K#lling the Billionaire's Brother

Chapter 4| I will marry my brother’s wife!

It was morning and yet it felt not like it. They mourned. They mourned their son’s death. They gathered the same way they gathered for his wedding but only now, they clothed in black fabric and not in dazzling bright colours, they mourned instead of ululating with joy. They were many like that. Cindy was still in his blood. She moved not an inch, but stared into empty space. She felt the void already. But she mostly felt her loss.

The detectives went back later, when they felt she was ready to talk to them. They took out their devices. One detective held the recording device out for their voices and the other was jotting down notes. “They were in balaclavas, you say? Did they say anything, did you perhaps recognize any one of their voices?”

She, without much strength, shook her head.

“Did they say what they wanted exactly?”

Again, she shook her head.

Finally, Ben said, “Alright, that’s enough. You heard her from the start, she can’t remember everything.” He had been standing there to support her through the interrogation with the police. He felt that was the only thing he could do for her, given he could not save her husband. Ben managed to rid away the police allowing them to say their last words, “Call us if you remember anything you haven’t told us.”

Ben then took Cindy to her room. He watched her shut her eyes and doze off.

The funeral was five days later. Still Cindy had not been able to pack herself together. She remained like that for several days. Like a zombie. Everyone was starting to adjust by the tenth day of Nkule’s death. But to Cindy every day felt like the first day after his death. She spoke to no-one but only mumbled to herself, “We have a child. He is out there. He is crying. He wants his mama. No! He wants his daddy...”

They began thinking that she had gone mad. They would whisper among themselves. “She keeps talking to herself.”

“What child is she talking about?”

“She’s gone crazy.”

“We should take her to the looney.”

Ben was there to defend her honour, “She’s not taking my brother’s death well. She needs more time and she’ll be fine!”

This other day the mother, father, aunts and uncles were having a discussion. Ben was also there. An aunt said, “I think we should let her go. She’s young and pretty, she can still find herself another man to marry.”

The mother agreed. She helped the aunt debate the idea adding among many more words that, “It would be wrong of us to trap her here when she has a huge life ahead of her.”

It was the father’s turn, “Oh, poor girl. She seems to have dedicated her entire life to our son. She can’t even move on.” He said, “Maybe you are right. Setting her free may do her a lot of good, there is no more left for her here now.”

“No!”

They all turned to the sound of the attacking word and he adjusted his tone. He realised he had gotten their attention. He was Ben, “...Where will she go? To her father’s house? The same people that chuck her out like trash just for loving my brother whom they disliked for no reason? What would my brother say about that?” he shook his head to convey his message. “He won’t be happy with us.”

They saw the truth in his words.

“Well,” an uncle asked, “little Ben, what do you suggest we do, then?”

“I can step in for him,” he said. “If it means marrying his widow to carry out his family, I will do it! I just want to do right by him.”

The men and women were considering his idea. They gazed among themselves. Searching for an answer. That while, Cindy was on her bed rocking back and forth, her eyes fixed into space. She was left alone in her room.

It had been months. Her widow period was long over but she still insisted on wearing black. It was her plan to mourn him to eternity. She hauled the shovel from under the bed. She thought of how Nkule had given it to her. She loved doing the garden, he had gifted her the shovel and she loved it.

Almost as though suddenly possessed, Cindy matched her way out the gate carrying the shovel in her hand.