But right now he felt like a lost boy who had misplaced the only thing that made home feel like home.
“Mirabel,” he whispered. “Please tell me I’m not dreaming.”
She turned her face to the window, wiping tears quickly like she was ashamed to be seen breaking.
“I’m not dead,” she said.
Jerry laughed once, sharp and pained.
“Then who is dead?” he asked. “Because there is a body in the morgue and everyone says it’s you.”
Mirabel’s jaw tightened.
Her eyes didn’t leave the passing streets.
“Drive,” she said quickly. “A quiet place.”
“Where?”
“Not your house. Not the office. Not anywhere your mother’s people can reach fast.”
That word landed inside Jerry like ice.
“My mother?” he asked slowly.
Mirabel finally looked at him, and the fear in her eyes answered him before her mouth did.
“Please,” she said. “Just drive.”
Jerry’s fingers closed around the armrest.
Tundai glanced at Jerry through the rear-view mirror, confused and tense. “Sir, where exactly?”
Jerry swallowed, then forced his voice steady.
“Ikeja. The garden. JJT Park.”
Tundai’s eyebrows lifted, but he started the car.
As the SUV pulled away, the market faded behind them. Jerry watched it disappear and felt something else rise under the shock, a small sharp seed.
Anger.
Because if Mirabel wasn’t dead, then what had been happening for the past week?
Who had watched him break and kept quiet?
Who had staged a funeral for a living woman?
He glanced at her again.
She sat very still, hands folded like a child trying to be good in front of strict adults. Her face looked thinner than before. Her blouse was wrinkled like she’d slept in it. Her sandals were cheap, not the kind he bought her. Her fingernails were bare.
Mirabel used to love small neat polish, even clear.
“Where have you been?” Jerry asked gently, trying not to scare her.
“Not far,” she said. “But far enough.”
“And your phone?”
“I can’t use it,” she said quickly. “They can track it.”
“They,” Jerry repeated.
Mirabel pressed her lips together.
The silence stretched as Lagos moved around them, alive and indifferent. They passed the billboard near Maryland. They passed bus stops with shouting conductors. They passed pedestrians weaving through traffic as if danger was a daily meal they’d learned to swallow.
Finally, they entered the garden area in Ikeja. Green plants. Softer air. People walking calmly. It felt like another country after Oyingbo’s chaos.
Tundai parked.
Jerry turned toward Mirabel.
“Here,” he said softly. “No crowd.”
Mirabel nodded, but her hands were trembling.
Jerry opened the door and helped her out, still half afraid she would vanish like smoke. They walked into the garden slowly. Jerry kept glancing at her face like he needed to keep checking the miracle was real.
They sat on a bench under a tree.
For a moment, neither spoke. Birds argued in the branches like they didn’t know a world could collapse.
Jerry finally asked the question tearing him open.
“Mirabel… why?”
Her eyes filled again. She stared up at the leaves as if the sky might offer an easier answer, then looked back at him.
“Because I heard your mother say she was going to kill me.”
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