When Skies Are Exposed

Chapter 2

Naima meant what she said to Tawfiq.

Every weekend, Aunt Faiza would send Karim to the park to meet Tawfiq. The house was out of bounds to him.

Naima had still not opened the box he had given her two weeks ago. She didn't want to.

But today something made her take the small box from the shelf. It was on top of Karim's admission to Valley View Kindergarten. Yes. He had started Kindergarten in Valley View. She saw their stay in Valley View to last longer.

She picked up the box and placed it on her bed. She looked at the box carefully. Like a foreign object. She wanted to guess what it was.

Naima didn't want it to be a fancy present. It would make her angry. He would be showing off the amount of money he had since he was a prince.

Naima wanted to talk to someone so bad about everything going on, but no matter how much he had hurt her, she wasn't ready to be the one to reveal his secrets to the world.

She had Googled him one time. Okay a few times.
It was only scanty information on him. His age and a little biography and how he was AWOL at the moment. There were no current pictures of him anywhere. That was why he was always against posting pictures of him on any social media. He didn't even have any social account to begin with.

Most of his pictures were when he was a young boy with brown hair-surprisingly another lie. When he grew up though, there were just a few side pictures of him. He mostly had people around him and covered his face with his hands. Typical Tawfiq.
Never the attention seeker.

No wonder he chose to come to Wyoming. Far from New York and Miami and Washington. Far from the spotlight.

She took the box quickly from the bed and started to unwrap it. After she had unwrapped it, it revealed a little black box. She raised the lid to see a...Pen?

Really? A pen? What did he want her to do with a pen? Write a letter to him?

The pen was gold and black in color.

Naima took the pen out to examine it. What was he trying to say by giving her a pen? She twirled the pen in her hand.

That's when something caught her attention. It looked like a small switch.
Ya Allah, it was a recording device.
Was he spying on her?
But the switch was off?
And it was in a box. No matter how much she didn't trust him now, she knew deep down in her heart that Tawfiq would never do something so low as spying on her.
What would he even gain from it?

She opened the pen up into its two parts and saw a memory card sticking out from the other end. She was getting confused right now.
What was he trying to say to her?
He did tell her to listen to it when he gave it to her.
Why couldn't he say it directly to her? She took the card out.

"What to do, what to do,..." She chanted.

She decided, if he had given it to her then she could do anything she wanted with it.

She put the card into her phone and opened the file on it.

It only had one main file. It read... Log

When she opened it, it showed more than 300 audio files.

"What on God's green Earth? He's been making logs all that time?" Naima was surprised to say the least.

Tawfiq didn't seem like someone who would speak into a pen to record himself. But what did she know about him really?

She plugged in her earpiece and opened the first file.