So I left. Every week.
And he stayed behind… digging.
The first time I noticed something was wrong, it wasn’t even intentional.
He had forgotten to cover the pit.
I stepped outside that evening and saw it immediately.
The soil looked disturbed in a different way—not fresh, not clean.
And there it was.
A metal edge.
Old. Buried. Waiting.
When I asked him, he brushed it off.
“Probably something left from before we moved in.”
Too quick. Too easy.
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
The next morning, he left early.
And for the first time, I didn’t ignore the feeling.
I went outside.
The pit was still open.
I climbed down slowly, my heart pounding.
The smell hit me first—damp soil, rust… something older.
The object wasn’t small.
It was a trunk.
I hesitated.
Then I opened it.
Inside were layers.
Clothes. Papers. Wrapped items.
The first thing I touched was a bundle of baby clothes.
Carefully folded.
Too carefully.
My chest tightened.
“Whose are these?” I whispered.
Then I found the documents.
And everything stopped.
My name.
Aisha.
My birth date.
My hands started shaking.
I kept digging through the trunk.
More papers.
Hospital records.
Every detail matched my life.
But the diary I found at the bottom told a completely different story.
It wasn’t written by me.
But it was about me.
“Aisha slept peacefully today…”
My breath caught.
Page after page described a child growing up.
But then the tone changed.
Meetings. Fear. Legal discussions.
And one word kept coming up again and again:
Land.
I sat there for a long time.
Then I remembered something my aunt used to say:
“There’s nothing left. Everything was destroyed.”
But now I knew that wasn’t true.
Something had been taken.
When Tunde came home, I didn’t show him what I found.
Not yet.
Instead, I asked a simple question.
“Do you know a lawyer named Okafor?”
He froze—just for a second.
But it was enough.
That night, I didn’t sleep.
I watched him.
And for the first time, I felt like I didn’t know the man beside me.
The next day, I went to the land registry.
And piece by piece, everything came together.
The documents were real.
The transfers were real.
And one name kept appearing.
