Winnie is numb. She cannot believe any of the things that have happened in the last two days. It is as though she is watching a movie, except that the movie is happening to her. She is the star of the story; the star in a very unfortunate story. What is she doing in a police cell? She has never hurt a fly. But now she is accused of murdering her very own husband. The man she loved with every fiber in her body.
Winnie suspects that her in-laws are behind her woes. Her mother-in-law, Mercy, and her sister-in-law Leah, have never accepted her as Harold’s wife. Their strong antipathy towards her is baffling. She has never wronged any of them, never been disrespectful, or done anything which, in her view, could have caused the animosity.
Winnie knows why they hate her, surprising as it is. Before she married Harold, she was a single mother of two boys. While Mercy and Leah are staunch Christians, they believe in stereotypes and are judgmental to the core. They were opposed to their son marrying a single mother right from the day they caught wind of the relationship. Winnie suspects that that is the real reason why they hated her from the word go.
They used to call her ‘Malaya’; Leah still does, though Mercy stopped after a confrontation with her son. Through all this, Harold stood by her and defended her. It helped that his father also supported the union. Richard, Harold’s father, was a reasonable man, and when the storm over the union was raging, he challenged his wife and children to give one reason why she, Winnie, would be a bad wife. They couldn’t give a reason, and so Harold was given his father’s blessing to go and pay dowry. Richard gave him part of the money that he used to pay the dowry.
What is interesting is that Harold is not Richard’s biological child. When Richard married her, Mercy was a single mother of one, but Richard accepted her with her then-five-year-old son. Leah is also a single mother; she has two children out of wedlock, reportedly by different fathers. So Winnie does not understand why they are so harsh to her simply because she got children out of wedlock.
*
Winnie’s children have the same biological father. She got into a relationship with a guy called David when she was in college, and she got pregnant. David denied the unborn baby and vamoosed. Since David had denied the pregnancy, Winnie figured that there was no point in forcing paternity on him. So when the boy was born, she crossed out the father’s part. Winnie was determined to raise her baby without complaining. Her parents supported her. They took the baby shortly after Winnie weaned him and urged her to go back to school, where she completed her diploma in catering. She got employed in a high-end restaurant as a waitress, and while her pay was not huge, she was making enough to support herself and her son, Chris.
Two years later, David resurfaced. He showed up at her workplace and told her that he was sorry for the way he had treated her and that he wanted to make it right for her. He wanted to be involved in his son’s life. He looked genuinely sorry, and so she forgave him. They started talking again, and soon they were lovers again. Before long, he moved into her apartment. He had lost his job, and so he had no place to stay. He had been ‘crashing’ in a friend’s apartment. Winnie opened her doors to him and they became a family.
But David wasn’t doing anything constructive with his life, other than just watching TV, eating, and demanding sex. He wasn’t even actively looking for a job, and he wouldn’t even pick Chris from the kindergarten. He was leeching on her, and she suspected that he was also sleeping with the house assistant she had hired to take care of Chris. She needed the help because her work had long shifts. And because she was away at work for long hours, David spent lots of time alone in the house with Isabella, the help. But she had so hated the tag ‘single mother’ that she didn’t want to lose David. She had a family, and that is what mattered.
Then she became pregnant a second time.
When the pregnancy started showing, she was fired from her job. Her boss wanted models for waitresses. With no income, life became difficult again. With no income, and without a job occupying her time, the first adjustment she made was to terminate Isabella’s employment. She could take care of her son herself and save money. That made David furious and they fought about it. But it was when she suggested that they move to a cheaper house that he got livid. He wanted her to find another job and maintain their lifestyle, but she reminded him that it was his job as a man to fend for his family. David disappeared again, after accusing her of cheating on him, and he disappeared again after disowning both Chris and her unborn baby. Isabella called two months later, claiming that she was pregnant for him and that he was not picking up her calls. Winnie hung up on her and blocked her number.
Winnie moved back to her parents’ house and gave birth to another son, whom she named Daniel. After weaning him, she started looking for a job again and found one in another restaurant, again as a waitress. The restaurant was owned by Harold.
