Formula 1: The GOAT

“Why would anyone among us risk severing this new relationship by telling her in the first place? But if none of us told her, it would be impossible for her to know unless she’s tapping our phones, which would be a miracle. The only conclusion is that one of us told her, and since everyone is denying it, how about we remove all doubt?” Hatice said as she removed her phone from her purse and placed it on the round table where everyone who was invited was already present.

Seda, sitting next to her husband, felt her eyes bouncing from one person to another as she hid her left hand, which was shaking despite her confidence that she had removed all evidence connecting her to the situation.

“Wouldn’t they have just deleted the conversation or the call history ahead of time if they were smart?” Emirhan said, not bothering to argue as he placed his phone on the table, confident in his innocence. He saw no reason to argue against it if it would allow them to return to the most important thing as early as possible, which was spending time with Fatih, their brother’s only son.

“That is a possibility, but there is a chance that they never considered that someone would suggest it in the first place,” Recep said as he unlocked his phone and did the same as his brother and sister.

Enes followed suit without saying anything and was soon followed by their spouses, with Seda being the first among them to do so.

Hatice slid her phone to her younger brother for him to check, and he took the phone of their youngest sibling’s spouse. Everyone followed the same style, going into contacts, messages, and messenger apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, all in search of their mother’s or mother-in-law’s contact information and any record of communication.

Some used this opportunity to see who their spouses were contacting, but that was only one among them. They passed the phones to the next person periodically so that none of them could hide someone else’s record if they discovered it. After everyone went through each other’s recent calls, they found none of them had contacted her. The only attempts at contact were from the other side, and all of those who were contacted during this week hadn’t answered, leaving them as missed calls.

“Looks like the one who did it was as smart as you predicted. Since we are not going to be looking at our call histories from the carrier anytime soon, how about we move forward and look for a solution? After all, we all know her behavior, and with her appearance here, it would not be a surprise for Rümeysa to leave with Fatih and not contact us again. This is something I believe most of us, barring the one who reported, don’t want. After all, he is our brother’s one and only son,” Hatice said as she returned her husband’s phone, which had already gone around the table. His phone was found to not even have her contact number saved in the first place.

To those present, this was no surprise, as they had all been on the receiving end of her erratic, selfish, and sometimes borderline narcissistic behavior, which had led to all of them pulling away from her the moment they could. Fatih’s father was the first to do so by going against her verbalized plans of arranging a bride for him and marrying Rümeysa, leading to their relationship ending that way. She could never come to terms with her demands not being accepted and used every opportunity she could to make her dislike of Rümeysa as clear-cut as possible, which led to Fatih’s father distancing himself from her and even the rest of their family. The rest of the siblings also did the same at different times, so even their spouses knew about her, and most of them had no liking for her at all, as her sons’ and daughter’s partners had been the ones receiving the largest brunt of her behavior, as it seemed she couldn’t bring herself to dish it out on her own children.

“What is there to discuss? All we have to do is not allow her any opportunity to mess this up for us. So I will say this again: if you are the one who called and informed her, stop it now. If you continue and I later discover that it is you who contacted her, I will make sure you regret it,” Hatice said, causing her brothers to get goosebumps as they knew she meant every word.

Seda, who had finally calmed down now that the inspection had passed without anyone discovering she was the one who did it, found herself finally being able to enjoy their reactions as they discussed what they should do to resume their plans.

“I will go and have a conversation with her and update all of you on her choice. But for tonight, we should just consider it impossible to spend time with him. As for tomorrow, I will make sure our plans resume as they were,” Hatice said as she picked up her phone from the table, gave a kiss to her husband, and bid him farewell as she headed to the room where Rümeysa was residing to have the conversation.

………

“See you tomorrow then, have a good night,” Hatice said before the door closed.

The conversation had gone quite well, and as she walked down the corridor, she removed her phone, about to call all of her brothers and Enes to update them. Just as she was about to call Emirhan, she paused for a moment, her finger tapping the back of her phone as she dived deep into thought until she stopped in front of the elevator and called for it.

When the elevator finally arrived and she boarded, she seemed to have finished her thinking as she started calling them one after another, updating them on the situation.

………

“Where is everyone? I expected them to have at least inherited German punctuality,” Enes said when he found himself waiting in the parking lot ten minutes after the rendezvous time he had been updated on yesterday by Hatice.

“Didn’t I call you to update you about the changes this morning?” Hatice, who arrived behind them, said as if she was trying to remember if she had contacted them or not.

“I don’t think so,” Enes said as he removed his phone from his pocket, trying to see if he had missed a call.

“Looks like it was my mist…” but before she could finish her sentence, she paused as she could see her mother walking towards them with a frown on her face.

Hatice immediately turned towards the husband and wife, looking at their faces for a moment before she turned to her mother, her frown remaining.

“I said yesterday that she is not respectful, and look at how she has made us wait needlessly without even coming herself,” Emine, Fatih’s grandmother, said as she stopped in front of them as if everything were normal and she had been invited.

Hatice became silent for a moment before turning to Enes and said with full confidence, “Looks like it was your wife who updated her about our plans ahead of time.”

“What?!” Enes asked in surprise and disbelief, wondering where such an accusation was even coming from.

The same reaction came from his wife, but her reasoning was completely different as she wondered how the heck Hatice knew.

“This meeting was a trap from the beginning. I told all of my brothers different information with different meeting places and times to see where she would appear. I went to observe them this morning, but she didn’t appear at any of them. When I came to observe you for the past ten minutes and she still didn’t appear, I thought I was just being paranoid and that she had other means of knowing our plans or the one who informed her previously had decided not to. But just as I was about to tell you, she appeared.

When I looked at your faces, you had looks of complete surprise at her being here, but the same can’t be said for your wife. She reacted as if she was expecting her and was enjoying the moment,” Hatice said as she raised her phone, which had been in her right hand holding her purse, with the camera facing in their direction. She said, “You can check the video if I managed to capture her face,” while pressing the stop-record button and playing the video. She fast-forwarded towards the later parts of it, and there it was: Seda had a momentary smirk on her face, which she immediately covered, captured as clear as day.

“Why would you do that?” Enes, who had been on the verge of defending his wife, asked, his feelings of betrayal and disbelief evident on his face.