Thirty minutes later, Rami was on her way back home. Nobody had been able to tell her anything new. The only intriguing piece of information was the one Seth had given her. Before she fell asleep that night, Rami mulled over Aba’s words over and over, turning them around in her head. Could her sister actually be alive? Or was it her ghost trying to tell her something?
The next morning, after her mother had gone to work, Rami showered and ate a light breakfast, still thinking about Aba. She hadn’t slept well. She kept dreaming about finding her sister in a remote forest, but each time she got close, Aba disappeared.
The sound of her phone ringing startled her out of her musings, and a glance at the caller ID almost discouraged her from picking up the call. She was so not in the mood. But on second thought, maybe she should answer and see if she could get any information.
“Hello? Rami, how are you?”
“Lilian,” Rami answered unenthusiastically. “I’m okay. Yourself?”
“I’ve been better,” Liliiain replied. “Rami…” There were a few seconds of silence where Rami wondered if the call had disconnected.
“Hello?”
“I’m here. There’s just something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. Are you home?”
“Yes,” Rami answered automatically, then regretted it immediately.
“Okay, good. I want to come and see you about something. But before then, I wanted to send you some pictures Aba made me take. I was supposed to send them to her, but I never got the chance to, and I just kept them because I didn’t think it was necessary. But I thought your family might want to have them. So maybe you could share them with the others when you get them.”
“Okay,” Rami said without much interest, then sat up suddenly. “Wait, pictures? What pictures?”
“The pictures we took at the traditional marriage ceremony we went to. Aba looked really good. I’ll send them to you. And see you soon!”
“Okay, I’ll be waiting,” Rami assured her, suddenly interested in what Lilian had to share. Rami had been unable to attend the ceremony because she had exams that day, and Lilian had accompanied Aba instead. Rami’s heart was thudding at the implication of this information she had forgotten. Because those pictures were the last photos Aba had taken, so if there were group pictures in those, then everything would change. And considering the people who were at the wedding, this was much worse than when she had believed that the person who couldn’t be trusted was Lilian.
The ping of her WhatsApp message tone startled Rami, and she snorted at herself for being so easily startled in the past twenty-four hours.
Opening the new message from Lilian, Rami stared at the photos for five whole minutes without moving. This could not be happening. This could not be happening.
In several photos, Aba was grinning into the camera with her arms around her half-siblings and her father. The wedding had been for a cousin on that side of Aba’s family, and Aba had felt so happy to be included since her biological father and, by extension, half-siblings had only come into her life two years earlier. What made it worse was that Mr. Hormeku owned a silver Toyota Land Cruiser, the very same kind of vehicle that Seth had told her picked Aba up on that last Sunday. But as far as Rami knew, Mr. Hormeku had returned to Ghana from Germany on Wednesday, three days after Rami went missing. Unless it was one of his sons driving? Or his driver?
Rami was confused. Whatever the case was, she knew that she couldn’t trust any of them now. But the good news was that since it wasn’t Lilian she was supposed to be wary of, she could finally share everything that had been happening in the last twenty-four hours with someone.
She went to the living room to wait for Lilian. They had a lot to unpack.
*************
Somewhere in another part of the country, the older woman stared sadly at the young girl. She was sitting on the small cot that was her bed with her head bowed, knees drawn up to her chin. She looked forlorn but still had a spark of hope after she had called her sister. The woman wondered if the hope she gave these girls was cruel even though she had good intentions. One thing she always did as a form of mercy was giving them the wrong timelines to reduce their anxiety before the worst happened and there was no turning back. For example, the young girl was calmer because she thought her sister had one week to find her after the SOS call. In reality, she only had three days, and one of them was almost gone. The older woman had tried a little more for this girl, though, and she hoped that it would help. Otherwise, after forty-eight hours, she would essentially be as dead as they already thought she was.
The older woman waited until the girl inevitably fell asleep, her body going slack and releasing her from her sitting position. When the young girl began to snore softly, the woman approached her unconscious body, just as she had in the past few days. She needed to do something extra today, so she had added some herbs to the girl’s food earlier so that she would sleep more deeply. She didn’t know if there would be consequences for what she was doing, if they would know that she was doing it, or even if they knew that she could. But she couldn’t dwell on those thoughts. She had things to do.
************
“Rami, I know that I sound crazy, but I think Aba is alive,” Lilian told me as soon as Rami opened the door to her, rendering her speechless.
“What do you mean? Why do you say so? Has she called you too?” Rami asked rapidly,
“It’s just a feeling I’ve been getting for the past few days,” she said. “And I’ve been seeing a woman in my dreams, telling me to please help Aba.”
“A woman?” Rami demanded as they sat down.
