Ashley stared blankly and with speckles of tear drops in her eyes. Her hands still rested defiantly on the door. Dominic turned towards her and then back to Maureen before sitting. His head probed with varying premises that lingered towards the same conclusion. A sharp deluding darkness exasperated his conscious effort to speak up.

How was he going to tell his beloved daughter that he cheated on her mother after years of condemning sexual impurity during the long morning and night prayers? She would spark and never trust him. He felt wretched- an owner of several multimillion naira buildings and contracts but yet, wretched.

He did explain to Ashley in details, but she didn't wait for the end of it before slamming the door and running. She would apologize later and her father wouldn't try to flog her because he would still be wallowing in guilt.

*****

Martins splattered a sea blue to the wavy sketch on his canvas. Then a red followed and he changed the brush to one with tinier and pointed bristles to outline certain details in his abstract painting. An array of varying colours produced an aesthetic polychrome. His hand held the palette now jumbled with different colours as each thick chunk of paint mixed with the others. A serious discerning look cornered his brow as he stared keenly at the life he was moulding.

His mother walked in after struggling to fit herself through the door because Martins had pushed his chair to stand in as a wedge. He wanted quiet, as he did whenever he painted or whenever he read or slept or ate. He would slowly descend the stairs with his pajamas and scoop one spoon full of whatever steamed from the pot and fly up, bolting the door and shutting the world out with his headphone.

He might mumble a nonsensical and incomprehensible greeting to his father, who would be on his short and singlet, burrowing into the newspaper and arguing imaginatively with the reporters on certain controversial issues. Other times he appeared on his black vestment, the white collar peeking out and his eyes would be burrowed into the Bible.

"Ah! Olorun owon omo mi o ko je? You haven't eaten?" She turned, dazed at the untouched crisp rice with a blood red thickened stew smeared on the top, which he was sure was because the tomatoes had been left for longer on the gas. It should be a brighter red not a lot darker, like the lungs of a chain smoker.

His chicken was spicy with pepper bits covering the grilled chicken. It was prepared as the same he took on Christmas day. It made his nose run and mouth burn.

"Bawo ni mama? I'll eat soon." He smudged one end of the canvas with his nails and used a rag to dab out an error.

"My son, you know I gave birth to you. I know when you're troubled and when you're happy. What is the problem?" She asked. Her waist seemed voluminous from different folds of wrapper.

The church members still trooped in to visit the pastor and his family and she would put on her best outfit, plaster a plastic smile and serve. To each person, she knew the perfect compliment- your hair is nice, where did you do it? See how beautiful this dress is. I love your shoe. Even when the hair smelt of must, the dress washed repeatedly and colours drained, and the shoe had no sole. She would say God bless you to everyone who greeted, standing beside her husband and shaded under her hat. She would tilt it a bit to the side to hide the swell as a result of the punch from the night before and will nod to every word her husband said on the altar. It was with that same gait and concentration that she used in listening to Martins.

He dropped the palette and forked in rice into his mouth. The painting was faced eastward, towards the afternoon transcending to evening sun and left to dry. He crouched beside his mum, his comfort and immediate shield from worry. She always pushed him to her back when Sola intended spanking him as a little child or when his father had given him a thorough beating after coming second once.

"Mummy, how did daddy tell you he loved you?" He asked. A flush of childhood innocence sweeping his masked look. His mother smiled, already knowing the direction the conversation tended.

"He came right up and told me. Back then we didn't waste time dating who we had no interest in getting married to." She stopped. She leaned closer and Martins felt her warmth and a dense saturation of perfume droplets around him despite the drenching patch of moist around her armpits. It was a mild perfume scent and not as choking as his father's. "My son, if you love someone, you go straight up and tell them. It is better to be rejected than to live in the mirage of unsaid words, of unsure reactions to flattery, of the possibility of the things that could be but aren't."

She left after the roaring of a car halted in their very large compound edged with flowers. It was Mrs Adeyinka and her noisome children that filled the backseat of a small Toyota car.

