CHORALE SANDERS

CHAPTER 25: FOUND

It had been a whole month since his encounter with Betty. She had stopped working at his company and he didn’t understand why. He hadn’t seen nor heard from her since the last time he was at her house.

That night was blurry. He couldn’t recall anything that happened. All he remembered was that, they had dinner and he didn’t leave her house till morning. Why? He didn’t understand. That morning when he woke up, he was sleeping on her bed while she sat in the couch. He needed answers but she wouldn’t tell him anything. She just asked him to get out of her house. He hadn’t heard from her since then and honestly, he was glad for that. He got himself another secretary, a man this time round.

After that night at Betty’s, Mama Rica didn’t speak to him. She’d always cook and made sure he ate but that was it. He did things intentionally to get her attention but she would just not mind him. Anytime it was 10 p.m., he’d pretend to be sleeping in the couch and she would go and wake him up to go and watch the late news. Every time he came back home from work and intentionally brought his shoes inside, she’d just pick them up herself and send them outside. And always when he finished his juice, he’d intentionally leave his glass in the sink and she’d just wash it, instead of asking him to wash it like she normally would. He knew it was because he didn’t come home that night even though he told her he would. She had told him she waited all night for him and even the potatoes she had fried for him, became cold and hard. She was doing all this because she was scared Kay would forget Chorale. It was only when he told her one day that Betty no longer worked at his company that she started talking to him.

Dwayne had been calling Kay to find out if he had heard any news about his daughter, all the time he had answered in the negative and he could feel the older man was hurting. He didn’t like that. Even the strong woman, Agnes, was now looking so miserable at the loss of her daughter. Anytime he visited their house and saw her like that, it broke his heart.

Valerie was due to get married this month. She and her boyfriend, Liam, had planned everything for the end of this month but with her sister missing, Valerie had had to postpone the wedding to a later date. She said she wanted her sister to be home before they’d continue with the wedding plans. Even Derrick, the toughest one amongst them was failing at hiding his pain. He was in his final year in high school, in a boarding school. Chorale left when he was home for holidays. He had gone back to school and was now on vacation again, but still no sign of his sister. Kay’s heart broke anytime he went to their house. Dwayne had lost hope in the Police now. It had been three months and they had still not heard anything from them. One day he was at their house to visit them when Dwayne angrily called the IGP to drop the case. He didn’t give any reasons and then he hang up. Kay assured them he would find their daughter and sister, his girlfriend.

He hadn’t heard from Caleb in a long while. He guessed the case with the family in Kumasi was probably taking all his time. Anytime he called his number, he either got disconnected or it went straight to voicemail. It had been going on for close to two months now and he was worried.

Caleb’s job put him in danger so many times. Sometimes he had to work with guns, and armed men and that bothered him a lot because he personally didn’t like guns. At least, not anymore.

At an early stage in life, around when they were teenagers, he and Caleb had had some anger issues and that caused them to be in trouble a lot of times. And to help defend themselves, they had contracted a professional gunman to teach them how to use guns and other weapons. For Kay, after some time, when he was older, he lost interest in using the weapon but he still kept some with him. Chorale always got scared when she saw guns. As for Caleb, he had grown to be an expert. He shot expertly and never missed his targets, even from a long distance and he could use so many other weapons too.