When I opened the bag the first thing that caught my attention was a white unsealed envelope placed on top of the money. I picked it up and looked at the money inside the bag. There was a lot of money and from the look of things, it was all in dollar bills.
I quickly opened the envelope I held in my hand, and brought out the written note that was in it. One look at the handwriting told me it was written by Ola. I read it,
" Tola it was a wonderful life I felt I could give you. But old scores had turned into new threats which I was secretly trying to handle without you knowing. I could not allow it to hurt the good woman you are.
When I told you to avoid your good friend Kemi, I knew why. The truth, is she was a threat to our relationship in ways you couldn't have imagined. Perhaps one day you will know the truth. " Ola.
What was Ola trying to tell me by writing this? And what was his connection to Kemi? It hadn't occurred to me to suspect him of foul play. As far as I can vividly remember, he never allowed Kemi to come to the house.
Kemi and I always met outside. It was either at her place or at the house of some other friend. I kept reading the letter over and over again, trying to get a sense of what he meant by Kemi being a threat to our relationship. I had to find out.
I closed the bag with the money in it, and kept it back under the bed. I wanted to find out what Chuks, the hotel manager, knew about them.
He had mentioned Kemi coming to the hotel with a man called Ola. What else did he know? I grabbed my hand bag and went down to the reception.
"Madame, how are you?" This was Nneka greeting me with a smile. I tried to smile back at her but I couldn't. She saw the expression on my face and stopped smiling.
"Can I see the manager?" I asked her.
"I will call him right away." She quickly got on the phone and called him and then told me he was waiting for me at the usual place.
I imagined it to be his private area. Without waiting for the receptionist to take me there, I went there myself. I knocked on the door and without waiting for him to answer, I went in.
I found him seated, watching the TV. I walked right up to him and standing in front of him, showed him the letter.
"Sunshine, what is this?" He asked looking at the letter.
"Read it." I told him. He took the letter from me and started reading it. I took the time to sit down opposite him so I could face him and look him in the eyes.
The fact that I was in this hotel meant there was something that he and the receptionist knew that they were not telling me.
"It can't be. This cannot be a coincidence," was all he could say while he handed me back the letter. I took it from him and put it back into my handbag.
"What do you know about these two people?" I asked with my heart beating fast. He frowned when I asked him that question. What was he thinking?
"Kemi and Ola were good friends of mine." He said taking a pause. I closed my eyes as I didn't want to believe what he had just told me.
"The first day they came I noticed a ring on the man's finger. The woman herself wasn't wearing one." He stopped and looked at me.
"Sunshine whatever it is, I think.... "
"No! I want you to continue talking. Tell me what you know!" I said interrupting him.
"Are you sure?" I nodded.
"Each time they came they would always book a room and stay there, maybe about an hour or two before leaving. They were good customers so I treated them well. That was until one day, while passing by their room, I overheard them shouting at each other."
"What was it about?" I asked poised to know what the argument was all about. It was hard for him to look at me, and each time he did he would blink. I stared seriously at him until he decided to talk.
"Sunshine if there's anything that you feel has been done behind your back, that woman is not alive anymore. So you shouldn't bother yourself trying to find out what really happened."
"With all due respect I refuse to accept what you've just said. I want to hear the reason why they were arguing, please."
"Okay," he said sighing. "To be sincere what I heard was that Ola was telling her to give him time to sort things out. She was telling him they..." He paused as if it was hard for him to say what he wanted to say next.
"She told him they already had a son and that was a good enough reason."
"What, a son? Impossible!" I got up and shouted at him
"I refuse to believe you. It's all lies you are telling me. Lies!" I kept shouting at the top of my voice. But all I got was silence from him. I shouted until he held me to him and embraced me.
"It's okay Sunshine, its okay." Tears started rolling down my eyes and I started sniffing. When he saw the tears in my eyes, he told me to sit.
"Here, come and sit down." He held my hands and made me sit down. He then left me and went to bring a book.
"Sunshine, I can't hide anything from you. Since you've come this far, I want you to see something." He opened a book and brought out a photo of me and Ola.
"Look, this picture fell out of his pocket." He handed it over to me. I looked at it and saw Ola again. It was touching as it felt like, he was with me again.
"This must be your friend." He handed me another picture. It was my friend Kemi and Ola together. They were holding each other's hands and smiling. I could tell they were happy with each other. But why?
"Sunshine as hard as this may be, I would advise you to get all of this behind you." I looked at him angrily as if he had made it all up. To me, it seemed he had invented everything, to make me believe it was true.
"I can't. I must get to the root of this story."
"What?!" he shouted
"I want to know the truth."
"And where are you going to find it?
"I don't know, but I'll find it."
"Look Sunshine, I beg you in the name of God, leave everything behind you and move on."
"Move on?" He nodded
"I can't. My whole life is messed up." I replied
"You still have a chance to resettle, find someone else, some new guy." I laughed inside me when he said I should get a new guy. It made me giggle.
"You mean I should pretend that whatever happened never really happened?" He seemed to be getting a little fed up with telling me to give up on my quest to know the truth.
"Look there are some thing's better left the way they are than to look for deeper truths that may be even more hurtful." He took my hands and held them.
"Sunshine. This is the name I gave you. I've never known you before. I have never met you before, but I know you are a blessing to any man that would want to take you seriously as a wife."
A wife? I was someone else's wife. Someone I called my own who, I never knew was having an affair with the one I called my best friend. How could I ever take any other man seriously enough to allow him take me as his wife?
"Are you trying to propose to me Oga Chuks?"
"What?" I looked seriously at him and he blinked.
"Look Sunshine all I'm saying is to forget all of this and move on. How difficult can that be?"
"I'm still a married woman, a widow to be precise. That's how difficult it is. "
"Jesus." He snapped his fingers.
"Soon his family will want to know what happened, and you know what? I don't know what to tell them."
Chuks the hotel manager got up and went to get himself a glass of whisky. I watched as he poured himself a glass.
"Can I have one too?" I asked
"No Sunshine, no.... " Before he had a chance to finish his statement, I was already standing next to him. What I heard was just too much, I wanted to drown myself in a bottle of whisky.
I took a bottle of Hennessey and a glass and went to sit down. He stared at me in amazement as I sat down. I filled my glass and gulped down the content and then filled the glass again.
"I'm sorry I'm putting you through all of this, Mr. Chuks. When I'm done, I'll leave your hotel and go and lodge in another one."
"You want to find out the truth don't you?" He asked me.
"And wouldn't you?" He didn't answer, but just stared at me.
And while he did so, thoughts of Ola came to my mind. Thoughts of how we started.
If I had known back then that my marriage to him would end with his tragic death at the hands of some unknown woman, I wouldn't have agreed to marry him.
But on the day we first met, he walked up to me and told me, in clear terms, that I would be his wife.
That day will remains indelible in my mind. It is a day I most certainly won't forget so easily. Because that one day changed my whole world, leading up to the events of the past few days.