OUR CHILD

Chapter 3

THE LOCAL FARMER'S MARKET WAS packed as usual on the typical, late Friday afternoon. The crisp air and slowly setting sun made it the perfect temperature outside.

Customers emerged from shopping in waves, rolling their mostly full carts to their cars. Among them was a thin, green-eyed, wavy-haired brunette sticking out like a sore thumb as she walked with a family of brown-skinned beauties.

The Ogules.

Adiboye was a Nigerian, successful entrepreneur, who built his business from scratch purchasing, renovating, and reselling houses. He went to school for English and got a degree in it.

However, he decided to go into house flipping not even a year after graduating and hadn't looked back since. It had been seven years and he just passed his goal of seven hundred thousand dollars per year in net sales. The Ogules were very wealthy people.

Neither he nor his lovely bride, Valerie Ogule, looked a day over thirty, though they were both nearing fifty. They held hands as their kids, Ashara Ogule, and Adiboye Ogule Jr, called AJ, raced ahead of them, playing with Hailey, their adoptive daughter. Little Ashara was only seven years old, three years behind AJ. She had her mother's personality. Smart, classy, and fun. AJ was like his father. Smart, determined, and energetic. Their parents' minis.

Hailey pushed Ashara in their cart toward the car, laughing as AJ chased them.

"Hey, slow down," Valerie commanded, seeing a truck roll up to them on her left that stopped to let them pass in the crosswalk.

"Yes ma'am," AJ said, slowing his pace, but still trying to catch up with them.

Adiboye pulled out the key fob and instructed, "The doors are open. Put the food in the car."

For whatever reason, Adiboye liked to park as far away from the entrance as possible. When they first got married, Valerie was not a happy camper. She would ask him to drop her off at the front door and wait while he parked the car, what seemed like two miles away, and walked to meet her. She had since gotten used to it and just walked with him.

Though, occasionally, she would still have him to drop her off before parking if she were in a rush.

At the trunk of their luxury sedan, a smooth, black Maserati, Hailey pulled Ashara out of the cart and set her on her feet. The three kids moved the groceries into the trunk and closed it with the automatic button. Everyone loaded up in the car, and they headed home.

Hailey loved her blended family. But, of course, sometimes she got stares from confused or intrigued people, wondering how a white girl ended up with a black family.

She didn't mind the stares some fourteen years later at fifteen, well almost sixteen, years old. Her family was some of the most kind-hearted people that she had ever met, who cared so much about her. And that's all that mattered.

The Ogules had taken care of her as if she were one of their biological kids. The best schools, the best neighborhood, the best everything. If what happened when she was little didn't, then she may not have ended up with all that she had. She owed a lot to the Ogules, especially Valerie. Or as she liked to call her...mom.

***

Ten minutes later, they arrived in their neighborhood called the Echelon Homes. It was a gated community populated by upper middle-class people with exquisite homes and corresponding lawns that have graced magazine pages.

Adiboye pushed the button to open the main gate that was mounted on his sun visor and then they rode through the quiet streets. A few minutes later, they reached their two-story, six-bedroom home with dove grey brick and a gated, C-shaped driveway at the end of a cove. "Home sweet home," Valerie said as their gate opened, and they pulled around to the garage.