Dunni was back home. Though her body had healed, her mind remained tangled in restless knots. Her tranquil home, once her safe space, now seemed smaller somehow, the air thick with unspoken thoughts threatening to suffocate her. The faint scent of lavender oil drifted from the diffuser on the dresser, meant to calm her, but instead it stirred an ache she couldn’t name.
At night, the dreams came. It was always Moses reaching out to help her out of the forest. She told herself they were tricks of her weary mind. Yet more than once, her fingers hovered over her phone, yearning to bridge a gap that felt impossibly wide. A wall, invisible but impenetrable, stood between them now. She had to accept that it was no longer the same with them. He had moved on, and she had to do the same.
A soft knock stirred her from her thoughts.
“Come in,” she called in an upbeat tone that was the opposite of how she felt. She was not ready to deal with her mum’s insistent “how are you?” and prying eyes trying to probe into the recesses of her soul as she tried to hide the fear and anxiety stemming from her recent ordeal. She still wondered why Maami always knocked before coming in. They were the only ones in the house, and just answering required more energy than she could explain. She was comfortable with gestures and grunts and could not muster the energy to engage in small talk. She had limited her visitors to almost none, wearied by their attempt at small talk and look of pity.
Her mother entered, the warm, spicy aroma of “asaro” palm oil yam porridge with spinach filling the air, wrapping the room in something comforting and familiar.
“Maami, you don’t need to treat me like an invalid. I’m perfectly fine now,” Dunni protested, pushing herself up against the pillows. Her stomach grumbled in defiance. “At this rate, I’ll be two sizes bigger by the time I return to work.”
“Maybe you should start going to the gym,” her mother teased, setting the tray down with a gentle smile.
“Are you calling me fat?”
“Oti o, you that need more flesh on these your bones. I only said gym to get you to leave the house. Going out and meeting people will do you good.”
“The gym sounds like a good idea,” Dunni agreed with her mother. “But I feel so lazy. I can barely jog around the house, not alone get on a treadmill.”
An unbidden image of Moses flashed through her mind, shattering every resolution to put him at the back burner of her mind. His signature handsome grin adorning his face, eyes crinkling with mischief as he tugged her out of the house to gym classes, promising to suffer through them with her. The scene was so real, she did not know when a sigh slipped from her lips.
Her mother’s gaze sharpened. “What is it, my daughter?”
“Nothing, Maami.”
Moses wasn’t a subject she wanted to discuss with her mother or could bear to unpack the too many unsaid words and too many wounds beneath the surface. Stewing under the weight of what could have been better than facing her reality of what she had lost. She took a spoonful of the porridge, savouring the spiciness that brought tears to her eyes. Tears of the pain she felt in her heart than from the pain on her tongue.
Having Tade in her corner did nothing to assuage the deepening wound from the loss of Moses, and her current ordeal only magnified her loss. She could picture Moses’ reaction clearly at every scene as her day unfolded, had he been here. She was exhausted from beating herself for destroying their friendship. She would give anything to have him back in her life – colleague, neighbour boyfriend, husband or anything.
Tade had been visiting, trying, perhaps too hard to mend what had broken. He’d even shared a revelation that Dr. Larry was their long presumed-dead father. A fact traced back to her own birth certificate. But the news barely registered. She was happy for him, but as for their relationship, it was a ship that had sailed. Trust was a fragile thing, and theirs had shattered into irreplaceable pieces.
“You’re my self-appointed doctor,” she’d teased him when he’d asked to remain friends. But it wasn’t the same. He wasn’t Moses, and he never could be.
“Oh! Sorry, Maami — I didn’t realise you were there,” Dunni said, startled, blinking rapidly
“You were far away. Are the nightmares still coming?”
“No, Maami,” she lied smoothly.
In truth, they came each night. It was always ending the same way. Moses, arms wrapped around her like a sanctuary in the storm, at other times, or he reaching out to her from the depths of a forest. She wrote them down as her therapist advised, but never mentioned the ending. Some connections felt too sacred to speak aloud.
On her way out of the room, her mother paused at the door, “How’s Moses? I haven’t heard from him since he left the hospital.”
Dunni stilled.
“Maami… Moses is in the US,” she murmured, her voice measured and cautious.
Her mother frowned. “I don’t know about the US. But he was in that hospital for three days and three nights while you were asleep and not responding. He never left your side until you woke.”
She was about to correct her mum for the umpteenth time. Maami will never use the word coma. But what she heard just sent a tremor rippling through her. “Are you sure?” She was almost afraid to ask.
“Why would I lie? That boy is a gem. They say he flew in, even entered that, Salisa Forest.”
“Sambisa, Maami,” Dunni corrected automatically. Her mother always seemed to have another version of it — sometimes Samisam, sometimes Bisam.
“Moses? In Sambisa?” she whispered, awe colouring her voice. It was something Moses might’ve done if he were still in Nigeria… but from the US? The thought was dizzying.
“Why haven’t you called him?” Maami asked, a deep frown furrowing her brow.
“I’ve been focusing on recovery,” she replied, the lie tasting bitter on her tongue. She wasn’t ready to unravel the threads of their estranged friendship or discuss with her mother what happened before he left.
Her mother gave a knowing smile. “Hmm. I hear you.”
When she was finally alone, Dunni’s heart thundered. She wasn’t imagining it. Moses had been there. It was a bittersweet moment. Glad that she was not crazy, but sad their friendship had slowly faded. This did not stop the warmth surging through her, threatening to swallow her whole. Without ever touching her, Moses had marked her for life.
Just then, her phone buzzed.
“Hey, Gimbiyan Sambisa!” meaning queen of Sambisa, Ola’s teasing voice rang out — a nickname he’d coined since her return. “How are you doing? Hope you’re getting all the rest you need.”
“I’m good. Maami has been spoiling me silly. I’m already dreading how I’ll cope when she leaves.”
“No rush back to work,” Ola assured her. “We’ve got your projects covered.”
Dunni did not argue with Ola, although she was growing crazy from sitting at home, but she also was not up to returning to work yet. The sudden flashbacks, the way she froze at the sound of a door shutting, running water, or even the rustle of leaves in the evening were all signs of the trauma that clung to her.. She hesitated, her pulse quickening. Then she asked softly, demanding the truth, “My mother said Moses was at the hospital.”
Silence hummed on the line.
“But… you saw him when you woke up,” Ola remarked. “You asked if you were home .”
“I don’t remember.”
But her tone sharpened as she fired the questions like an investigator. “When did Moses arrive? When did he leave? And don’t tell me to ask him.”
She could almost see Ola shrugging.
Ola hesitated, always careful not to tread too deeply into their tangled history. They needed to figure it out themselves without the help of anyone.
“He landed the day after you were kidnapped. Left the day you woke. He recruited the rescue team.”
Her breath caught. Tears pricked her eyes. Moses. He had done all of that for her. A truth settled deep within her. Moses was etched into her heart. She longed for him still, and the belief that no one could ever replace him both reassured and terrified her.
“I want to see him,” she whispered. “But it must be a surprise. Will you help me?”
Now that Dunni was beginning to understand just how deep Moses’ love ran, Ola no longer hesitated. “Of course. What do you need?”
“An address.”
The moment they hung up, Dunni called the travel agency, her voice trembling with resolve. The trip was booked, and she just had to wait to complete her treatment.
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