Adaeze Traded Her Only Inheritance to Send Him Across the Sea — He Returned Home With Another Woman on His Arm

Chapter 2

The airport smelled of diesel, sweat, and flowers gone soft in the heat. The whole of Obiagu had come — market women in their best wrappers, children on shoulders, elders on borrowed chairs. Mama Nkechi stood at the front holding a parasol like a war banner, watching with the eyes of a woman who had already read the final page.

Adaeze stood at the front in her mother’s best dress, clutching sunflowers until the stems bit red crescents into her palms.

The arrivals door slid open. People spilled out, families colliding, strangers arguing with porters. And then —

Emeka.

He was taller than she remembered, thinner, wearing a suit that could have bought her shop twice over, a wristwatch catching the light like a wink. Her mouth opened to call his name.

Then she saw the hand.

A woman’s hand, fingers laced through his as naturally as breathing. She stepped forward beside him — a girl, really, in a dress the colour of crushed wine — laughing at something Emeka had said.

The flowers hit the floor. Adaeze heard herself make a sound she had never made before, small and animal, and the whole village heard it too. The crowd went silent the way a crowd only goes when it is pretending not to stare.

Emeka’s eyes found hers across the hall. For one terrible second something flickered across his face. Guilt? Relief? She could not name it. Then he smiled his old, open smile and walked toward her, the woman still on his arm.

“Adaeze. It is so good to see you.”

She forced a smile onto her face. “Who is she, Emeka?”

He hesitated.

The woman — up close, kind eyes, nervous hands — stepped forward, her accent foreign and careful. “Hello. My name is Kemi. I am so happy to finally meet you, Adaeze. Emeka speaks of you all the time.”

All the time. Then why, Adaeze wanted to scream, is your hand still inside his?

The villagers whispered. Someone laughed too loudly and choked it off. Emeka looked at his shoes, then said, very quietly: “Kemi is my business partner.”

A business partner. Holding his hand at the arrivals gate, in front of his whole village, on the day he came home to the woman who sold her father’s land for his plane.

Kemi let go of his arm as if it had burned her, her face the colour of her dress, and stepped back, folding her hands behind her back like a schoolgirl caught.

There was more. Anyone with eyes could see there was so much more.

“Adaeze,” Emeka said, and his voice cracked on her name. “There is something I should have told you. Something I have been too ashamed to say for two years.”

The sunflowers lay on the floor between them, stems wet, petals beginning to curl.

And the whole village leaned in to hear a secret.