Mabel Greene was on a mission. She was nervous, but she was also determined to complete her mission. It was the least she could do. She knocked softly on her daughter’s door.
“Come in,” Kimberly answered.
Mabel entered. Kimberly was sitting upright in her bed. “Were you sleeping?” Mabel asked.
“No, I couldn’t sleep. I thought you’d be asleep by now. Its past midnight.”
“I couldn’t sleep either.”
“Why? Is there a problem?”
“No, but there is something that I feel in me that I must do, and I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight till I do it.”
“What is it?” Kimberly asked worriedly.
Mabel produced a small bible from under her nightgown. “Do you remember this?” she asked.
“Yes.” Kimberly smiled. “It’s my bible from Sunday school. You kept it all these times?”
“No, I did not know it was still around. I found it in one of your dad’s drawers as I was boxing his clothes three days ago.”
“You’re boxing dad’s clothes?”
“Yes. I think it is about time but that is not why I am here. I want to show you something I saw in your Bible.” Mabel opened the Bible. “It’s a verse you wrote down. James underlined it in red. Look.”
Kimberly took the Bible. She read aloud the words she had written down over fourteen years ago. “Matthew chapter eleven verse twenty-eight,” she read, “come to me all of you who are tired from carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest.”
“Do you remember when you wrote it?”
“Yes, of course,” Kimberly laughed. “It was the first time I was going to present at the children’s programme. I was so nervous I could not even drink my water before the recitals.”
“Yes,” Mabel said, “but you got on that stage and you were amazing. And you explained your verse so well the Reverend himself gave you a standing ovation.”
“I remember that too.” Kimberly smiled at the memory. “I was so happy afterwards that I couldn’t stand still.”
“And do you remember how you explained the verse?”
“I think so.” Kimberly thought for a while. “It encourages us to put our trust in Jesus and look up to him. We should send our troubles to him because only he can help us. Jesus is able to relieve us of our burdens if only we will go to him.”
“That’s right,” Mabel said, “and that night do you remember what James said?”
“He said my speech reminded him of what he had conveniently forgotten.” Kimberly smiled at the memory. “It was from that day that we started having our morning devotions.”
“Yes,” Mabel said, “and those were wonderful days till we stopped.”
“Because dad left.”
“No, because I did not continue. We could have, but I was too filled with my own pain I refused to see the big picture. I started having my morning devotion a few weeks ago and I’d like for you to join me. We can have it here in your room if you want, or we can have it in the hall like we used to.”
“I think I have forgotten how to pray,” Kimberly said slowly. The truth was that she had not considered prayer in so many years that she did not think God would remember her anymore.
“Then we will learn how to pray together,” Mabel said with a reassuring smile. “I am still learning myself.”
“I don’t know,” Kimberly said uncertainly. She did not want to raise her hopes up any longer. And she did not want to put her trust in a power she could not see. She was only just learning to accept her life without self-pity.
“Well,” Mabel rose up from the bed, “I will have it in the hall and you can always join me when you make up your mind,” she said. “Goodnight.” Quietly, she let herself out conveniently leaving behind the Bible.
Kimberly stared at the Bible a long time after her mother had left. Sleep had long deserted her and now, she was restless. She picked up the Bible and opened it. It opened to Psalm forty-six and from the first verse she read till her eyelids drooped shut.
Mabel Greene and her daughter sat dumbfound in front of the stylish man they had received into their home barely an hour ago. It was raining heavily outside and there was thunder and lightning but they heard not a single sound of that. Only the shock and confusion dominated their beings. This man sitting in front of them had brought in a storm worse than the one raging outside.
Finally, it was Kimberly who spoke up. Her voice was tiny and shaky but audible enough. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “Who sent you? Newton?”
“No one has sent me. I understand that this may come as a shock to you and it is precisely for that reason that my coming here has been delayed for so long.
“How much is he paying you to do this?”
“No one is paying me to do anything,” Kevin answered. “But suppose Newton is paying me to be here, what do you think he will gain by this. Does he not have more to lose if it is announced that your father is dead?”
