Sinners And Saints III

Epilogue.

"Is this on?"

She fondled with her phone to get it in the right position on the tripod stand for a minute, even though her hands kept trembling as she did. She took a step back to look at it, to check it first before she hurried to to the chair in front of it. She let herself sit in it as quickly as she could before her legs started to fail her.

She stared at the camera for a second and let herself smile so brightly. She waved a bit before she raised her napkin to her mouth and coughed into it gently. She lowered her hands from her mouth and smiled again.

"What did I even set this phone up for?"
She chuckled at the realization of how lost she was about what she was trying to do in the first place. It felt really embarrassing too, just sitting there in front of a camera like that. She cleared her throat again and frowned when she lowered her gaze to the napkin she was fondling with. Somehow, it reminded her of the realization that she didn't have enough time to play around. She could feel how her throat was still so sore from coughing every three minutes and even though she could feel a piercing pain in her chest and belly, she managed to ignore it. She knew she could only do it for so long.

She had gone paler than ten minutes ago, it looked like the poison in her system was finally kicking in harder than she had calculated. Sommadina shifted uncomfortably in the chair she was sitting in and left her focus on the plan she had established.

"I thought I had more time with you all but it looks like  I'd be lucky if I last another twenty minutes." She said as her hands trembled on the cloth she held. She found a way to toughen her stance and take in some strength from what she had reserved. She inhaled sharply to fight the pain in her belly that had intensified and then exhaled again.

"To my beautiful children," she cleared her throat just as she reached for the piece of paper on the chair beside her to look at the note she had written down.
"By the time you find this message, I'm afraid that I wouldn't be here anymore."
She froze,

Just what was she doing? Why was she suddenly being so dramatic about dying like it wasn't her choice? Was she really going to record this? Record herself making the most useless speech she had ever heard? Just what was her recording supposed to do for them? Was it going to make them feel any better about the choice she had made? About all the choices she had made?

They said at one's dying moment, just before their last breath, they'd start to relive their lives, all the years they lived in ten seconds. Hers took more than ten seconds, and it came with a lot of pain too.

She slowly turned to the chair beside her and dropped the paper back on it. She turned back to the camera but this time, she couldn't bring herself to face it. She thought she could make a recording without being overly emotional but she was wrong. She couldn't bear it, she couldn't help herself. She could already feel her eyes wetting and the drops of tears that had fallen on her fingers from them.

What could she possibly say to them? How was she ever going to explain to them how she chose him over them again? How she chose to die with him over them? How was she going to explain that she did it for them without sounding like the most selfish person on earth? Was she going to apologize for the life she lived so far? Were they going to understand if she did? Were they going to forgive her if she did?

Pathetic. She was truly pathetic.

She didn't understand it before but she did now. All she ever needed was her children. She thought she needed Randal to keep her family whole but she didn't. She was too focused on trying to protect her family, that she didn't even realize how much she had destroyed it with her own hands.

She regretted it.

All her life, she regretted it now. She should have chosen the life her father had designed for her, maybe if she had just married Okezie as her family wanted, only her would have had to be miserable. Maybe if she had gotten married to someone she didn't love, she wouldn't have cared so much about earning his love, maybe then, only her children would have mattered to her. If she had done that, maybe she would have only been the miserable one in her marriage. She should never have prioritized her happiness first, more so, she should have stopped her father from forcing them into a marriage when he found out that she was pregnant. She should have known that she could have never eaten her cake both ways. She could have fought harder on her own but it was beyond that. Her choice to get married to Randal was beyond the love she had for him. She made that choice for him, to protect him from her father. He was a nobody and she knew that that hurt her father's pride even more. It gave him a reason to do away with him in the snap of a finger.