"JAMES?"
"Sonia? Good morning sweetheart." The huskiness in his tone told her he hadn't been awake long. It was barely seven.
"Good morning."
"I've been dreaming about us. Our cruise didn't last nearly long enough. The only thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that you're going to be my wife in June. I wish you were here right now," He murmured. "Why don't you come over for a little while before you have to leave for work? I want to show you how much I love you."
She wouldn't be going to the university today. In fact, she'd already called Rita, one of the university graduate students, to cover her classes.
"Sonia? Why aren't you saying anything?"
A shudder passed through her body. She wished she could tell him everything he wanted to hear. But the last urgent message, one of many left on her answering machine by her in-laws, had turned her world upside down for the second time in her life. They'd called again from an hotel in Maitama, Abuja not five minutes after she and Divine had walked in the door from their trip with James.
"James. . .we have to t-talk!" She swallowed hard. "I'm just glad I caught you before you left for work."
"Sweetheart? Something's really wrong. What is it?" She could feel his concern. There wasn't a more understanding man than James Okoye. But when she told him...
"Sonia?" He prodded. Don't go all quiet on me."
"I-its about Kenneth."
"What about him?"
James voice had dropped to a lower register. Kenneth had been the ghost between them far too long for Jame's liking. Sonia was terrified of what this news was going to do to him, but she couldn't put it off any longer.
"H-he didn't die in the war, James."
As soon as she'd said those words, the silence on the other end was so eloquent with shock, Sonia didn't know if she could bear it.
When she'd been given that news, she'd gone into shock herself, unable to tell her inlaws what had happened on the cruise-that she'd accepted James Okoye's proposal and would be marrying him at the end of the year's first half, hopefully with their blessing.
She hadn't been counting on it ofcourse, because Kenneth's parents were still in mourning over their only son's death. She was well aware that they would have trouble allowing James into their grandson's life on a permanent basis, let alone accepting him as her husband.
But with one phone call, everything had changed, and her world no longer made sense. After six and half hours of soul-searching agony, it still didn't. She was in love with James, but she'd never stopped loving Kenneth.
The joy she'd experienced on hearing he wasn't dead, after all, that he'd be home in a few hours, was indescribable. Everything had taken on the properties of fantastic dream.
When her normally sober son, Divine, heard the news, he ran around the house making whooping noises, leaping in the air at odd moments - behaviour so uncharacteristic she barely recognised him - while she'd been in a sort of stupor.
Not until she could function well to carry her suitcases into the bedroom did thoughts of James intrude on her consciousness. Then she was overwhelmed by guilt. Consumed by it.
James was in love with her. And she adored him. She couldn't wait to become his wife. But Kenneth was alive! Her beloved husband who'd been missing in action and presumed dead. The husband she hadn't seen for seven years.
Jame's sharp intake of breath sounded like ripping silk. "So what are you saying? Is he a POW?"
"He was." Sonia couldn't keep the tremor out of her voice. She couldn't stand the thought of what Kenneth had been forced to live through.
"Was?"
"He's been released, a-and is on his way home."
"You mean to Ghana?"
"No. I-I mean he was in Ghana for debriefing, but that's over. The air force is flying him into Hart Airforce Base this morning."
Another ghastly silence.
"I'm coming over."
"No, James!" She panicked. "You can't!"
"Sonia-"
The anguish in his voice devastated her.
"There's no time, James. His plane is landing at nine-thirty this morning. As it is, Divine and I are going to have to rush to make it. His parents drove up there yesterday. They're meeting us at the base."
God forgive her for putting off this phone call until the last minute, but she didn't know any other way to do it. She dreaded the idea of causing James any more pain when he'd waited two years for her to agree to marry him.
"I don't believe this is happening. I just put my ring on your finger ten days ago. Sonia..." He cried in agony.
She reeled, clutching the headboard of her bed for support. The bed she'd shared with Kenneth for seven years. In eight weeks she'd be sharing Jame's bed. Now Ken was coming home....
"Will you be wearing it when you see him?" She knew it was anger that had made James lash out, anger and pain.
This was only the beginning.
"James" her voice shook as tears gushed down her cheeks "--you know how much I love you. You know it."
"Mom?" Divine hollered. "Hurry up! What if Dad's plane gets in early?" I want to see him come in!"
"I'll be right there," she called.
Divine was in shock, too. Euphoric shock. The kind only a thirteen-year-old boy could experience. A boy who'd just learned that his hero father, the man whose memory he'd always idolized to the exclusion of every other male, including James - especially James was alive.
To Divine, everything was so simple. His dad was coming home to be his dad again. Divine had huge plans for them, plans that toppled the foundation James had been carefully laying to reach some sort of understanding with her son.
One phone call had wiped out two years of work. Already James was a memory. No one could compete with Divine's flesh-and-blood father, who was coming home to stay. What more could one ask of life? End of story.
A groan escaped her throat. "I-I've put your ring in my jewelry box."
"And where are Kenneth's rings?"
She closed her eyes in fresh pain. "The same place."
"For how long?" He demanded, his voice fierce with hurt.
Dear God. That was a question she couldn't answer.
He murmured a few bitter curses, sounding as out of control as she felt. "I had no right to ask that of you. No right at all. But I'm warning you, Sonia. I haven't spent the last two years loving you, only to give up now. Remember that, even if you can't remember me after today!"
"James! I'm in love with you, darling. I swear I'll call you before the day's out. I swear it!"
"Don't make promises you can't keep."
"Have you so little faith in me?" She cried.
"Mom?" Divine opened the door of her bedroom and poked his head in. "Hurry up!"
She nodded, signaling that he should close it again and leave her some privacy. He frowned his impatience before the door clicked shut. He knew she was on phone with James.
"Lord, Sonia. This has nothing to do with faith and everything to do with the kind of marriage you and Kenneth once had. So let's not pretend."
She flinched from his bitterness. "I - I'm not pretending."
"Oh, hell, Sonia - "
"I have to go," she whispered.
"I know, and I'm being an insensitive bastard." She could hear the tears in his voice. "But I also know that the next time I see you, things'll be different. You won't be the same Sonia who finally made every damn dream of mine come true."
"I haven't been the same Sonia since I got that phone call," she admitted in a dull voice. "To be honest, I don't know who I am, James. Right now there's only one reality - I'm terrified."
"You don't know the half of it, sweetheart."
The line went dead.
