“So this is the place?” she said loudly. “No wonder the road is terrible. How do people even live here?”
Tunde glanced around with a lazy smirk. “They manage.”
“Everything looks backward.”
Some villagers heard. The atmosphere shifted immediately.
Mama Grace answered calmly, “My daughter, not liking a place is different from insulting it.”
Kemi turned, gave her a quick assessing look, and laughed. “And who are you?”
“I am Obinna’s mother.”
“Oh,” Kemi said. “So you are the farmer’s mother.”
Chika’s grip tightened around the basket in her hand.
Tunde looked at Chika then. “So you really stayed.”
Kemi smiled without warmth. “Of course she stayed. Where else would she go?”
Mama Grace frowned. “You should speak with more respect.”
Kemi’s face hardened. “Respect? For village people who think suffering is a lifestyle?”
That was enough.
“You came for family rites,” Chika said. “Not to insult people.”
Kemi turned to her. “A few days here and you already sound like them.”
Before anyone could stop her, Kemi announced she wanted to see “the kind of place Chika was now living in,” and marched toward the house.
Inside the compound, she looked around and laughed.
“This is it? This is where you now live?”
The house was neat. Quiet. Honest.
Kemi saw only what it lacked.
“I did not choose this,” Chika said. “You forced it.”
“And I did you a favor.”
Then her eyes landed on the pink diamond piece lying in its case on the side table, where Chika had taken it out earlier.
Kemi stepped forward, opened the case, and froze.
Suspicion flashed across her face.
“You stole this.”
Chika stared at her. “What?”
“This cannot belong here. It must be from Daddy’s house.”
Mama Grace straightened at once. “That belongs to Chika. It was given to her here.”
Kemi laughed in disbelief. “Given by who? That farmer?”
Leave a Comment