*
The romance between Harold and Winnie evolved gently and subtly. It started as a friendship. Harold worked in an NGO and had hired a manager to run the restaurant. But he also had an office at the place and every evening he would pass by. Sometimes he even completed his work assignments from that office. He also spent most Saturdays at the place. While he didn’t work at the restaurant full time, he was quite hands-on and knew everything that happened. Whenever he arrived at the restaurant, he would take time to interact with customers and staff.
Something intrigued him about Winnie soon after she was hired; he later told her that it was her enthusiasm for life, her work ethic, and the patience and kindness she displayed to customers that attracted him to her. They got talking more and more often; every evening, after sharing pleasantries with other staff, he took more time chatting with her. They spoke about their lives, ambitions, and struggles. It started becoming clear that this was more than an employer-employee relationship. At some point, she told him that she aspired to be an accountant and that she had taken the catering course because someone had told her father that ‘it had market’.
Harold offered to help her take accounting classes. He enrolled her at KCA University and instructed the restaurant manager to give her a friendly schedules that would allow her to attend classes. Her closeness to the boss got her many enemies among the staff of the restaurant, as she was accused of sleeping with him to get favors. At that time though, there was no romance between them, although she had started developing feelings for him.
It was six months after she started school that he formally asked her to be his girlfriend. By then she had already told him that she was a single mother of two, and the boys knew him as ‘Uncle Harold’. They had become friends over time, and she had introduced him to the boys as her friends. Sometimes he picked them up on Sunday afternoon to take them to parks and other fun centers, but Winnie never tagged along. When he asked her to be his girlfriend, she reminded him that she was a single mother, and he said that he had no problem with that. He was ready to bring up her children as his own. Winnie agreed to be his girlfriend.
Harold’s sister Leah got wind of the relationship even before they made it public, and told their mother. Harold’s mother, Mercy, confronted her son about the allegations that he was dating a ‘loose woman’. Harold confirmed that he was dating Winnie, and firmly told his mother that ‘there was nothing loose about Winnie’. He told her that Winnie was the woman he wanted to marry. His mother flatly said that there was no way Winnie would be her daughter-in-law. Why would her son, who was well educated, handsome, and with a good job choose to marry the remnants of other men? Why couldn’t he get himself a pretty, God-fearing virgin? Why did he want to tie himself down with a prostitute?
Harold insisted that Winnie was the woman he wanted in his life, and reminded his mother that as a Christian she should not judge anyone by her past. He reminded her that she was not perfect either, but was where she was by the grace of God. Mercy never called Winnie a ‘prostitute’ again, but she opposed the union nevertheless. She threatened to boycott the wedding, but Richard calmly told her that he would be comfortably accompanied by his sister to hand over Harold to his wife in God’s presence. Eventually, she attended both the traditional wedding and the church wedding.
But the deep hatred for Winnie continued.
*
As a bachelor, Harold had been spending a substantial part of his income on his family. But after he got married, the amount he was spending on them reduced, as he channeled his income to his new family. He took Chris and Daniel to better schools. He also bought a piece of land and built his family home. He had been living in a rented one-bedroom house all along.
His mother wanted him to build his home on the ancestral land, but he refused. He saw the hatred his family had for his wife and chose to build a home elsewhere. His father understood and supported him, but his mother and sister claimed that it was Winnie who was inciting him against his family. It didn’t help matters when Harold turned over the management of the restaurant to her. It was confirmation, in Mercy and Leah’s view, that Winnie was running Harold’s life through witchcraft.
The final thing that was causing the animosity in the family was that Winnie and Harold did not have any children together in their thirteen years as a married couple. Chris and Daniel were the only children they had. Mercy and Leah spread rumors that Winnie had had her uterus removed in the “last of her series of abortions”. They insisted that her two children would not be allowed to inherit their son’s property.
In truth, it was their son who was unable to have children. After two years of unsuccessfully trying to conceive, Harold and Winnie visited a doctor and they were informed that Harold was suffering from azoospermia, which is the total absence of sperm in his semen. Unfortunately, after medical tests, doctors told him that his condition was not a result of blockage, which could be rectified, but was possibly due to genetic factors.
