The divorced wife

chapter 5

Chapter 5: The Man Who Changed My Life

Amelia pov

By the time I got home the house was quiet. Too quiet, actually, the kind of quiet that sits on your chest instead of just being empty air around you.

Mrs. Wilson was waiting right at the front door, same worried look on her face she'd had since yesterday, like she'd been standing there the whole day just watching for my car.

"Mrs. Kingston... are you feeling any better?"

"I'm alright."

She didn't believe me, I could tell, but she just gave me this sad little smile instead of pushing.

"I'll make you something light to eat."

"Thank you."

I went upstairs slow, one hand on the railing the whole way up, still a little shaky from earlier. And it hit me walking up those stairs for the first time since I moved into this house, it didn't feel like mine anymore. Felt borrowed. Felt like I was already a guest here waiting for somebody to tell me when to leave.

I pushed open the bedroom door and just sat down on the edge of the bed for a second. The suitcase from the night before was still sitting there where I left it. Half full. Half empty, depending how you wanted to look at it. Kind of summed me up pretty well, if I'm honest.

I reached over to fold another dress and my fingers hit something in the drawer, something small and stiff, and I pulled it out. A photograph. Old one.

Arthur.

Taken years back at the company's charity dinner. He's got his hand on my shoulder in it, grinning at the camera like he'd just won something, and I'm standing there next to him looking completely mortified because I never liked getting my picture taken. Never did.

I smiled looking at it, even with everything going on.

"You always hated photographs," I said out loud to nobody, my thumb rubbing over the edge of the frame. "I miss you."

The room got real quiet after that.

And I don't know why, but my mind just went back, all the way back, to the day I actually met him.

I was twenty-one. Working two jobs and still trying to finish school on top of it. Every single day looked exactly the same. Classes in the morning, half asleep through most of them. Café shift right after that. Then a restaurant at night till closing. Sleep whenever my body finally gave out, which usually wasn't for long.

One rainy night this old man walks into the café, right before we're closing up, shakes his umbrella out by the door. Orders black coffee. Nothing else, just the coffee.

I bring it over and he looks up at me and goes, "You look tired."

I laughed, actually laughed, because I'd heard that one a hundred times before. "Yeah, I've been told that."

"When's the last time you had a day off?"

I actually had to think about it. "Honestly? I don't remember."

He didn't look at me with pity or anything, just nodded like that made sense to him.

"What are you studying?"

"Business."

"And after you graduate?"

"I want to build something."

"What kind of something?"

I remember laughing a little at that question, because I genuinely didn't have an answer ready. "I don't know yet. I just know I don't want to spend my whole life wondering what could've happened if somebody had just given me one shot."

He looked at me for a real long time after I said that. Long enough that I got a little nervous, honestly. Then he smiled.

"That's a good answer."

I had no idea who he was. To me he was just some old man who liked black coffee and asked too many questions. That's it, that's all he was, until the next week happened.

My school called me. Said my tuition, which had been overdue for months, was suddenly paid in full. Every single naira of it. I actually thought it was some kind of mix-up, some clerical error, because who does that for a stranger.

It wasn't a mistake. A few days later I found out it was the man from the café.

Arthur Kingston.

I tried giving the money back. Tried for weeks. He wouldn't take it. Instead he offered me an internship, and then that turned into a real job, and that job turned into an entire future I never once saw coming for myself.

He never once made me feel like some charity case. Not one single time. He treated me like I actually mattered, like I was somebody worth investing in, not somebody to feel sorry for. He believed in me way before I ever learned how to believe in myself, and honestly, some days I still don't think I fully do.

I felt something wet hit my cheek and realized, kind of embarrassed, that I was crying without noticing it start.

"I kept my promise," I said to the empty room, voice cracking a little. "I stayed."

Even on the nights it hurt so bad I could barely breathe through it.

Even on the nights I wanted so badly to just pack a bag and go, no note, nothing, just gone.

I stayed because he asked me to. Because he believed there was still something good buried somewhere in Chris, even when Chris himself never seemed to believe that about his own self. Because I couldn't look this man in the eye, the one person who ever saw me and saw potential instead of pity, and tell him no.

I never got the chance to disappoint him while he was alive. I wasn't about to start now that he's gone.

There was a knock on the door and it pulled me right out of my own head.

"Mrs. Kingston?"

Mrs. Wilson, soft as ever through the door.

"Your dinner's ready whenever you're ready for it."

I wiped my face quick with the back of my hand. "I'll be down in a minute."

I put Arthur's photo back in the drawer, careful, like it might break, and smiled even with this ache sitting heavy in my chest.

"I hope I made you proud," I said, quiet, mostly to myself.

And that's when I heard it. Footsteps out in the hallway.

Heavy ones.

Ones I'd know anywhere, even with my eyes closed.

Chris was home.