The Third Wheel

Melissa went missing a week ago.

My wife has been in shambles since then. I often hear her crying in the kitchen where she and her best friend used to hang out all the time.

Melissa and Luisa have always loved cooking – my wife solely for the joy of it, Melissa for the “magic” that it seems. She had always been weird like that.

They have been friends since they were babies in diapers and stayed in the same town until their adulthood, or until I married Luisa and “abducted” her away from her bestie. Melissa’s words, not mine.

She often joked that she was our weird perpetually single friend. Our third wheel.

They have been searching for her – the police, her family, Luisa’s family and some groups that formed in the communities in our two towns, drawn together by Melissa’s smile in her photo that was published in every local rag and broadcasted in news channels.

Frankly, I don’t understand the fuss. I see her all the time.

I see her outside in our yard, in the living room, in the kids’ room, and sometimes in the kitchen watching Luisa cry. At night, I sometimes wake up and see her standing at my side of the bed and staring into space.

“I hope Melissa is eating well wherever she is,” I heard Luisa say softly.

We were watching the news and Melissa’s face came on again . That photo of hers still holds the same pull it had the first time it was shown on tv.

“If you have any information that would help us get her home to her family please call these numbers…” the anchor said.

Luisa was also on her phone texting. She was discussing with her friends the possibility of raising funds for a reward for anyone whose information would lead to finding her bestie.

All the while that we were at the living room, watching her photo on the screen, Melissa was standing in the hallway. She was partly hidden by the shadows, looking at us.

A few hours later, my wife went to bed, leaving me with Melissa.

Several moments passed in silence between us, with only the steady drone of the late night news providing the ambient noise.

I heard her walking slowly towards the couch. She silently sat down beside me. I felt her shift her weight. Do they even have weight at this point?

I pretended to ignore her.

I was confident about my knowledge. She, or at least the body she had, is not here. It’s not here. I know where it is and it is not here.

We sat like that for a long time.

“Why…”

I pretended not to hear her.

“Why…Why…”

I stood up. “I had to protect my family.”

She was silent again.

“Your ‘feminist’ views and ‘single blessedness’ was changing my wife. You were planting the seeds of divorce in her head,” I said with conviction, my voice loud enough to be heard but soft enough not to wake the woman I never want to lose in the bedroom next to us.

“No…” she was sobbing. I didn’t know ghosts can sob.

I walked away, turning towards the bedroom. I passed by the large window with a view of the little hills just a few meters away from our house.

I squinted my eyes, looking for that tree with yellow fragrant flowers. I think they call them narra trees. Beautiful creations of nature that bloom in April through May.

The narra tree I buried Melissa under bloomed early this year. Made me think that what I did to her was decreed by nature. That bitch had to die.

She was poison to my marriage, advising my wife to stop putting up with things that she once found adorable because it was me doing it. Luisa was already mesmerized by that damn “sprinkle, sprinkle” lady on TikTok and the dating” story times” that made all men look terrible.

Then this witch here started sharing her “feminine rage” songs, child-free movement doctrine and anti-marriage views. Listening to their conversations left a bitter taste in my mouth every time.

Luisa used to want to have kids, but ever since Melissa made her read about the 4B movement in South Korea and how it is slowly turning global as the women’s response to centuries of subjugation and mistreatment in societies, she made us stop trying for a baby.

“You’re not leaving that tree. Ever,” I whispered to Melissa.

I remember how Paris Paloma’s “Labor” was playing on her phone when I struck her at the back of her head as she was bending over to look at something I pretended to see on the ground.

“Don’t you see? There’s a caterpillar on that leaf,” I lied to Melissa.

“Where?”

I answered that question with a whack on her head.

She trembled and writhed a bit on the ground before she became perfectly still, her eyes open with a permanent expression of surprise. It was easy to bury her. The grave had been dug the night before.

She’ll never be found.

I honestly don’t care if she intends to haunt me for the rest of my life.

She’s staying under that tree. It’ll be forever. Like my marriage.