The morning air felt unusually still in the Raymond home. A thick silence hung between the walls like a fog, disturbed only by the faint ticking of the clock mounted above the living room doorway. Beatrice sat on the edge of the cream leather couch, legs crossed, tapping her fingers anxiously on the glass table. Her eyes darted toward the front door every few seconds.
She was waiting.
And her patience was hanging by a thread.
Then, finally, there was a knock.
She stood quickly and opened the door to find Esau, the private investigator she had hired weeks earlier. He was dressed in a checkered shirt, holding a brown envelope, his expression unreadable.
"I told you I'd get something clearer," he said as he stepped inside.
Beatrice shut the door and walked swiftly to the couch. "What did you find?"
Esau sat opposite her and opened the envelope. He pulled out a printed A4 photo—this time, perfectly sharp and clear.
The moment he laid it on the table, Beatrice's breath caught in her throat.
She stared at the image as though the air had been sucked out of the room.
A teenage girl, standing in a school compound—Orbit International High School—smiling faintly, her school sweater tied around her waist. Her hair was neatly plaited back, her posture poised. But what made Beatrice's fingers tremble was the face.
It was familiar. Too familiar.
Beatrice's hand moved to pick up her glass of juice, but before it could reach her lips, it slipped from her shaking fingers and crashed to the floor. The glass shattered, juice spilling across the tiles like a slow, crimson wound.
Her chest rose and fell as she whispered, "No… It can't be."
She bent slowly, staring at the photo once more.
That face.
It looked like hers.
It looked like her mother's.
It looked like… Zaria.
But it couldn't be. Zaria was in Hilltop town, far away. That chapter had been closed long ago. That child had been forgotten—buried under years of excuses, denial, and guilt.
Beatrice stood up abruptly, her heart hammering. She paced the room, hands clutching her elbows as if trying to hold herself together.
"Do people look that alike?" she muttered to herself. "Maybe she just resembles… No. No, it can't be her."
She spun around and stared at Esau. "Where did you take this picture?"
"At Orbit International. Yesterday morning," Esau replied calmly. "Same girl you've been asking about. She's always with your husband and son. They seem close."
Beatrice pressed her fingers to her temples, breathing heavily.
What if it was her?
What if the girl Sally was protecting, checking on, smiling with… was the very child she had abandoned over a decade ago?
The thought made her feel like vomiting.
Still pacing, she turned to Esau again, this time her voice lower, more serious.
"Can you investigate the family of that girl?" she asked. "I want to know where she comes from. Her background. Who's taking care of her. Everything."
Esau gave a slight nod. "Give me a few days. I'll find out everything."
Beatrice nodded slowly, though her mind was spinning out of control.
After Esau left, she shut the door and leaned her back against it. The photo now sat on the table, staring at her like a ghost that had come back to haunt her.
She slowly walked back into the bedroom, closed the door, and began pacing again. Her heart wouldn't rest. Her soul wouldn't stay still.
She kept glancing toward the photo.
Her eyes stung with emotions she didn't understand—fear, anger, maybe even guilt.
She paused in front of the dressing mirror and whispered to her reflection, "No. You can't be the one. I sent you far away. You're not supposed to be here. Not in this city. Not in this house. Not in my life."
She turned away sharply.
Her mind was now a storm of memories. Zaria crying as a child. Her tiny hands holding torn notebooks. The way she had always waited for a reply to the letters Beatrice never answered. The letters she had torn up without even reading.
Beatrice clenched her jaw.
"If you're really the one I think you are," she said quietly, "then you've come back to destroy everything I've worked for."
She walked to the bed and sat down, her eyes still wide with disbelief.
"You don't know how far I've come to stay in this marriage. You don't know what I've done. The lies I've told. The life I've built with my bare hands."
She whispered again, her voice trembling, "I won't let you take it from me."
---
Outside, life continued as normal. Children played along the roadside. Music played faintly from a neighbor's house. But inside the Raymond home, a storm was brewing.
And somewhere in Entebbe, Zaria sat quietly at her school desk, unaware that the woman who had once cast her aside had finally seen her face again.
Unaware that her identity—her very existence—had just cracked the walls of a long-held lie.