At 60, Carla wasn’t much excited by the fanfare, but she could pretend to be present while her mind focused on other things.
She was a businesswoman who had officially inherited her parent’s businesses when she was 30, even though she was adopted.
Unofficially, she had been pushing buttons and paperwork for decades. She was raised by proud parents who believed in good virtues.
She believed herself to be a kind, generous, honest, and successful woman. Her husband, Taylor was also into business; however, his company was only a small one still struggling to establish itself comfortably.
Carla’s company was decades old and had been in existence even before his birth. Taylor, 62, was a successful man — but he was also a very jealous one.
Carla could remember that the signs started showing up after their sixth month of living together. But it wasn’t until another man entered the picture that she really saw it manifest.
It all began on a sunny weekend. Carla had gone shopping for some dresses and stopped to get some sandwiches she could feast on while driving back to the home she shared with Taylor.
As she approached a bend, she slowed the car down, and her eyes were immediately drawn to a small girl giving a sandwich to a homeless man who sat next to a stray medium-sized mutt.
The man smiled at the girl in thanks, and after she left, he split the snack into two and handed one half to the dog, which quickly gobbled it up. It was a touching moment, and it made Carla stop her car and give him the bag of sandwiches she got from the cafe.
“You can have these mister,” she said shyly.
“Bless you,” the man replied, and Carla felt a tug of recognition for some reason.
She tried to observe the man without looking at him as she walked away, but she couldn’t make out the face behind the unruly beard, facial hair, and dirt that covered it.
Since that day, whenever she passed that point, she would drop something for him, sometimes it was food, other times warm clothes. One day her husband noticed that she had taken the clothes he would send to the recycler.
“Now why would she be needing men’s clothes?” Taylor thought to himself but kept it to himself until she was about to leave for work.
“What do you need those clothes for?” Taylor asked quietly.
“Oh, these?” she said. “Well, I’m giving them away to a homeless man I met a few —”
“You’re speaking to homeless men?” he cut her off, his face wearing a disgusted expression.
“Yes but he —”
“Don’t try to defend this sacrilege!” he yelled, cutting her off again.
“It is just an act of kindness,” she said, hoping he would understand.
“If you will not listen to me then I will send those who will listen to evict him from where he is perched. Beggars are a nuisance anyway,” Taylor said before walking away to make phone calls.
On the other hand, she reoriented herself, took a few deep breaths, then went on to work. Within an hour, she was informed that Taylor had assembled cronies that would join him to evict beggars in the community. They thought it was a general sweep, but she knew Taylor was after just one.
She had been hurrying toward the beggar to get him out of the area, but when she drove up to the spot the man had temporarily taken refuge, she saw that it was too late.
Her husband was already there. And he had already exchanged several blows with the beggar who looked lost and ready to collapse. “What are you doing Taylor?!” Carla screamed.
“Is this him? The man you’ve been cheating on me with?” Taylor yelled.
“I never cheated Taylor, trust me!” she yelled back.
At that, Taylor drew the beggar close to speaking to him. “She is yelling at me because of you, that’s enough to make any man mad,” he said before pushing the beggar forcefully to the ground.
Unbalanced, the weaker man fell backward, and as soon as he hit the ground, he knew something was wrong. There was pain within his heart, and he felt very uneasy.
Carla went to the man and seeing the situation, quickly set to work unbuttoning the beggar’s tight shirt and giving him a heart massage.
“Be alive,” she screamed, her eyes on the man’s chest, hoping her hubby had not just committed manslaughter.
That was when she saw the birthmark on his chest. It looked like a darkened patch of skin in the shape of a crown—precisely the same as hers.
Carla kept the heart massage up until the ambulance arrived a few moments later. Then, while he was getting treatment in the hospital, she tried to fight what she knew was a gut feeling.
“It couldn’t be, could it?” She thought within herself, trying and failing to calm her rapidly beating heart as she took a more careful look at the unconscious beggar.