The diagnosis hit Harold hard, but Winnie stood by him, affirming his masculinity until he overcame the near depressive state. Harold had been an excellent father to Chris and Daniel before the diagnosis, and he became even more so afterward. This affection for ‘alien children’ infuriated Leah and Mercy even more.
Harold’s family is not poor. His parents were both secondary school teachers and they had done well for themselves, even before Harold got a job and gave them a push. While tapping into Sacco loans they had built a healthy portfolio of rental houses. Harold helped them establish a dairy farm with thirty cows after they retired, which brought in a decent income, supplementing their pension and rental income. Richard died five years ago, so Mercy runs the businesses with the help of her younger son Jediel. Harold doesn’t not mind. He also helped his sister Leah establish a tour and travel company that had been her dream.
But it is his youngest brother that Harold helped the most. Jediel had dropped out of school in form two due to a drug problem. He probably would have gotten lost in the streets, and probably even died young, but Harold took him to a rehabilitation center. After he completed the program, Harold took him to a polytechnic where he did a driving and mechanics course. Harold helped him get a job as a driver in a hardware store. His ambition was to be a matatu driver though. After he qualified to be a matatu driver, Harold helped him acquire a matatu and helped him get registered in a Sacco. Today Jediel has five matatus on the road and is the chairman of his Sacco.
*
When Harold was alive, Jediel stayed away from his brother’s affairs. He supported his brother’s decision to marry the woman of his choice. He always remained grateful to Harold for turning the course of his life.
But after his brother’s death, his mind was poisoned by his mother and sister and he turned against his sister-in-law Winnie.
*
Winnie knows that wealth is at the center of her woes. She knows that her in-laws are determined to make sure that she and her sons do not inherit Harold’s property. That is why she is being accused of poisoning him.
Harold did well for himself in the course of his life. The restaurant that brought him and Winnie together has grown into a chain with seven outlets. They have invested in apartments that they run as Air-BnBs. They also have a farm where they rear pigs commercially. They also have rental properties. Harold was focused on his career, where he had risen to be the Executive Director of a large NGO, and so left the management of his businesses to his wife. This did not make his mother and sister happy.
In addition to their savings and investments, Harold had also won a mega jackpot a week before he died. Harold was not a habitual gambler, but a recreational one. He liked putting small stakes on multi-bets to “test fate” as he often jokingly said. He never placed bets of more than five hundred bob, and all his bets were on stakes that promised mega jackpots. He has never won anything over the years, but last week it was announced that he had gotten a thirteen-game prediction correct and won two hundred million shillings. That is money Mercy and Leah would rather die than let Winnie touch.
*
A post-mortem has not yet been conducted, but all indications show that he was poisoned. Two days ago, Harold came home complaining of a stomach ache and declined food. He took a painkiller and decided to rest on the sofa. Barely thirty minutes later, he started frothing in the mouth. Winnie and Chris rushed him to hospital where he was declared dead on arrival. Barely an hour later, police came and arrested both her and Chris while they were still in hospital.
It was a Friday night, so they are still in the cells two days later waiting to be arraigned in court tomorrow. Chris is just twenty years old but he has already been branded a criminal; he is accused of killing the man he had grown up loving as his father. Eighteen-year-old Daniel, who was not at home when his father died, is the one who is organizing their defense. He has already hired a lawyer for them.
Winnie hopes she will be released on bond tomorrow so that she can attend her husband’s autopsy. She knows Mercy and Leah are wicked enough to bribe the doctor so that he or she can fake the results to implicate her. She knows that Mercy is wicked enough to send her to prison for a crime she did not commit.
What she is wondering is whether Mercy is wicked enough to kill her own son to keep his wealth. When Harold’s father died five years ago, there were rumors that he had fallen in love with another woman and that he had wanted to divorce Mercy. Mercy, the rumor continued, had had him killed to prevent him from humiliating her in such a way.
Winnie had never believed the rumor. But now, holed up in a dark and stinking police cell, she is beginning to wonder.
[THE END]
The next story in this series will be published on Friday next week but one. This coming Friday, I will publish the novella of the last series, Scarred from Birth. Kindly bear with me.
You can find the previous novellas HERE.
