The Midnight Kiss

Tears burned my eyes but I refused to let them fall. Not yet.

“Stand up,” I said. My voice sounded strange even to me. “Stand up and tell me the truth. Right now.”

He placed the frame gently on the side table, the same place it had sat since we moved into this house. Then he rose slowly, like an old man carrying too much weight. His shoulders were slumped. The man who usually stood tall in his mechanic workshop now looked small.

“Ada, please,” he started. “Some things… they are not easy to explain.”

“Easy?” I laughed but there was no joy in it. “You call this easy? I come home and meet you like this and you tell me it is not easy to explain? My own sister, Chinedu. My blood.”

He took one step toward me but I moved back. The smell of engine oil still clung to his clothes from the workshop. Usually that smell comforted me. Tonight it made my stomach turn.

“I know how it looks,” he said. His eyes were pleading. “But believe me when I say this — it is not what you think.”

Those words again. They only made the fire in my chest burn hotter.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to grab that photograph and smash it on the floor. Instead I just stood there, breathing hard, my hands shaking at my sides.

He opened his mouth to say something else, then closed it. For the first time in our three years of marriage, my husband looked truly afraid.

And in that silence, one question kept ringing louder than everything else in my head.

Was my husband secretly in love with my sister before she died?

Has he been pretending with me all along?

My people… I don’t even know how to tell you the rest of what happened that night. My heart is still beating fast just remembering it. If you are reading this, please stay with me. Drop a heart or comment “I’m following” so I know I am not alone in this. Because honestly, I don’t know how much more of this I can carry by myself.

To be continued…