Once in Love
Episode Eleven
Anna walked through the gate without saying a word or even looking back to see her husband standing at the door in tears, looking at her as if she would change her mind and come back home.
“What will I tell my Inlaw? They have been supportive since I got married to my wife.
I don’t even know how to explain to them that I slāpped my own wife, and that’s the reason she is leaving me. I’m already wėak from begging her to stay.
If only you knew that I need you around here, Anna,” he said, using his hand to wipe off the tears flowing from his eyes. As Anna stepped out from the gate, abandoning her car, she suddenly remembered.
“Since when this incident happened, I have not called mom or even dad. To think that if dad hears knows everything, he will be disappointed in me.
I need to call him. How did my husband know they had gone to the village on such short notice?”
she asked herself. It could be that her father told her husband because her father was always the type to call them and check up on them, although both her parents asked her to keep the dream away from her husband.
In her father’s words, “It might not be good.”
She dialed her father’s line, and it went through, but she did not pay attention until she heard “hello, hello.” Then she goes back to consciousness, “hello dad, how are you and mom?
The worst has happened. Where are you both?” She didn’t even let him answer the questions she asked.
“We told your husband to tell you that we went to the village. It was an emergency, but we just got back with your mom,” the mother gets the phone from her husband and said, “I had the dream again.
We have been trying to call you, but your line has not been connecting.”
She lifts her bag from the ground. “Oh, thank goodness they are home,” she says as she started walking a bit to take a cab to her parents’ house.
She flagged down a car, an elderly man. “Driver, Brooks Street, please,” she said as she hopped into the cab.
Although the man looked accommodating, with the way he smiled at her and how well-dressed he was, it was a man in his late 40s who had his own share of life problems.
Anna wondered what was going on in the man’s life but it was not a problem to her at the moment, she was at the pace of losing her marriage and she just needed all the advice she could use at the moment.
There was no need to talk to the man because he didn’t have a ring on his finger and might not understand her.
He started driving after putting the bags in the booth, noticing the way she leaned her head on the chair.
She was quite uncomfortable considering the fact that she owned a car she had used for years. “Everything is just a test, Anna. You will be fine,” she assured herself.
The man stretched his hands and tapped her, she had fallen asleep, escaping reality for a bit.
She startled as she woke up. “Ma, are you okay?” the man asked, fixing his gaze on her. She did not say a word then reluctantly said, “I’m fine.”
The man waited for another response from her, but none came.
Then he said, “We are at Brooks Street now.” Anna stretches herself, “Oh, my world, we are here already,” she said as she got out of the cab and retrieved her boxes from the booth.
As she started walking, she heard the man saying, “Ma, you haven’t paid me my money.” She turns back and gives the man money, even more than what she was supposed to pay.
“Ma, this money is more than what you are supposed to give me.” He called her attention to it, but she just nodded.
“You need to rest, Ma. E be like say something bad don do you today,” he said as he drove off, leaving Anna to contemplate about taking her boxes to her parents’ house or just living on the street.
How will she start explaining everything to them, and where will she even say Isabel was?
It had been a whole day since she last set her eyes on her daughter. She does not even know if they were feeding her well or if she was okay where she was.
“My head is spinning right now. It’s just heavy that I cannot even think straight. God, please save me, save my marriage,” she knelt down on the road and prayed.
Noticing the way people were staring at her, she had to get up and go inside, fully ready to answer questions from her parents.
As she carried her two boxes and walked to the compound, she dropped them there and went inside, walking past her father and mother without saying a single word to them.
It was as if she had turned into a ghōst overnight; nothing made sense to her anymore. She went straight to the bedroom, fell on the bed, and slept off.
Her mother had to go outside to see if she came with anyone, but there was no one in sight except her two boxes.
She picked them up and dropped them inside.
“Did she come with her husband or daughter?” her father asked, but her mother just nodded. They both decided to go into the bedroom and find out what was wrong with Anna, that she did not even say anything to them.
As they both entered the bedroom, they saw Anna snoring the day away.
“Let her sleep, oh my pōor daughter. I wonder what had happened to her,” her mother lāmėnted as they both left Anna in the room, closing the door slowly.
Thessycute Ekene