“An older woman, looks to be in her early to mid-forties. I don’t know her; I’ve never seen her before. But she looks so sad and earnest at the same time, saying things like, ‘This time must be different; please find her.’ The first time it happened, I thought it was just one of those things, you know. But then I keep having that dream. I’ve had the same dream for the past three months. I think someone is trying to send me a message.”
Rami was conflicted. She had been ready to talk to Lilian, but Lilian’s opening was making her a little suspicious. Was this a trick? Was Lilian trying to figure out how much Rami knew? Or was someone trying to tell them both something? Rami’s voice telling her not to trust anyone echoed in her head. Then again, Lilian had always been superstitious with her spirituality stuff, so it wasn’t that surprising that she was seeing women in her dreams telling her to help a dead friend. Also, she had not been in those group photos; she had been the one taking the pictures.
“I know I sound crazy. After all, Aba has been buried. But I still can’t shake off the feeling, and I needed to talk to someone about it. You are the only one I can think of. You’re the best person to talk to, actually.”
Rami decided to trust her. “I don’t think you’re crazy. I actually believe that there is a little chance that she may be alive after all.”
“What, really?” Lillian asked, shocked that Rami was believing her so easily.
“Yes, I believe you. At the very least, something crazy happened to Aba, and we need to find out what.”
Lilian looked at Rami. She had been prepared to come and convince Rami that she wasn’t schizophrenic. She hadn’t expected her to be so agreeable. Unless… “Wait, have you been having dreams too?”
Rami took a deep breath. Here goes nothing. “Aba called me.”
“What!?!” Lilian screeched. “How?”
Rami told Lilian the whole story about the midnight phone call, the clues she was given and her visit to Trudy’s, ending with how Lilian’s phone call had given her some more clues.
“This is crazy,” Lilian murmured after Rami was done sharing. She didn’t know what she had expected when she decided to share her dreams with Rami, but it definitely wasn’t this. There was still so much to consider, though – like the fact that Aba had already been buried.
“If that body that was buried was not Aba, who was it?” Lilian asked Rami.
Rami shook her head. “Honestly, I don’t know. This whole situation is crazy.”
Something clicked. “Wait a minute. Only three people identified Aba’s charred remains. My mother said she saw her. At the time, I was surprised that she had actually stomached seeing Aba like that. But what if she hadn’t? What if she just told me she had?”
Lilian frowned. “Why would she lie about something like that?”
Rami rubbed a frustrated hand over her hair. “I don’t know. But I can find out. Let me just call her.”
“Good idea,” Lilian agreed, finally relaxing on the sofa.
Rami tapped her foot anxiously on the tile as she waited for her mother to pick up her call. When the call ran without her mother picking up, Rami looked at Lilian in frustration. “She’s not picking up.”
“Try her line again.”
Rami dialled the number again, waiting anxiously for her mother to answer her call. Just when she thought she wasn’t going to answer, her mother answered. “Rami?”
“Hi, Mom,” Rami answered, suddenly nervous.
“Are you okay? You sound off,” her mother noted worriedly.
Rami steeled herself. “No, I’m okay. I just wanted to ask you something. Can you talk? This won’t take long, but you will need some privacy.”
“Rami, if it’s not urgent, can’t it wait until I get home?”
Lilian shook her head vehemently at Rami.
“No, Mom. It’s urgent because I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Okay, fine,” her mother said with a sigh. “Give me a moment.”
Rami heard the muffled sounds of people talking and then a door closing.
“Okay, Rami. What do you want to ask me?”
“I know this question is strange, considering everything that has already happened, but I need to know. Did you actually identify Aba’s body? Did you see her at the mortuary?”
Her mother let out a tortured sound. “Ewurama, why?”
Rami felt terrible for reminding her mother of her sorrow, but they needed to know.
“Mom, I’m sorry, but I swear that this is very important. I think—”
She paused when she saw Lilian frantically shaking her head. She was right, she needed a better plan than to raise her mother’s hopes when they didn’t even know what was going on. This could all be trauma-fuelled hallucinations on their part, making them conspiracy theorists without any facts. Thinking that, Rami almost gives up so she doesn’t torture her mother with memories, but something held her back. Even if there were a one per cent chance that Aba was still alive, she had to follow this through. So she changed tactics.
“Mom, I’m sorry for doing this to you, but I keep thinking about Aba, and I feel horrible that I didn’t go and see her one last time, regardless of how she looked. I feel like I should have gone to say goodbye at that point.”
Her mother let out a breath. “You don’t have to feel bad, Rami. Aba wouldn’t have blamed you.”
“I know, but I know that she would have at least tried to give me a last goodbye if it had been her. I know that at least she had you. You were braver than I could ever be. Even you were able to do it. Why couldn’t I?”
Rami’s eyes filled when she heard her mother sniffling. “You’re giving me too much credit, Rami. I didn’t have the strength to—I couldn’t go in there. I lost my nerve when we got there, and I couldn’t stop crying.”
Rami and Lilian exchanged glances.
