CHAPTER 9
I had been holding my tongue since the day we brought my father’s body back from the hospital. Everyone expected me to stay quiet, to bow my head, to swallow whatever bile burned in my chest and pretend that peace mattered more than truth. I tried. God knows I tried. But every time I looked at her—my father’s wife, the woman people called my stepmother—I felt my stomach churn. She moved around the compound like she owned everything, like my father didn’t die with unfinished words in his mouth.
I could barely sleep the night before. Memories of my dad kept crashing in, one after another—his voice, his laughter, his hand on my shoulder. Then the ache of knowing he never knew I was pregnant. He died without that truth, and maybe that was mercy. Maybe if he had found out, it would
