WoTD: duplicity

definition:
1: deliberate deceptiveness in behaviour or speech; also, an instance of deliberate deceptiveness; double dealing.
2: the quality or state of being twofold or double.

I saw her on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a waif-like creature camped out by the city market, two bags by her side, a dog in her lap. Each week she wore the same t-shirt, faded black, long-sleeved, the cuffs torn and frayed. Her presence, ritualistic and shameful, struck a sympathetic chord in me. Whenever I walked past I dropped some coins or a five dollar note onto the footpath beside her. Not too much money, I thought, for fear she would use it for drugs, but enough to buy a meal, or some socks, or food for her dog.

Months passed and I developed a habit, a need, a ready discharge of my societal guilt. Never once did I ask if she needed more, nor did I offer it.

Then, she disappeared.

I dismissed her absence on the first day, comforting myself that even vagrants had responsibilities, but by the next Thursday the vacant place by the wall distressed me. I lingered for a long time with coins warm in my hand; needing answers, an explanation. I felt cheated. She and I had a deal, an unspoken agreement, a passing of financial fortune to one less fortunate. She had no right to reneg. Eventually I accepted that she had.

It's been weeks now and she has not returned. I am helpless to uncover the truth. I satisfy my curious turmoil by tarnishing her memory, slating her as a deceptive cheat, a trickster who feigned poverty to exact a complex and measured duplicity. Probably she was affluent and bored, testing society's generosity by behaving like a homeless person. If I never learn otherwise, that is how I will remember her. It's easier that way.