The sides had scratches and Martins was sure that one if not all of the seven children had something to do with it. They poked their nose into every room, learning first hand where everything was kept. Once, the last born fiddled with his phone and crashed it on the floor, then giggled and ran away. "He's just  a child, he doesn't know anything," His mother said and Martins feared that parents who responded this way bred mutinous children. He stared at his painting, some parts were still wet and for fear of smearing the work, he didn't touch it with his finger. The crisscrossed braided artwork represented Ashley, he will give it to her hoping she would forgive his dark soul ripped of emotions.

*****

Ashley was let into Kelvin's house by Kelvin, who dampened his shampoo drunk hair and paraded the house in a towel. Beads of water droplets settled on his skin like his own naturally shinning glitter. The house was empty and Ashley imagined his parents had gone to work.

"Come in," Kelvin said graciously, smiling and then quickly converting his warm ambiance into a more cautious one when he realized Ashley's eyes were liquid and her nose glowed a slight red. She hugged him, a slightly free and then tight embrace. He hesitated for a while before returning the hug by placing his hand on her back and smoothly sliding it down. "What's wrong?" He asked, pulling her body from sticking to his raw skin.

"My whole life has been a lie," she said, sobbing. A loud knock hit the door, a rude interruption to their discussion. It was Martins. One of the loose cotton shirts hung freely on his body. He stared at a downcast Ashley who was still sobbing at the corner on a thick sofa inflated with newness.

"Yes?" Kelvin asked.

"I came to see Ashley," Martins said.

Kelvin looked back as though seeking permission and quickly looked back at Martins.

"She doesn't want to see you. She came here because she needs comforting and I doubt she can get that from you." Martins probed his long fingers, one of them with a ring. He stared at Ashley who looked away and laid down, facing her thoughts and pain towards the seat.

She woke up later in a different room, losing her sense of direction for minutes and then recognizing soon that she was in Kelvin's room. He came in later with wine tipping the glass tumbler and crackers crusted by the side of a fancy tray. The air was chill and the room, dark to keep the room cold. He wore a tie dye shirt and a loose short then pushed the tray to her. Her head grinded internally because she had cried herself to sleep and still squinted, half awake.

"Kelvin will you date me?" She asked. He stopped arranging the crackers and stood, stunned. He wasn't sure he heard right and her face was already scarred with the numerous marks of someone who had slept so deeply they uttered rubbish.

"Have some rest," he said, pushing her hair to the side and revealing her oily face. "Your head must be hurting." He felt her head, nudged the thick feathery blanket closer and then turned to leave.

"I'm serious," she continued, unmoved. "I know what I'm saying. You don't have to provide an answer now," she said. His hand rubbed the door knob and slowly closed the door in a slight bang.

*****

Mary was told someone had come to see her. She had wanted the knowledge of her resurrection to remain fazed and untouched until she was ready to reveal herself. The plan was to expose Thelma after haunting her with the guilt of trying to murder her but after a deep meditation from the Bible, of accepting all wrongs with a good cheer, of loving despite hate, she decided to let the thought slide from her slippery fingers. It glided with blood. Her blood.

The visitor was Dominic. His afro pushed up and about his scalp, despite the clean shave two weeks ago. His hair grew rapidly and it was little wonder and less of a coincidence that Ashley took the trait as well. She would grab a handful of relaxer drunk hair and chop a large chunk of it because they caused heat, but they would grow back soon enough, more bouncy that they entangled at the comb's teeth and she would have to apply relaxer all over again to straighten it.

Mary ran over and hugged him. He hugged her too with Beatrice standing right next to them so empathic and wild with emotions. He had come to break the truth and take her back home, to her real mum.

"No! Never," Mary began, fluid with hot tears when they had gone home. "You can't be my mother," she continued, facing Maureen who sat dumbfounded also tearing up. Ashley heard the mash up of tears and came down the stairs to see what happened. Beatrice clasped her hands together and Dominic beside her, preferring to console her than his wife seated distressed on the bare floor with a wrapper covering her thighs. "Remember the time you burnt my stomach with hot iron? I didn't even burn your cloth. Do you also remember when you made me eat from the dustbin? When I ate with the dog? When I was locked outside? The beatings with any object within your reach? No! You're not my mother. You are not a mother." Ashley cried silently, simmering with mixed emotions of guilt and pain. Everyone in the room cried even little Uche who seemingly cried the most unsure of just why he cried.

