A week after the night of the ambulance, Auntie Mariam walked out of the hospital. She was thinner, her skin paler, but her eyes still held that sharp, calculating glint. The kind of look that said she was already rewriting the story for anyone who would listen. A silk scarf was wrapped neatly around her shoulders, as though she could not bear to be seen without her usual polish.
Tasha and I were there, not because we wanted to be, but because the discharge papers required a family signature. She signed without hesitation, her pen cutting into the page like it was a contract sealing something final.
"Home," Mariam said curtly, handing the clipboard back to the nurse. Her voice was weaker, but the command was still there.
Tasha did not look at her. She kept her gaze fixed on the floor tiles, her face unreadable. I could feel the tension radiating off her, the same kind of pressure that builds before a storm.
The drive back to her house was silent. Mariam sat in the front seat, staring out at Nairobi's streets as if she owned every building we passed. Tasha sat in the back beside me, her hands folded tight in her lap. When the car finally stopped outside the gate, she leaned close and whispered, "I'm leaving soon. Before she finds a way to stop me."
That night, we met at my apartment. The city outside was restless, with horns blaring in the distance and the occasional echo of a motorbike rushing through the dark. Tasha spread her mother's letters across my table again, her passport resting beside them.
"She'll be fine without me," she said flatly. "She's been fine all these years without needing me for anything but her lies."
Her voice did not shake, but I could hear the strain underneath.
"When?" I asked.
"As soon as I can get a seat on a flight to New York," she replied. "The longer I wait, the more chance she has to find out and ruin it. I have her last address from the letters. If she's still there, I'll find her. If she's not, I'll search until I do." I nodded, but the words caught in my throat before I could speak.
That night, when she left for home, the apartment felt too empty. The chair she had been sitting in still held the faint warmth of her presence. I sat there for hours, staring at the same stack of papers we had been looking at, but all I could think about was the space she would leave behind once she was gone.
Over the next few days, I went through the motions of life without feeling any of it. The streets of Nairobi blurred into one another. Even the music in the matatus sounded like background noise. The thought of her boarding that plane felt like someone slowly tightening a rope around my chest.
I did not tell her how much the idea of her leaving was eating at me. She had enough to carry already. But in the quiet moments, lying awake at night, waiting for her messages, watching the rain smear the view outside my window, it hit me how much she had become the constant in my life. And how much emptier it would be without her here.
When the day of her flight finally came, I went with her to the airport. Not because I wanted to see her go, but because I could not bear the thought of her leaving without me there. She did not cry. I did not either. But every step she took toward that gate felt like it was pulling a piece of me with it.
When she finally disappeared from sight, the terminal felt too big, and Nairobi suddenly felt too quiet. That night, Nairobi did not feel like my city anymore. I walked back from the bus stop with my hands deep in my pockets, the streets still buzzing with life. Music spilled from open bars, the chatter of people in small groups, the smell of roasted maize drifting through the air. But it all felt like noise from a world I was no longer part of.
When I reached my apartment, the first thing I noticed was the silence. No faint sound of her voice in the kitchen, no shuffle of her steps across the floor. Her cup was still on the table, the one she always used for tea. I had washed it that morning, but now it looked like something left behind, a small relic of someone who might never return.
I sat on the couch, staring at my phone, willing it to light up with a message from her. Hours passed, and the screen stayed dark. I imagined her somewhere over the Atlantic, her head resting against the airplane window, the city lights of a continent slipping away beneath her.
The thought that she was moving forward while I stayed here lodged itself deep in my chest. I told myself it was not jealousy. It was just the ache of losing the one person who had made all this noise and chaos feel like it meant something.
Around midnight, the rain started. It tapped against the window in slow, uneven patterns. Normally, I would have liked the sound. Tonight, it only made the room feel colder.
I found myself replaying the little things, the way she would tie her hair up when she was reading, how her voice softened when she spoke about her mother, the determined set of her jaw when she talked about leaving Mariam's house.
The more I thought about it, the more it felt like I had been left behind in a story that had already moved on without me. She was chasing something that mattered, family, truth, maybe even forgiveness. And I was just here, waiting for her shadow to pass over me again someday.
I did not sleep that night. I just sat by the window, watching the rain and wondering how long it would take before I heard her voice again.