The house was exactly as I had left it, filled with my family members, the scent of my mother’s jasmine candles, and the sound of morning prayers drifting from the sitting room. Everything was the same, but I felt like I’d returned as a completely different person. Like I’d left a piece of myself somewhere across the ocean and couldn’t figure out how to function without it.
I splashed more cold water on my face, watching the droplets fall back into the white basin. Even the water here felt different. Everything felt different.
My phone buzzed on the counter. I slowly brought myself to check it, thinking that maybe, by some miracle, Marley had texted.
But no.
It wasn’t her, just another message from the wedding committee group my mother had added me to. They were rambling about the final dress fitting, catering, and other things. It was another reminder that in less than three weeks, I would be Mrs. Chukwuma Okafor.
The thought made my stomach lurch.
I had turned my phone to silent since I came back, unable to bear the constant notifications about wedding plans while my heart was still bleeding. But the messages kept coming. Aunties asking about the guest list. Cousins excited about the celebration. My university friends sending in their congratulations and asking for details about my time in Canada.
If only they knew what details I was trying to forget.
Marley’s comforting scent. How she’d leave little notes in my textbooks when she thought I needed encouragement. The sound of her laugh echoing through her apartment. The way she’d hold me at night, stroking my hair and whispering sweet things into my ear.
The way she’d looked at me that last time in her car.
I pressed the washcloth against my eyes again, harder this time, as if I could press the memories away, too. But they were burned into me now, part of my DNA. I would carry her with me forever, even as I walked down the aisle to marry someone else.
Another sob escaped before I could stop it, echoing off the bathroom tiles. I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood, the way I always did when I was trying not to fall apart completely.
But it wasn’t working anymore.
Nothing was working anymore.
The bathroom door creaked, and I heard my mother’s voice through the wood.
“KC? Are you alright in there, my dear?”
I straightened up immediately, muscle memory taking over.
Wipe the tears.
Fix the face.
Become the daughter they expected me to be.
“I’m fine, ma,” I called back, surprised by how normal my voice sounded. “Just getting ready.”
“Breakfast is on the dining table, and Chukwuma’s sister called. She wants to discuss the Aso-Ebi details with you.”
Chukwuma’s sister. The woman who would become my sister-in-law in a few days.
“I’ll be right down.”
I heard her footsteps retreat down the hallway, and I turned back to the mirror. The girl looking back at me had learned to lie very well since she came back to Nigeria. I think she had always known how to lie.
She could smile on command, nod at all the right moments, and act super excited about flower arrangements and catering menus.
But late at night, when the house was quiet, and the wedding plans couldn’t distract her anymore, she still reached for her phone. Still typed messages she would never send. Still whispered a name into the darkness that no one here would ever understand.
I dried my face one final time and straightened my shoulders. Time to go downstairs and pretend to be happy about marrying a man I barely knew, while the woman I loved was probably waking up three thousand miles away, getting ready to start another day without me.
I made my way downstairs to the dining room, where the whole family had gathered. Dad sat at the head of the table, Mum beside him, already deep in conversation with Aunty Ngozi. Chuka, my six-year-old brother, was focused entirely on his plate of rice and stew, while Esther, just two years younger than me, kept glancing toward the stairs as if she’d been waiting for me.
Some of my aunties and cousins filled the sitting room, their voices mixing with the Nollywood movie playing on the television, creating that familiar warm chaos of an Igbo household.
