To a new beginning!

Chapter 1

Susan Henshaw looked up from the back seat of the chevrolet truck and sighed when she saw traffic building up. She closed her tablet and took off her reading glasses. She leaned back and closed her eyes.

The call from Home had been so sudden and short noticed that Susan had to take work with her, and she was so thankful to have had something to do on the long flight home, it was a nice distraction from the reason she was back in Nigeria after almost fifteen years. She shook her head as soon as the thought crept in.

"Sammy how long till we re home?"

The driver that had been sent to pick her up from the airport , a short sturdy man with a nice smile, offered her a sympathetic look from the rear-view mirror

"Sorry madam, we should be home in 15 minutes max, eh, no offense ma, but you look really tired".

Susan gave a little smile. "None taken. i am jet-lagged."

"Eyaah, sorry madam. Once this traffic clears and we take the next turn, we don reach be that".

It was almost dusk on a Friday, Susan thought, of course its a perfect day for a nightlife, the traffic shouldn't be surprising. Lagosians love their streetfood, Susan mused as she glanced out the window to see various food and snack vendors lined up on the streets with a lot of customers buzzing around them.

The friday night stream of traffic that rolled by was probably on its way to clubs and parties.

On a night like this, her father would have few of his friends over for a bottle of Irish whiskey and peppered suya or barbecued fish. Nights when her mother would dress up and look beautiful for their  guests. Those were the nights are parent ever acted like a real couple, dancing and laughing together in a way that made her young self all giddy inside just by watching them.

Other nights her mother was just drunk shitless and passed out in her room.

   Susan set her mouth in a grim line. Those were the nights she wanted to forget but couldn't seem to.

  Nights when her mother broke her promise over and over again.

  I'm sorry baby, i didn't mean to get so drunk. This will be the last time, mommy won't drink so much anymore.

   But she did. And it only got worse. Susan thought bitterly.

Somedays she looked at Susan like she was the best thing in her life and somedays she didnt see Susan at all.

    She'd even believed and was pretty convinced her mother loved her, when she was sober, she paid attention to her and was always genuinely interested when she talked about school, homework and friends.

   But that belief and conviction shattered when she left without a word and never came back. 

    For the first few years, Susan completely blocked her mother and her memories from her head. Refusing to feel anything, acting like it hadn't left a big gaping hole in her life.
  
   That had been a grave mistake, Susan would later learn, when she had a mental breakdown suddenly at seventeen. Always angry, erratic, unreasonable and sad all the time.

  And it had taken two years of therapy to deal with the feelings she'd tried to suppress, to acknowledge her mother's abandonment and how it had affected her mentally.

And she was still dealing with it.

  She knew her mother was alive, her father had made sure to find that out, when she needed that information to process her feelings. To know if she could finally come to terms with the fact that her mother simply hadn't wanted her or loved her.