Returned Wife, Stolen Children
Chapter 1: The Homecoming
In order to save my daughter, I fell from a rocky hill. The pain from that fall entered my bones and my spirit—no agbo or prayer could touch it. All the people in our town, from the pepper sellers at Oja Oba to the elders from St. Peter’s Anglican, believed I had gone to join my ancestors.
Everyone in the city thought I was dead.
Tunde believed so too.
A year after I was presumed dead, he remarried.
His new wife, Morayo, even wore her gele the same way I used to.
It was as if he tried to summon my spirit through her—same quiet voice, same way she greeted elders. She and Tunde treated each other with respect, and even my children had come to rely on her.
The day I returned home, Tunde shielded his tearful new wife and looked at me with cold indifference.
"Morayo also married me with proper rites and ceremony; there’s no reason to give your position back to you."
He said it like he was locking the gate on a house he used to call home.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
After all those lost years—years my memory was gone and my body healed—I had already remarried.
