Jeremy episode 20

JEREMY
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FINALE
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Jeremy wouldn’t answer my calls. My father was also silent.
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Apparently, my mother had gone over to Aunty Uju’s house shortly after I left for the hotel where Jeremy had put up. My father was home alone, which explained why I came home to find that much quietness.
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“These men’s” silence bred confusion. I didn’t know what to think. I had come up with a thousand and one theories of what could have possibly transpired between them, but none of them really justified much. I was too curious and confused to even begin to cry. I didn’t have time to languish since I was so focused on trying to figure out how to gain information from my father.
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Jeremy ignored my calls for the entirety of that day. Even after two days had passed, nothing had changed. I made numerous unsuccessful attempts to get my father to explain what was happening.
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My mother had not yet returned. She would be gone for a number of days. In my desperation for information, I finally recalled that I had a way to persuade my father to reveal everything. I recalled how my father, despite his best efforts, was never able to keep anything from his wife. I recalled that my mother had always found a way to make him talk when he tried to keep something from her on those few occasions. I reached for my phone and called my mother since, as things stood, that was my only chance to learn what was going on.
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I dialed my mother’s number, and as soon as she picked up, I questioned her about her impending return. She laughed and said she hoped this frantic need to get her back home had nothing to do with my father telling her that I haven’t been on speaking terms with him. I told her that what she was saying was beyond my comprehension.
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Later that night, Mother and Aunty Uju arrived. My mother realized right away that I hadn’t been eating. She took note of how pale I had turned. She observed that I hadn’t had a shower in days. I made the decision to exploit this and emotionally blackmail her after observing how scared she appeared to be when she saw the mess that was me.
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My mom could never stand by and see me upset or crying. Mom always went out of her way for me, and I knew for a fact that most mothers wouldn’t do the same things for their daughters, especially when those daughters are as old as I am.
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I told Mother everything that had happened, and as I was telling her story, I started crying.

I complained to my mother about how Jeremy wasn’t returning my calls or answering my messages. I explained to her how her husband’s silence was doing nothing to improve the situation.
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“Your husband acts as if nothing is happening. He has refused to speak to me. He has avoided saying what Jeremy has also refused to say. He doesn’t even seem to mind that I’m upset. He doesn’t even care if the person bringing him meals these past three days has a depressing expression on her face or not. He calls and sends me on errands without even looking me in the eyes to observe how I behave while I’m on or after these errands. That man is cruel; he doesn’t care about my feelings or how happy I am.”
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I started crying again, this time because I was so overcome by my pent-up feelings.
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I was asked by my mother to dry my tears. She promised to find out whatever it was later that evening, and true to her word, she did.
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Evidently, when my mother disclosed the information Auntie Uju had overheard at our introduction regarding Jeremy, my father had gone on to conduct his own inquiries.
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What my father was able to gather in that short spell was both tremendously admirable and incredible.
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Jeremy was not such a miracle child after all. He had only managed to survive thus far because he had never actually had any blood ties with the king. The fact that Jeremy was born on the same day as the deaths of the king’s biological male children was not as miraculous as it would have seemed.
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Jeremy’s mother had an affair. This relationship resulted in the birth of Jeremy. The meeting that Jeremy’s mother verified was the beginning of a different side of Jeremy’s father—a harsh side—and was triggered by the uncertainty surrounding Jeremy’s conception. Everything that had happened between Jeremy’s mother and this hidden lover was revealed after they consulted the gods.
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The woman’s excuse was partially reasonable, even though it was sacrilegious. Since he married his three prior wives, Jeremy’s father has hardly paid her any attention. After all, she is still a human, and blood still flows through her veins. She looked elsewhere for her sexual fulfillment, and although her pregnancy proved she had slept with this man at least once, it’s not improbable that this act had been going on for a while.
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Even though it was many years later, this is suspected to be the primary cause of Jeremy’s mother’s expulsion from the palace, not strictly because Jeremy severed his father’s pen!s.
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Jeremy’s father had to commit that act in order to rid the land of this abomination. He had to lie with his daughter, which was obviously incest to everyone else who wasn’t privy to the situation.
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The story about how much she believed her husband would eventually come to his senses and beg for forgiveness because she knew for a fact that he was a good man is important because not many people knew this and there was no way Jeremy’s mother was ever going to rat herself out.
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Jeremy had purportedly come over that day to confess who he was and beg my father’s forgiveness for keeping his identity a secret in the first place. After he had continued to tell tales about why his identity wasn’t really something to brag about and how all he wanted more than anything was to be with me, my father then dropped the other bombshell on him.
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“The same way you lusted after Susan more than anything else before you decided to beat her to death just six months into your marriage, correct?”
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Supposedly, Jeremy had once been married. This was before they were eventually evicted from the palace. The King decided to adopt Jeremy as his own son and was even willing to have him succeed him if only he could get his act together and, more importantly, keep a woman since he didn’t want what Jeremy’s mother had done to go down in history next to his legacy.
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Everything Jeremy told me was true; it was all based on what he had learned from his mother and had to endure as a child. For some reason, he had chosen to leave the section where he was formerly married and had battered this woman to death.
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The majority of these revelations caught Jeremy off guard, and he was definitely upset to learn how much my father knew about him and his family.

My father informed Jeremy that he would never watch his only daughter marry into a family like his, and the two of them got into a heated argument as a result.
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I cried my eyes out throughout that night. I tried to get in touch with Jeremy through any of his friends that I knew or even his sisters to at least get a message that he was okay, but surprisingly, none of them took my calls.
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Days quickly turned into weeks, then months, after Jeremy left my house in that dejected manner, and I’m still unable to contact him.
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I finally managed to sneak out of my parents’ house and decided to go in search of Jeremy. When I visited his mother’s house, I was surprised to learn that they had allegedly moved. I was unable to persuade anyone to offer any details or a tip regarding where I might be able to find any of them.
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Once more, days swiftly turned into weeks, and weeks became months. Months passed without hearing my Jeremy’s voice; months went by without Jeremy telling me that all my father thought he’d found out about him and his family were pure lies. I was dying to hear Jeremy tell me that they were just misunderstandings.
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I couldn’t possibly hold Jeremy responsible for his mother’s error. It was always going to be her guilt to live with, but why Jeremy never deemed it important to inform her that he had previously been married is still something I am struggling to wrap my head around.
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In retrospect, everything makes perfect sense. Jeremy had vowed never to touch a woman again after the consequences of the last time he did, having battered his wife to death, but he simply wasn’t man enough to accept full responsibility for his own actions. Instead, he blamed his father.
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Its been two years, and there hasn’t been a single day that I haven’t thought of Jeremy. I’ve long since learned to forgive him for the pain he’s given me.
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Previously, I’d imagined myself bumping into him with another female, then reaching into my handbag, pulling out a gun, and emptying the bullets into him, assuring the girl that that scoundrel was not worth her time, but now that I’ve gone to counseling and been taught to see things differently, I’m confident I’ll do better in the same situation.
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In hindsight, I think Jeremy was also a victim. He had grown up in an unfit setting for any child, and the damage only began to appear unknowingly later in his future because it is the only default he knows.
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Well, I hope Jeremy finds love again and that when he does, he is entirely open to her. As for myself, I’m now working on my trust issues. My counselor is a wonderful person and very good at what she does.
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I’m still a work in progress.
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The end.
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Moshood Avidiime The Writer

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