<h2>The Day She Left</h2>
<h2>Life After The Breakup</h2>
<h2>The Return</h2>
Letter My Mother Hid For 17 Years
I found it the night we buried her.
I did not cry at my mother's burial.
Everyone in Kisii thought I was strong. My uncles said I was a man now. My aunties whispered that I was holding myself together for the family. The truth was simpler. I was numb.
Mama had been sick for three months. We had taken her to Kisii Teaching Hospital, then to a private clinic, then back home when the money finished. I watched her fade a little every day. By the time she died, I had already cried all my tears in the small room where she slept.
After the burial, the compound was full of people eating pilau and drinking soda. Neighbours were talking about land. Relatives were talking about who would take what. I could not stay there.
I went inside her house. Her bed was still there. Her leso was still folded on the chair. Her Bible was still open on the page she last read.
I sat on her bed just to breathe. That is when I felt it.
Under the mattress, something hard. Not a stone. Paper.
I pulled it out. It was an envelope, yellow and old. My name was written on it in her handwriting.
For Brian, when you are ready.
My hands started shaking. Mama never wrote me letters. She called me. She sent voice notes. She never wrote.
I opened it slowly.
Inside was one page. Only one page. And the first line stopped my heart.
Brian, the man who raised you is not your father.
I read it again. And again. My eyes could not move past that line.
She wrote that she had kept this secret for 17 years to protect me. She wrote that my real father was alive. She wrote that he lived in Nairobi. She wrote that he had been looking for me since I was a child, but she had chased him away because she was afraid of losing me.
At the bottom, she wrote his name.
And a phone number.
I sat there for a long time. The noise outside disappeared. The smell of pilau disappeared. All I could hear was my own heartbeat.
The man I had called Baba for 17 years, the man who had just cried at the grave like he had lost his wife, was he lying to me all this time? Or did he also not know?
And this man in Nairobi, this stranger with my blood, why did he never come for me?
I folded the letter and put it in my pocket. I knew one thing. I could not sleep in that house that night without knowing the truth.
I picked up my phone. My thumb was over the number.
Should I call him?
Chapter 2 coming tomorrow - Follow me so you don't miss it