You know what a lone wolf really is, Thomas?”
Vasily looked at me, then paused. We were somewhere over the North Atlantic, the cabin lights of the Air Canada Dreamliner dimmed to a ghostly blue. He stared down into his empty plastic cup, his eyes a map of raw, unfiltered despair.
I looked at his unshaven face, his slouching shoulders. The guy looked absolutely bagged—totally exhausted by life. My throat felt like sandpaper, so instead of speaking, I just shook my head. A quiet no.
“A solitary man,” he muttered, his voice thick with a heavy Serbian accent. “A man who outlived his purpose.”
Vasily reached over and grabbed my right arm. His grip was tight, his knuckles white. It was uncomfortably intense, but I didn’t pull away. On a gruelling fourteen-hour haul from Istanbul back home to Toronto, you either ignore your seatmate or you become their priest. I had chosen the collar.
“In a marriage,” Vasily whispered, “the woman must outlive the man. What do you think, Thomas?”
The double rye-and-ginger I’d downed an hour ago was finally kicking in, melting my usual Bay Street inhibitions. I leaned back into my headrest. “The Good Book says woman was made from the rib of man. Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.”
Vasily let out a hollow, raspy laugh. “Are you St. Thomas, then? A man of doubts and scriptures?”
I just closed my eyes. Silence speaks volumes when you’re hurtling through the stratosphere at nine hundred kilometres an hour.
Vasily poured his heart out over the Next Generation movie selection playing silently on the screens around us. He’d immigrated to Ontario, Canada in the mid-eighties, sacrificing everything to build a life in the GTA. He raised three boys, bought the brick house in Mississauga, did everything right.
But then his wife died.
“Now?” Vasily spat the word out like venom. “Now I am a wanderer. Six months a year I couch-surf in Belgrade, fighting off vultures who think I’m a rich Canadian. The other six months? I rot in my sons’ basements in Oakville and Vaughan. A rotation. Like a piece of old winter tires stored in the garage.”
He scratched at his neck violently, his eyes wild. “My wife was the anchor, Thomas. I thought I was the patriarch, the strong man. Hah! Wisdom is a latecomer. Without her, I am a ghost in my own family. A lone wolf.”
My heart ached for the old man. The sheer weight of his grief was suffocating. I gently pulled my hand away from his grip, needing to break the circuit of his misery. “I can’t imagine being in your shoes, buddy,” I murmured, signaling the flight attendant for another drink. I needed a distraction.
I didn’t want to end up like him. I had a fiancée waiting for me at Pearson Airport. A beautiful life ahead.
Eventually, Vasily drifted off, snoring softly against the window. I finally closed my eyes and slept.
The harsh cabin lights slammed on, accompanied by the captain’s chime. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve begun our descent into Toronto Pearson. Current weather is a brisk minus four, with light snow flurries…”
I stretched, looking over at Vasily. He was still asleep, his chin tucked into his chest.
When the wheels hit the tarmac with a heavy thud, I nudged his shoulder. “Hey, Vasily. We’re home, man. Welcome back to the Great White North.”
He didn’t move.
“Vasily?”
I pressed two fingers against his neck. Cold. Rigid.
Panic seized my chest. I flagged down a flight attendant, my voice cracking. “Hey! I need some help here! My seatmate isn’t waking up!”
Within minutes, the plane taxied to a halt at Terminal 3, and paramedics rushed down the aisle, pushing past bewildered passengers. They hooked him up to a monitor, but the flatline tone echoed through the quiet cabin.
“He’s gone,” the medic said, looking at me. “Looks like a massive coronary. Probably happened hours ago in his sleep. You his son?”
“No,” I stammered, sweating through my wool sweater. “Just… just met him in Istanbul.”
Because I was the last person to speak to him, the Peel Regional Police officers waiting at the gate asked me to step into a secondary screening room to give a quick statement. I sat at a metal table, completely shattered, clutching my carry-on bag.
A stern-faced officer entered, holding a clear plastic evidence bag. Inside was Vasily’s worn leather passport—and a thick, unsealed envelope.
“Mr. Miller,” the officer said, sitting down. “We found this in the deceased’s breast pocket. It’s addressed to you. ‘To Thomas.’ Did he give this to you?”
“No,” I whispered, my hands shaking. He must have slipped it into my jacket while I was asleep.
The officer nodded, sliding the envelope across the table. “We opened it to check for hazardous materials or threats. It’s clean. But you should read it.”
With trembling fingers, I pulled out a single sheet of lined paper. The handwriting was jagged, frantic.
Dear Thomas,
You are a good man for listening to a dying wolf. You speak of the Bible, of ribs and flesh. But you do not know the real story.
My wife did not die of sickness five years ago. She tried to leave me. After everything I sacrificed for this country, she wanted to take half of my kingdom. So, I buried her beneath the concrete floor of the Oakville basement I now ‘visit’ every winter.
My sons think she ran away back to Serbia. But the guilt is a cancer, Thomas. It eats me alive. I bought a ticket on this flight knowing my heart would fail—I stopped taking my medication three days ago in Belgrade. I wanted to die over the ocean, where the law cannot reach me.
You have my confession. Do with it what you will. The lone wolf finally stops running.
It has been three years since that flight.
The police excavated the basement in Oakville. They found her, just like he said. The news was all over the CBC for weeks. My fiancée couldn’t handle the trauma of my involvement; she left me shortly after the trial concluded.
Now, I live alone in a small apartment in downtown Toronto. I don’t go out. I don’t talk to neighbors.
Sometimes, when the winter wind howls off Lake Ontario and rattles my windows, I look at my reflection in the dark glass. I see my unshaven face. I see my gloomy, despondent eyes.
And I realize Vasily’s final, cruelest energy transfer was successful.
The lone wolf still haunts me. Because now, I am one.
