The Runaway Bride

Episode 22

Chinwe walked with slumped shoulders to the car, where her husband was waiting patiently for her with his father, she had stayed some few moments more to say farewell to her mother-in- law who was disappointed they would not be staying to eat.

“Can you give me a lift to my parents’ place?”

“Okay, but why would you like to go there”

“I just need some space to think”

“If that is your reason, then you can think all you want in our house, we still need to talk”

“Tokunbo, please, this is not easy for me”

“And you think it is for me? If there is anyone who would like to be alone right now to think some things through, then I should be the one, I have been abandoned, ridiculed, disbelieved by the woman I have come to love and it is so heart breaking, but you know what? I don’t know how to hide and run from
my challenges, so I won’t be able to do so now. We still have to live together, at least till the result comes out. However, I still get this feeling that you still do not believe me and if that is the case, then give me this 1 week.”

Chinwe could not find her voice and before he finished speaking she started crying, her tears were falling so heavily that she looked as if she was sweating around her neck.

Tokunbo looked at her and pulled out his
hanky and placed it on her thighs, this
seemed to have made her cry harder.

He did not know why she’s crying but he would love her to stop, she could fall sick from too much crying. And for some reason he would like to know what else she could be keeping from him because it seemed there were more.

When they got home, he walked beside her to their room and asked her to get some sleep, when he came back some minutes later, he found out that she was still crying.

Tokunbo placed a call to Chris to ask him for the tablets he used on him when his wife ran away, he directed him to a part of the cabinet in the room. Seconds later, Tokunbo dissolved the tablet in a cup of water for Chinwe.

She took the water from him with teary eyes and drank up.

He was glad to watch her doze off some
minutes later; he sat beside her and wiped
her face with a moist hanky. Tokunbo just
could not bring himself to be upset with her, maybe later or some years to come, but definitely not today, not the way she looked now, fragile, beautiful and broken, and definitely not after that night at the hotel.

He called his father and asked him if he could still get a week off work to which he agreed.

He set some plans in place as he waited for the results to come. All he needed to do was to follow his plans through and wait.

---

Chief Ajayi drove out of the house without
wasting time to tell his wife where he was
headed, he drove straight to the family
hospital, the same place his son had visited earlier. He went without any formalities to the office of the doctor that did the sample collection.

“Ah, Chief, what brings you here” Dr Kunbi looked up from the file in front of him and stood up to shake hands with his guest.

“Good to see you too, I just want to pay you a visit”

“Are you feeling well?” he asked without wasting time, knowing fully that he was joking about the visiting part, men like this don’t pay him a visit unless something is wrong.

“I am well; I would just like to ask about the test my son and some 2 other people came here to do this morning”

“Well, that is between them and the
laboratory, you don’t expect me to give you any information on that, do you?” Dr. Kunbi smiled professionally as he relaxed back in his seat..

“Have you sent it already?”
“chief, this is a patient’s…”

“Forget that confidentiality, all I want is to be included in the test, he is my son, so.”

“so, you have to buy your own test kit and bring the person you want to confirm his paternity to us here and you fill the forms, fill the reply route and we send the samples to them.

My job is to sell the kit and send to the
lab the samples”

“So there is nothing you can do?”

“Absolutely none. Wait for the result to come and if your son wants you to know the results he will tell you. I don’t even get the result unless he brings it to me to interpret for him; which would still be confidential”

“I am not after the result, I just want to know if Tokunbo is my son.” Ajayi could not hold it in any longer.

---

There he got it off his chest, his suspicions
have left him restless since the little boy
walked towards him in the house some hours back, he trusts Tokunbo and believed him when he said he is not the father of that little boy; but what father could forget the face of his son while growing up.

The resemblance is just too much, the birthmark is the least of what he saw, the teeth, the way he walked,
the eyes and even his stature. Everything just points to just one fact, no make that 2 facts; Tokunbo is either not his son or he is the father of that boy.

When all he had to say would not change the doctor’s mind, he pretended to have some other issues he wanted to complain about, but Kunbi knows him too well and told him he needed to rest. He wrote him some pills that could be bought over the counter and sent
him home with a pat on the back, reminding him to take it easy.

When he got home, he walked to the sitting room and one of their staff came to welcome him.

“Where is my wife?”

“She’s in the kitchen sir”

“Doing what?”

“Cooking sir”

That made him more suspicious, since
Tokunbo announced that they had gone for DNA test, his wife had gone quiet compared to her normal self and the antagonist stand she was against the young lady. She had been acting nervous, asking him what he would love her to prepare for him.

Well, it is not that she did not use to do that, but when she cooked for him, it would be on his birthday or they were expecting guests.

She would rather stay in the kitchen and
supervise the meals than do the cooking
herself.

Not that he blamed her, he is not a great
eater, he wastes more than he eats and that could be discouraging for the person who makes the food. They have been married for 32 years and known each other too well.

She knows him too well and he could say the same about him of her.

They met when he was about to finish his University degrees at the University of Ife. They started dating.

She being an indigene of the town. She was running a diploma program in one of the colleges. He had asked her to be his girlfriend surprising his friends who had lost hope on him finding a girl before leaving school.

When he introduced her to them, they had been shocked at his good choice and luck.

She was so lovely and well groomed. They called her good pedigree. Most of his friends were envious of him. When he finished his university degree, he was posted to Kaduna for his NYSC and she started a program at the University of Ibadan. He went for his masters
immediately in the UK, hoping to give her
more time to go further in her education
before tying her down with marriage.

He had planned to marry her after her NYSC but things did not work that way as they married in her third year in the University.

Immediately he returned from the UK, his
parents had informed them they were not
getting any younger and but mounted
pressure on him to get married. He got
married her eventually.

He has come to know her by listening to her, watching her and patiently listening to her, but one thing he knows too well about his wife is that, when she is nervous, she cooks.