FIVE WASTED YEARS

CHAPTER 4: THE SECRET BEHIND ALIF'S NAME

Arga didn't confront Nadira right away.

Years of entering burning buildings had taught him that charging blindly toward smoke was how men died. You assessed first. You found the source. So instead of calling his wife, he called the social institution named in the press materials from Rendra's conference and asked—politely, patiently—how an adoption was supposed to work.

The woman who answered had a kind voice and the slightly weary tone of someone who explained the same rules many times a day. Adoption, she told him, required assessments, home visits, approvals, and a legal process under the applicable regulations. It could take a long time. "Being close to a child doesn't automatically make someone the legal parent, Pak," she said. "No matter how much affection there is. The procedures exist to protect the child."

He thanked her and hung up, more confused than before.

If Nadira had only recently begun planning to adopt Alif, why had the boy's name been written into company documents two years ago? Two years. That was before Arga had ever heard the name Rendra Wijaya. Before Nadira had started coming home late and keeping her phone face down.

He asked Dimas to trace the source of the documents—properly, through legal channels. Nothing that could blow back on them.

Two days later, Dimas called. "There's a foundation," he said. "Yayasan Cahaya Harapan. It's tied to Rendra's social programs. A couple of years ago it received a large sum from his company." Paper rustled on his end of the line. "What's on record isn't enough to prove wrongdoing. But the activity reports and the amounts don't match. Not even close."

"So it's fraud."

"So it's a discrepancy," Dimas corrected firmly. "Listen to me, Ga. Don't go around saying that word until we can verify it. People like Rendra have lawyers who eat accusations like ours for breakfast."

That afternoon Arga finally agreed to meet Nadira at a café in Kemang. He arrived first and chose a table by the window. When she walked in twenty minutes late, she was not alone. Rendra followed a step behind her, sunglasses pushed up into his hair, nodding to the barista as if he owned the place. Perhaps he did.

It was a message, Arga realized. She was showing him she had no intention of hiding anything anymore.

"I'd like to speak with my wife alone," Arga said, before either of them sat down.

Rendra smiled and pulled out a chair. "There's nothing here that needs to be kept secret," he said, settling into it with an easy, proprietary sprawl. "We're all adults."

Arga didn't argue. He laid the copies on the table between the coffee cups and watched Nadira's eyes move across them. Her face changed—only slightly, a tightening at the corners of her mouth.

"Alif isn't just a child I want to help," she said at last. She slid her phone into her handbag with deliberate care. "I knew him long before you ever heard about him. And I have my own reasons for protecting him."

"Then tell me those reasons," Arga said, "without making me the last person on earth to find out." He leaned forward. "I'm not going to force you to tell me everything personal. That's yours. But when my name is involved, when our marriage is being dragged into this—I have a right to know."

His voice didn't rise. It didn't need to.

Rendra leaned back, laced his fingers behind his head, and looked at Arga the way one might look at a mechanic who'd been asked to perform surgery.

"With respect, Pak Arga, you don't understand the world we're dealing with," he said. "Some matters require quick decisions. And people who don't have—" he paused, choosing the word with care, "—the financial capacity, frankly, shouldn't get involved."

The sentence landed on the table like a slap. And in that moment Arga understood: Rendra didn't see him as a husband owed an explanation. He saw him as an obstacle. Something in the road. Something to be moved aside.

Before they left, Nadira admitted one more thing, almost reluctantly, as if it had slipped out before she could stop it. She had met Alif through a social project funded by Rendra. That was all she would say. When Arga asked what project, where, when, she shook her head and said he wouldn't understand.

She was right about one thing, Arga thought as he rode home on his motorbike through the evening traffic. He didn't understand.

The city crawled around him in a river of red taillights. At a stoplight near Mampang, a street vendor wove between the cars selling bottled water and tissues, and a little boy sat on the curb beside her, sorting coins into a plastic cup. Arga found himself staring at the child until the light turned green and the cars behind him began to honk.

Two years, he kept thinking. Two years of Alif's name in documents he'd never seen. Two years of Nadira knowing something and choosing, every single day, not to tell him. He tried to remember what their marriage had looked like back then. Had she seemed distracted? Had she started dressing differently, coming home later, laughing at messages he couldn't see? He couldn't remember. That was the worst part. He had been so busy trying to be a good husband that he had never stopped to notice whether he still had a wife.

By the time he turned into his own street, he was beginning to suspect that whatever lay hidden behind Alif's name was far larger than an affair.

He was reheating leftover rice when someone knocked at the front door.

It was nearly nine. He wasn't expecting anyone. He wiped his hands and went to look through the window. Beyond the low iron gate stood a young woman, perhaps twenty-five, clutching a small cloth bag to her chest. Under the yellow streetlight, her face was ashen.

For a moment Arga didn't move. Every instinct he had, honed on nights when a stranger at the door usually meant disaster, told him to be careful. Then he saw how tightly her knuckles were wrapped around the bag, how she kept shifting her weight as if ready to run, and he opened the gate.

"Pak Arga?" Her voice trembled. She glanced over her shoulder at the empty street, then back at him. "My name is Siska. I used to work at Yayasan Cahaya Harapan. I handled Alif's files."

She swallowed hard.

"Please. I need you to hear what I know—before it's too late."