Michel Huisman is a very precise man. He has the same routine as long as he can remember and never deviates from it, no matter what happens. Everyday he wakes up at 6:30, drinks his coffee, and reads his newspaper. The real one, the one made from papers. His assistant and Rianna tried to persuade him to read the newspaper on an e-reader, but he just couldn't. The feelings are not the same. There is something so therapeutic in flipping the big page, he loves the rustling sounds it makes.
At 7:30, he finished his second cup of coffee and his newspapers. He will then go out for a run, always on the same route, or on the treadmill if he is not home. But it's always 4.74 km. He will then take his morning shower, shaves, put his clothes on and go to work until 19:00. He never works overtime, he never comes home early either. After that he will have leisure time with his family, usually involving chatting (or just listening) to Cathy and Rianna blabbering about their day. at 22:00, he changed into his pajamas and read on his bed until 23:00.
He loves his routine, he finds solace in something monotone. He used to spend hours sitting in front of the grandfather clock when he was a child, just to follow the pendulum, moving right and left, right and left, in the same rhythm. It fascinated him how it just kept swingin, never too fast nor too slow, no matter what happened. That's how he wants to live, just live his life hoping that nothing's going to happen and shakes his rhythm. Anomalies disturb him, and he sees himself as a leveler, to find something that disturbs the process, and fix it. He's good at it too. In fact, his family business expands exponentially as soon as he takes over from his father. He only needs to look at the numbers and the history, he finds the cause why something is increasing and decreasing, and finds a solution for it.
His love for precision is also the reason why he is attracted to Rianna almost immediately. She has long black hair. Straight, and while other girls love to have complicated haircuts with different layers, Rianna hair has the same length. No bangs, no layers. Everything is on the same length, and when she walks, the hair swishes on the same rhythm as her hips. Just like the pendulum of the grandfather clock, he can watch her for hours. Her name is perfect too. Rianna, he likes to pronounce it Ri-anna instead of Ryanna. Ri-anna, just like Re-anna, repeats of Anna. Anna Anna, and because Anna is palindrome, he loves it even more. He asked her if he can call her Anna Anna, but she didn't like it, so he settled on call her Ri, and says the Anna Anna in his head.
Her personality is also predictable. She is always happy. He hates arguments, so he loves that Rianna never wants to argue in public. It's not like he always wants to be right, he just wants her opinion to be based on fact, just like his opinions are, and they can't do that without a computer to google it at least. How could they cross check it? Rianna also never gets flustered or surprised. If she doesn't like something, she could still smile and appreciate things, and pretend like everything is okay until they are behind closed doors. He likes it that way. Having opinions is great, but voicing your opinion is not always the great policy as it can disturb the normalities. For example, his mother loves to cook chicken very very well done that it tastes almost like a board. He brought one of his ex-girlfriend to a dinner with his parents, one time, and his mother cooked chicken breast in a champignon cream sauce. She said directly that the chicken was dry, it was true, but the comment made his mother upsate, and the dinner ended early, without after coffee conversation. He was home early that night and didn't know what to do with the time, because he was supposed to still be at his parents house. That killed the romance for him.
Rianna handled that differently. She thanked his mother for the dinner, and didn't even refuse when she offered her another one. She ate everything graciously, and he went home on time, that he should. The next day she told him that she didn't like it, so they found a compromise, if she had to eat dry chicken, he would massage her shoulders afterwards, that suited him perfectly. Everybody's happy.
Making Rianna happy is also something that he loves because it's so predictable. She loves making clothes, so he gives her a crafts room with the latest sewing machine, laser cut, threads and scissors in every variety you can think of. She loves to read, so he converted one of the guest rooms in their manor into a library. She loves to shop, and she loves fashion. Well, he has plenty of money to buy everything she wants from any designer she wants.
But making her happy is not that easy anymore. Ever since Cathy died, his rhythm that never changed, changed dramatically.
It started with a phone call, at 14:00 on wednesday afternoon. It was Rianna. He rejected the call, because, well, she usually called him at 15:30 to ask him what he wanted for dinner. She was 1.5 hours too early, and she never did that before. So he kept a mental note in his head to check her watches, just in case it was broken.
And when his parents called him, he rejected it again. How can those people forget not to call him outside the allocated time they had agreed on? And after a while, his secretary came in and broke the news. Cathy had jumped off the bridge, and Rianna was the one who saw it happen, had a mental breakdown.
He remembered that he sat on his chair frozen. His first instinct was panic. He started scratching his hair, and muttering nonsense. He didn't know what to do, whom to call, he was not prepared for something like this. So he did what he knew best, he consulted his computer on what to do when your daughter committed suicide, but it got him nowhere. Panic striked again, but this time, his secretary intervened, and sent him home with a driver. He was home 3 hours too early, and then panic striked again.
When he arrived home, he saw the other side of Rianna, the bawling, screaming Rianna. Her hair was disarray, on messy buns he hated. She was not a calm, collected, and predictable wife he knew. He completely lost it, what should he do? Everybody looked at him, and expected him to do something that he doesn't know what. So he tried to go back to his rhythm, trying to grasp every last bit of control he could pull. He reached out to her and tried to move her to their bedroom. There, they could discuss with a cool head, just like usual.
"Cathy, Mitch.. Cathy.. I tried to stop her, she wouldn't listen.. Mitch.. Cathy.." She couldn't even string words together to make a full sentence.
"I know, Ri.. I know.. Let's discuss this in the bedroom." he tried to calm her down, but she kept on crying and scrunching her hair. He could see some strands fell onto the ground. He made a mental note to vacuum it later.
"I tried Mitch.. I tried to stop her.. she .. "
Michel took a deep breath. "Yes I know, you failed to persuade her that's why she jumped and died. Shall we discuss it in the bedroom, everybody is watching?"
As soon as he closed his mouth he knew he had said something wrong, because Rianna stopped crying and went to the bedroom alone. Everybody, even his parents shook their heads in disbelief, and left him. His mother, the person who understands him the best, only muttered that she would arrange everything and that his focus would be to sort everything out with Rianna. What is it to sort out? She stopped crying, didn't she?
But he was wrong. She locked herself in the bedroom, and he has to spend his night alone. No more chatting with Cathy, and now no Rianna either. He couldn't even go back to his routine now, because reading in bed was also out of the question. His first drop of tears fell that night. He drowned in sadness for the loss of his daughter, his wife, and his rhythm. Where could he find a new grandfather clock afterwards?
He woke up feeling awful the next morning, but resolute. Maybe if he can get back to normal, he could pull Rianna out of her sorrow. She always did it for him, so now it was his turn to do that. So the first thing he did was to occupy the other room as his bedroom, so he could still go to sleep on time, and wake up on time. The next morning he went to the office exactly at 09:00.