SILENCE

The lady got up from her seat and walked to some drawers which were invisible to the two men before she walked over to them.

Turning back around and settling into her chair she gave them some documents that she had collected.

‘Ferbian was my youngest son, he was only twenty three when he first told me about Sasha.’ She paused a certain glow appearing in her eyes

‘My son had never been the one to bring girls over, he said he was only going to introduce me to the woman he was going to marry. The way he spoke about her, I knew that my place had been taken over in his heart.’ She smiled weakly

Elisha perused through the papers, seeing Sasha with a man that he guessed was Ferbian.

‘At first I hated her, I wasn’t always a nice person but losing my child taught me things that I never thought I would learn. He loved Sasha with everything in him, from the way he smiled at her, to the way he always locked fingers with hers each time they walked. He told me he knew I hated her but I would soon get over it and fall for her.’

She paused rubbing her forehead with the back of her hand.

‘I thought he was insane but truthfully speaking I was just jealous of how much attention he gave her. He brought her home one weekend and told me I had to spend the week with her because something had happened in her neighborhood and she was no longer safe. Bear with me this was at a time that he wasn’t going to be home and I thought it was just a plot to get me close to her.’

‘So you mean your son brought her here for some sort of protection?’

The lady sighed as if calculating her next words.

‘They had been together almost two years and I had never seen eye to eye with her, their wedding was scheduled for a month and my conclusion was that he wanted us to get along before that.’

‘You mean your son dated his girlfriend for two years and you never got along with her in all those years, did you even try?’ Ben asked

‘When you have your own children especially girls that you will be willing to lay your life for before just maybe you will understand me.’

‘Ma’am judging you is the last thing we are here for.’ Elisha cut in giving Ben a hot look

She turned from him to Ben before continuing

‘She had bags in her hands and a mark on her neck, something that I am sure Ferbian didn’t notice. Men don’t easily notice things and that is one of the grave mistakes you make.’ She said strongly

‘So what happened?’ did you send her out?’ Elisha asked as Ben took down some notes

‘I couldn’t, I would never do that. Ferbian leaving her with me meant there was more to the story than what he already knew, the first few days I tried to treat her like trash but she didn’t bulge she continued to treat me with respect and kindness even though each day it was like she was losing a part of herself.’

She paused to drink some water

‘On the third day I heard her cry, it was an agonizing pain I felt my insides break. I rushed to her room and found her laying on the floor, I wanted to shake her but she was deep in sleep and it was like she was having night mares. She was naked.’

A tear dropped when she said that

‘She was naked and her body had bruises that I only guessed she was being abused. I wanted to reach out but I just didn’t know how to, I had never raised a female child and looking at Sasha scared me.’

The three kept quiet, there were too many emotions in the room and the gentlemen were scared of ruining the moment so they kept quiet.

‘The last days she was here I treated her like my own flesh and blood, it was beautiful to learn about everything she was passionate about. She was a free spirit and I regretted never getting close to her in the beginning. Somehow when Ferbian took her away it felt like it was the last I was seeing of her and true to my feelings the next time I laid my eyes on her she was in a casket.’

By this time the lady had broken down terribly who would think that even after ten years someone would still bottle up so much information and emotions in them?

‘What happened next ma’am?’ Ben asked with so much insensitivity

‘Ferbian never took it well, he believed Sasha was murdered and the fact that the hospital refused to do a postmortem left a lot of unanswered questions.’

‘Ma’am sorry to cut you short but we thought her family was the one against the postmortem.’ Elisha said

She let out a dry laugh

‘Sasha had no family, Ferbian was all she had. He wouldn’t let it rest but it was like there was a greater power that was pushing everything forward. My son never got over it, I knew my Ferbian too well and I also saw his death before it came. He was walking on dangerous grounds and even if I tried he wouldn’t listen to me, he was hell bound on making the perpetrator pay.’

‘Did you find the person behind everything?’

She stood up again and brought out more papers. On them were the ones they had seen much earlier of Larna being tied up in a designated ware house, these were clearer; as if they were the originals of the copies they had seen.

‘How did you get these?’ Elisha asked feeling a pain from within as he imagined what she had gone through

‘Ferbian got what he wanted, he found out that a Mr. Chishala had being paying Sasha who was a morgue attendant to cover her hours some times in the night. She had no problem with that, at first she thought he was just being generous plus making extra cash didn’t hurt until some families started complaining of how their relatives’ corpse looked tempered with. She was curious, as curious as he was and later found out what Mr. Chishala had been up to.’

The two men were on their edge of their seats now

‘He paid her lots of money for her silence, she was okay with it since those people were dead until she got engaged to Ferbian and he showed her a totally different world. She wanted out, the day she came with her bags here she had gone to see Mr. Chishala but it didn’t end well because he beat her up.’

She paused.

‘She never told us all this but Ferbian found out that Mr. Chishala lived for his daughter, his only female child. He and his elder brother Fernando kidnapped her. She was only fourteen, they beat her black and blue until she opened up, and apparently she had eavesdropped on her father and watched everything from the corridor.’

Elisha dropped his gaze.

‘They let her go and her father being so influential, he did all he could to remove her name from all police records so that she could never open her mouth again; but you know what certain information does to people. Ferbian couldn’t do anything about it, he couldn’t prove that Sasha was killed even when we knew that she was and so he took his life. My little boy took his life.’ She said crying

They waited for her to calm down.

‘And Fernando, what happened to him?’

‘He took off some months back, he says he did all he had to and now all he left me was his son who he named after Ferbian.’ She said pointing at the little boy who was in the dinning area

The two men thanked the lady for the information and stood up to leave.

‘Elisha.’ She called before they drove off

‘Yes ma’am.’

‘I am sorry about your wife and kids.’ She said

Elisha stopped in his tracks and wondered how she knew about him when she hadn’t asked them who they were.

‘We always knew you would come here for help, we kept track of your lives. There is nothing we didn’t know about you and I guess we are even now, for Ferbian and Sasha.’

‘Meaning?’

‘That wasn’t a mere accident, Fernando planned it and now he is at peace knowing he made the Chishalas pay for his brother and his fiancé.’ She said closing the door in their faces

..

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Winnie

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