"Please forgive me," Maureen said, blowing her nose into the edge of her wrapper. "I did not do all those things intentionally my daughter."

Mary stood up, diverting the trail of tears that poured from her eyes to the side with her fingers. She walked right through the door and into Beatrice's car hoping her action of entitlement wasn't glaring or repulsive. Beatrice stood too but took slow steps towards Ashley blanketed with Kelvin's biggest sweatshirt.

"Ashley-" Beatrice began.

"I can't call you mum. It's going to be hard readjusting. None of this is your fault, but I can't. I'm sorry, I need to go." Her reply, apt yet condescending. Before then, Beatrice was the woman whose biography she had learned and mastered. They bought each volume of the Annabelle's magazine and she would cut out the various designs in the teens section, plaster them on her bedside, wardrobe and books even. She read the scoops on teenage years, the topics her mother had vaguely discussed with her like sex, because her religiosity forbade she repeated the word lest its profanity sufficed. Maureen knew she visited Martins and his friends but of course had seen them all together, never imagining some day feelings could erupt within the people she overlooked, as though one couldn't fall in love with someone so close they seemed like family.

She began to fix the odd bits and pieces together after she found out. Whenever Beatrice was shown on television in one of the very many interviews, Dominic praised her gait, her steps, her intelligence, her dressing but no one of course saw any reason to suspect. An image on the screen seemed impossible to grasp, to hold or to make love to. They seemed like perfection, flaunting expensive accessories and using the latest phones, smiling into the camera and appearing as though each one tried to outdo the other. Her head spun whenever the thought came together- the thought that Beatrice knew Dominic was married and yet still cheated on her mother.

"I just need to be alone," Ashley said again, climbing the stairs.

When Mary got home, a rebranded package in the form of a well built and freshly looking being stood waiting at the reception. It was Kelvin and he jolted up when Beatrice's car slid in against the interlock.

They hugged and he breathed in whiffs of her hair. They weren't lustrous like Ashley's, but they glowed. She had added a bit but still remained slender like a model.

"I'm having a rough day, I'm just so happy I saw you. I missed you," Mary said later when they sat on a sofa at the reception. Martha, Mary later learned was the help's name,  brought in a tall wine with a fat bottom even though Mary pleaded she did the serving instead.

"Madam will not want to see you do work ma," she replied, sinking in humility.

"I can't believe you're alive," Kelvin said after Martha disappeared inside. "I thought I lost you. I wasn't myself for days when you went missing." They poured a glass, two glasses and then three. It wasn't alcoholic but befitting for its purpose, with the sweet sour taste of the fruit from the vine lingering on their tongues. They talked about many things; The investigation set up, the arrest of Martins, the shrill in school and then the pencam. "I warned them that the whole game was a stupid idea," Kelvin said, sipping the few drops of wine that remained on his lips.

"You mean the pencam Martins threw? He told me about the dare and threw it into the incinerator. How did the detective know he was the one? How did she find it?" Mary asked. She had stopped sipping and lingered with a half filled glass.

"With all I just said, that's the only thing you're interested in?" Kelvin asked.

"No I'm just curious. From what you just said, the detective is very smart but it's impossible to find something that disguised between trash," Mary said, sipping.

"I guess Martins has learned his lesson and that's all that matters. Your inhaler is still probably buried under dirt in the incinerator." He tried pouring another glass of wine, his veins erupting from his neck.

Mary stopped abruptly, almost choking. "What did you say?"

"-that Martins has learned his lesson?"

"No, not that, after that. Something about my inhaler," Mary replied, dropping the glass to prevent it from slipping from her hand.

"Your inhaler is still probably buried under dirt." His voice was calm.

"How did you know about my inhaler being buried under dirt?" She asked.

"I know you are asthmatic, you told me."

"Yes, yes I did. But that's oddly specific. How did you know I was with my inhaler that night in the incinerator? You were there, weren't you? You tried to kill me too."

Author's note: Thanks for reading! Don't forget to vote this chapter by clicking on the star button below.

This chapter is dedicated to yourfavtallgirl. I see you b 💕

Prepare for the grand finale!!