to take a little more time to reach the destination.
But her response shocked her in a way. "Who told you we are going to see your grandmother today? We have no plans of seeing her today. We've specially traversed for so long for this one meeting only" said Cindy
. Martha was taken aback by this as her another belief of seeing her grandmother fell apart right in front of her. She remained silent, rather numb.
She failed to understand what has been happening ever since they had begun this journey from her town.
All the incidents occurring since they had begun to travel flashed in her eyes just which seemed to be a reel playing in front of her.
The moment she sat herself into the car, when she turned behind to wave off her village, when she ate the sandwich at that restaurant, how she got hurt and then helped by her father and then got her wound dressed by her mother, the moment she saw those Sunset-seeming hill and what not. "Why is my reason to be here?" she thought.
It all felt uneasy now to Martha once the truth dawned on her that she wouldn't be getting to see her grandma today. She felt a bit uneasy. Something didn't feel right to her.
"Why have they not been talking to each other, if their cause of silence is not daddy's infrequent visit to granny? Why they both were shouting at the top of their lungs earlier in the morning today? Where are they taking me? Where we are even headed? She again spoke to her mother without any thoughts regarding whether to say or not.
Her anxiety outweighed her fear from her mother and their silence and she said, "Mommy, what is the purpose of meeting this person? Why was it so important for me to accompany the two of you?" This again infuriated Cindy the same way she was infuriated by her daughter earlier in the morning.
She somehow couldn't keep her calm today when her daughter would pose questions to her.
She said with a voice that could not get any more stern, "Shut your mouth up Martha.
Once we reach there, you see it for yourself. Do not keep posing questions at me again and again.
Sit quiet in the way you have been sitting for so long now." Her father, on the other hand, pretended as if he wasn't even present in the car and didn't even shake his head a bit the time Cindy was giving an earful to Martha. "As for your eagerness to know why we are visiting that person's place, we need to participate in a trade!" This made Benjamin raise his eyes on Cindy.
Cindy noticed this behavior of Benjamin and turned around to face the road in front of her again. Martha, who had just received an earful from her mother, cried silently as tears started flowing from her eyes all the way to her cheeks.
Her mind had stopped working and she couldn't think of anything now. She just lowered her eyes and sobbed silently, audible enough to both Cindy and Benjamin as the rain had stopped now.
Cindy, too, lowered head and a tear or two escaped from her eyes, though she didn't make any of the two realize she was deeply hurt.
Cindy wasn't hurt by the fact that she had been acting rude towards Martha for the entire day but due to something else, something worse.
After a few minutes of this incident, they continued to drive into the fields until the fields opened up into a vast ground.
This ground, however, had not witnessed any human settlements seemingly since it was purely a barren land.
Therefore, the whole region depended predominantly on agricultural activities and it would be a choice of a fool to seek inhabitation nearby such a barren land. Benjamin drove a little farther from the exit from the fields to reach a place where there were big rock lying on the ground on to which a person could sit to take some rest, usually someone who would have come all the way from the fields.