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Brigita had always had good eyesight. She could recognise the birds that flew so high they were only fluttering specks to everyone else. When someone came to visit the farm when they were working in the fields, Frantz and Kat always looked to her to announce who it was.
She was always correct.
Except for one time.
Frantz threw her a puzzled glance as Kat embraced the man who had just arrived – their son, finally returned after all these years. The man who Brigita had said must be a stranger, maybe someone looking for work on the farm.
Brigita shrugged. They didn’t speak of it again.
But all evening long, she wondered how she could have been wrong. How she could have mistaken her husband for a stranger.
The reason was probably that he had been away for so long. As they sat at the table eating supper, she glanced at him from time to time. He had a beard now. The angles of his face had sharpened, losing all trace of boyishness.
Brigita was uneasy. Her relationship with Martin had never been simple. She was a good wife, or so she thought – up until the point where she didn’t particularly care for the marital act. The church was right; it was uncomfortable and simply served a purpose. Whenever Martin had wanted to bed her, she had complied. She had never enjoyed it.
Did Martin want to sleep with her tonight, to confirm their marriage after having been away for so long?
Worry twisted her stomach so that she wasn’t really able to eat much.
When they lay down that night, Brigita was incredibly glad that Martin simply turned on his side, facing away from her, and only murmured “good night”.
During the next days and weeks, Martin reacquainted himself with the life he had left behind. His parents joked about how he sometimes forgot the simplest things – like where they kept their farming tools. “You must have really been working even less than we thought!”, Frantz said, grinning and clapping Martin on the shoulder. The latter just smiled sheepishly and replied that he was here now to make up for that.
And he did.
Brigita waited for the day when he would erupt and curse at her. Martin had never struck her, thankfully, but he had used to throw a fit whenever something had gone wrong, like a tool breaking or slipping in the mud of the pigsty.
But the day never came.
She was still wary. Watching for the usual tells that were ingrained in her mind because they were her only hope of getting out of Martin’s way so he could rage and swear alone. But she couldn’t spot them.
Not even the ones that showed that Martin was – for once – content.
It was as if adulthood had erased every trace of the Martin she had married. But it hadn’t happened to anyone else she knew. How could he alone have been scrubbed as clean as white linen?
It must have been because he had been far away, Brigita told herself. But as the months passed, she believed herself less and less.
There were two men in her life now. When Martin sat in his chair, she could see a younger version of him there. Until he said something, or did something, that the younger Martin wouldn’t have done – and the image rippled, like summer heat over the horizon.
His smile was almost exactly like Martin’s. Almost.
-
Brigita had already gotten used to this double image, the mirage of the husband she had known and the man he had become, when she noticed that the scar on his thigh – remnant of a bad fall during his childhood – had disappeared.
It was a hot night in August, and they both slept without a blanket. Martin’s shirt had ridden up and exposed most of his leg. Brigita usually didn’t look at him this closely; she had no interest in the male body. This night, however, she couldn’t sleep.
As she tossed and turned, the moonlight wandered over Martin’s sleeping figure. For a moment, she thought she simply hadn’t looked properly.
But then her suspicion was confirmed.
Shock coursed through Brigita’s veins like cold water. She had been right, after all. This was not her husband at all.
Her first thought was that she needed to tell someone.
But a small voice inside her asked why. This man was a better husband than her husband.
She almost laughed at the notion – a double husband, two persons in one name.
Brigita looked at him, lying there in a pool of soft moonlight. Slowly, her nerves calmed. She didn’t need to tell anyone if nobody else harboured suspicions, she thought. After all, despite her initial wariness, this marriage – despite still being the same one as before – felt like a second chance.
A second chance she wouldn’t waste, she resolved.
Then she closed her eyes and went to sleep.
During the next days, whenever she looked at Martin, it felt like seeing him for the first time all over again. The shadow of the Martin she had known before had passed.
She didn’t miss him.
-
The harvest was stored in the barn, the fields lay barren again. As the days grew colder, Brigita was glad for the fire in her hearth. She sat in a chair, her legs covered by a blanket. Her fingers were busy knitting, but decades of experience allowed her to let her eyes rest on the man beside her.
He was carving something, scattering scraps of wood all over the nice blanket she had woven him. As Brigita watched, a small cat emerged from the piece of wood.
She waited until Martin was finished. Then she laid her needles aside and covered his soft, wrinkly hand with her own.
“For whom is it?”, she asked.
Martin held up the cat and turned it from side to side so she could admire it. “For little Kat, as a Christmas present. She likes the ones in the old monastery so much.”
Brigita smiled. “She will love this one.”
She stood up slowly, held out her hand. “Come to bed, Martin?”
He took her hand and then kissed her. “Yes, dearest. I’ll need as much sleep as I can get before they all come to visit us on Christmas Eve.”
Wrapped in the blankets and each other’s arms, they slept peacefully.