I looked at Uche, his hulky shoulders looked so small as he sat on the stool, his hands on the table folded. I couldn’t believe that the proud boy with loud laughter and animated smile had been reduced to this broken man in front of me, filled with pain and intense passion—it wasn’t the passion that we had shared years ago, in his small dorm room in Nsukka, neither was it the passion we had shared on the night of my traditional wedding. It was another type of passion, a mix of self-blame and anger. What happened to him? I wondered.

I was filled with questions. The body of his wife had just been carried away by the people from the mortuary. I could still remember when his call came—I had been at my office in Ajah, when my phone rang, his name flashed across the screen. I had been filled with surprise, and even though I never deleted his number from my phone, he had never for once called me, and I too hadn’t called him. Why was he calling me? I was filled with a certain sense of trepidation. I had heard stories of ex-boyfriends who had returned to torment women demanding for large amounts of money, or otherwise they would post their nude pictures online.

But in all the years I had known Uche, if there was anything I was sure of, it was the goodness that filled his heart. Moreover, I had never sent him nude pictures that could be used against me. But I remembered the night my traditional marriage, filled with a impeding sense of loss, I had called him in tears. When he arrived. I had gotten into his car and ignoring his questions of concern, I had moved over the car console and engaged him in a passionate kiss. I had expected to hear something about that night, or how he had missed me over the years. And so when I had heard him say, “I killed my wife,” I had been frozen with shock, and when he kept repeating it, as though he himself could not believe it, I hung up, took my bag and rushed out of the office.

I always knew that Uche lived in a two-story building in Ikoyi. So it wasn’t difficult to get a taxi to his home. When I had arrived, the door had been opened and some people were already gathered inside the house. I didn’t get an opportunity to see him until later in the day when everyone had left, and his wife’s body had been carried out. I called my husband to tell him that I had to stay with a friend overnight because she had a miscarriage. I felt guilty as he had been nothing but concerned, and often calling again to ask about the welfare of my ‘friend’.

The night had not been easy. I had held Uche as he cried, loud, choking tears that struck at my heart. In all my life, I had only seen Uche cry once, silently with the tears that ran down his cheeks as evidence of his emotion. But loud cries like this, were foreign to the Uche, I know. He had slept off in my arms, and I had to endure an uncomfortable night’s rest, seated on the floor and a man with his head on my laps. It was this morning that he realized that I had been there the whole time, and I saw a hint of the Uche I knew in the shy apology that he had muttered.

“What happened?” I had asked a number of times, but he had yet to give me an answer. I stood at the door of his study, my hands folded across my chest.

“Won’t you seat down?” he stood up to clear one of the chairs that had been piled up with law books. I allowed him to do so. He looked like he needed a distraction.

After that night in his car, a few meters away from my village house where my mother had been fussing over the preparation of the meals that would be shared at the wedding, I hadn’t seen Uche again. He attended none of my weddings—the traditional marriage or the church wedding. He had simply disappeared from my life. I had seen pictures on Facebook when he married Kikelomo, a rather small but beautiful Yoruba woman. Their wedding had been wonderful, I knew because I had watched the videos one of my friends who had attended the wedding sent to me. That day, I had been filled with nostalgia and I had taken the day off, to lie in my bed and think of the times I and Uche had been together.

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