Still Kimberly wouldn’t put it past Newton to do it just for the pleasure of hurting her. He had said that he would make her pay.
“He is not lying,” Mabel said quietly.
“How can you tell?” Kimberly questioned.
“Your father had a brother. They called him Peter. They did not get along very well.”
“Dad had a brother? And you knew about him? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you say anything, mum? We looked for him for so long.”
“It never crossed my mind,” Mabel said. “I knew that James had a brother before I married him but I never met his brother. He never mentioned him. It was like a taboo to him.”
“That does not mean that this man is telling the truth. He may be an imposter for all we know. You said so yourself that you never met dad’s brother. How do you know that he had a child?”
Mabel looked from her distraught daughter to the impossibly composed man sitting across from her. “Just a few weeks after James and I returned from our honeymoon, I found an unmarked letter in our mail. It was from Gloria Annan.”
“That is my mother’s name,” Kevin said.
“Yes. The letter was for James but he refused to read it so I did. In the letter, Gloria announced that she had given birth to twins and begged your father to attend the naming ceremony. He did not go and we never mentioned it again. Three weeks later, another letter arrived. There was only one sentence on the paper. We named them Kevin and Keziah, it read. It was the last I heard from them.”
Still, Kimberly refused to believe that this man sitting in front of her was her cousin or that she had more family elsewhere apart from her mother. For believing that this man was her cousin would mean that she believed everything else he was saying. And this man had just told them that her father had been dead for two years. She was not ready to believe that. Neither was she ready to believe that her father had been so close to her for so long without attempting to contact her.
“He loved you a lot,” Kevin said. “He spoke about you two all the time.”
“Yet he never ever once tried to reach us or even send a message.”
“It was for the best. Whatever he did or did not do was to protect you and your mother. I cannot tell you how much he longed to be with you.” Kevin opened his briefcase and produced a brown envelope. “These are some letters he wrote to you. They were never posted because it was not safe.”
Kimberly took the envelope and opened it. She recognised the unkempt handwriting instantly. He used to tease her that they both had the same handwriting. She went through the letters. There were only two dates on all of them, her birthday and her parent’s wedding anniversary. She found the letter dated on her sixteenth birthday. There was only a simple drawing of a canopy bed and a scrawled happy birthday, pumpkin. She dropped everything on the floor and fled the room.
Mabel picked up the papers.
“I understand that all this may be difficult for you to grasp in a day,” Kevin said. “I am staying at Kempiski Hotel for a while before I go back home. You can always look me up.”
“Thank you,” Mabel said. “I’ll walk you to the door”
Five days later, Kimberly found herself seated across her cousin in his room at the Kempiski hotel. She looked at the photos spread out in front of her. They were photos of her cousins, her uncle, her aunt, her nephew and niece —both Kevin’s children —and her father.
Kevin pointed to a photo of her father with the two children. “This was taken three years ago just before the kids went away to spend their vacation with my sister and my mother in Austria.”
“Why did you choose now to come?” Kimberly asked. “You said my father died two years ago. You could have come earlier.”
“There were documents to take care of.”
“So why now?”
“I realised we all need closure in some areas of our lives so we can move on.”
“Closure?”
“Yes”
She looked at him suspiciously. “You said you had spies set on me.”
He laughed loudly. It sounded very much like her father’s laughter. “They were not spies. They were only hired to keep an eye on you and alert me of any danger you may be in.”
“They sound like spies to me.”
“Well you don’t need to worry about them now and all your dirty secrets are safe with me.”
She smiled. “I wish there were dirty secrets to talk of.” She wondered if he knew about her little trip to Mapungi. She did not ask him.
“You have all your life ahead of you to make dirty secrets” Kevin said. “Do not brood over what may have been. Live and be happy. If there is one thing I know, it is that we Greenes do not give up without a fight and we always fight to win. Fight for what you want.”
Kimberly stood and threw her arms around Kevin. He hugged her back. “Thank you,” she said.
