FIVE WASTED YEARS

CHAPTER 2: AN INVITATION FROM A STRANGER

Arga didn't sleep.

He lay on his side of the bed—he still thought of it as his side, though the whole mattress was his now—and stared at the ceiling fan turning in slow, useless circles. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the photograph. Not the candles, not Rendra's hand beneath hers. The date.

Three months ago, Nadira had told him she was going to a work training in Bandung. Three days, she'd said. The company was paying for the hotel. He had driven her to Gambir station himself, carried her bag to the platform, and told her to text him when she arrived. She had. *Sudah sampai, Mas. Dingin di sini.* I'm here. It's cold.

But in the photograph she was not in Bandung. She was in Jakarta, twenty minutes from their front door, wearing the green dress he had bought her for their anniversary.

At seven in the morning, he called the station and asked for a few hours off. His commander didn't press him for reasons. In nine years of service, Arga had never asked for anything before, and the old man seemed to understand that whatever it was, it mattered.

The notary's office occupied the fourteenth floor of a glass tower on Sudirman, the kind of building where the elevators played soft music and the receptionists wore identical gray blazers. Arga felt conspicuous in his plain shirt and worn shoes, his marriage certificate tucked inside a plastic sleeve like a schoolboy's homework.

A woman met him in the waiting area. She was perhaps forty, with short hair streaked silver at the temples and the steady, unhurried manner of someone used to delivering news people didn't want to hear.

"Pak Arga Pratama? I'm Maya Prameswari." She offered her hand. "I'm the one who messaged you. Please, come in."

Her office was small and orderly. A potted orchid sat on the windowsill; beyond it, the city spread out in a haze of exhaust and morning heat. Maya gestured for him to sit, then laid a thick manila folder on the desk between them.

Arga placed his marriage certificate beside it but didn't let go of it right away.

"I don't know you, Bu Maya," he said. "So I'd like to understand why you asked me here. If this is a legal matter, I'd appreciate it if you explained it plainly." His eyes didn't leave her face. Firefighters learned early to read a room before stepping into it.

Maya nodded, as if she had expected exactly this. She opened the folder and began laying out photocopies one by one: transaction records, letters of authorization, a business agreement thick with clauses. The name of Rendra's company appeared at the top of several pages. And threaded through them, again and again, was another name.

Nadira Maheswari.

Not listed as the wife of a firefighter. Not as a volunteer or a donor. She appeared as a party with direct financial ties to the company.

"Your wife's name has been used in several transactions that are currently under review," Maya said carefully. "I can't tell you she's committed a crime. I'm not in a position to conclude that. But there are signatures and dates here that I think you need to see with your own eyes." She slid a few pages toward him.

Arga read slowly. He was not a man of documents; his world was hoses and ladders and the arithmetic of oxygen tanks. But some things didn't require expertise. Halfway down a power-of-attorney form, above a line marked *Pihak Kedua*—Second Party—was a signature.

His signature. Or something shaped very much like it.

He had never seen this document in his life.

At the bottom of the same page was the name of a small company he vaguely remembered Nadira mentioning once, years ago—something about a side business selling batik online. It had been registered using their home address.

The air-conditioning hummed. Somewhere in the corridor, a phone rang and was answered.

"Who gave you these?" Arga asked at last. He set the page down very gently, as though it might burst into flame. "I just want to know if someone is trying to set my family up."

The word *family* stuck in his throat on the way out. He wasn't even sure anymore whether he had one.

Maya folded her hands. "They came from a former staff member at Rendra Wijaya's company. Someone who found transactions that didn't add up—and who decided, shortly afterward, that it was safer to disappear." She paused. "Before they left, they asked me to make sure you were told. They believed your name was being used without your knowledge."

She took a business card from her drawer and placed it on top of the folder. There was no name printed on it. Only an address in East Jakarta and a phone number written by hand.

"If you decide to pursue this," Maya added, "do it properly. Through a lawyer. People who build companies like this one don't take kindly to being questioned."

Arga left the building with his head full of noise. The heat outside struck him like an open oven door. He was standing at the curb, waiting for a gap in the traffic, when his phone rang.

Nadira.

He answered without a word.

"I need you to sign some papers," she said, skipping any greeting, her voice clipped and businesslike. "For Alif's adoption. Rendra's assistant will bring them by tonight. Just sign where the tabs are. It's all standard."

"No," Arga said.

A pause. "What do you mean, no?"

"I mean I'm not signing anything." He watched a bus lumber past, belching smoke. "Not until you explain why my signature is already on a power of attorney for Rendra's company. One I've never seen. One I never signed."

For the first time since he had known her—through five years of arguments, sulks, and silences—Nadira didn't have an answer ready.

The line went quiet. One second. Two. Three.

And in that silence, standing on a sweltering Jakarta sidewalk with traffic roaring past, Arga understood something that chilled him to the bone: perhaps his feelings were not the only thing his wife had been hiding from him all this time.