“Nana?” Vanessa asked. “Why are we stopping?”
But Nana could not answer.
The woman had lifted her head now, sensing the car. And in that instant—before full recognition, before memory turned into pain—something old and uncontrollable woke inside him.
The past he thought he had buried had stepped onto the road.
Alice woke before dawn every day, not because she wanted to, but because survival demanded it. Before the village stirred, she rose from the thin mat on the floor, her back already aching from the day before.
The single room she shared with her daughters was quiet except for their breathing. In the dark, she lay still for one moment, watching Ila and Mariam sleep curled together, as if afraid the world might separate them if they drifted apart.
She ran her fingers gently through their hair.
“Just a little longer,” she whispered.
Then the rooster crowed.
Morning had come.
She wrapped a faded scarf around her head, washed at the water point, and pulled on the same worn dress she had patched so many times she had lost count. After waking the girls, she gave them each a small piece of leftover cassava. They ate without complaint. They were used to hunger.
That, more than anything, broke her heart.
“Mama,” Ila asked softly, “are we coming with you today?”
Alice hesitated. She hated taking them to gather firewood. The road was long, the loads heavy, the heat unforgiving. But she had no one to leave them with.
“Yes,” she said. “We’ll go together.”
As they walked toward the forest edge later that morning, Alice’s thoughts drifted where she rarely let them drift. There had once been a time when laughter came easily, when her hands were soft, when hunger did not wake before she did.
There had once been Nana.
Even now his name felt dangerous, like pressing a finger to a wound that had never truly healed.
She remembered who he had been before ambition hardened him—bright, restless, full of dreams far too large for the village around them. She had believed in him with her whole heart. She had sold the few things she owned, taken odd jobs, endured gossip and judgment, all so he could chase the future he talked about so passionately.
And then one day, everything collapsed.
