When History Repeats Itself

Prologue

** Kerry - Keke Palmer**

Prologue

My palms were sweaty.

Even with the air conditioning humming like it had something to prove, my skin prickled. We had been parked outside the gate for almost ten minutes. My father's fingers tapped a nervous rhythm against the steering wheel. Neither of us had said a word.

Inside the high white walls was the house I'd be calling home for the next two years at least. My father's house. His wife's house. Sumaya's house. Not mine. Not really.

Mum was somewhere in the clouds by now, halfway to London. I pictured her alone on that plane, probably crying quietly behind those oversized sunglasses she only wore when trying to hide her emotions. I was all she had left here. The thought made me feel guilty and abandoned at the same time.

I pressed my palms against my thighs. My dress had started sticking to me, even though the car was cold. Everything felt damp with nerves.

Sitting here, bags in the boot, heart in my throat, I tried to tell myself I was ready.

I wasn't.

But this was happening anyway.

My father turned to me. "You okay?"

I nodded.

A lie.

"I'm sorry we couldn't do this differently," my father said suddenly, not looking at me.

I didn't respond. Because what was the right way to do this? To move a seventeen-year-old girl into the home of her father's wife and their daughter—the child from the real family—because her own mother had gone off to pursue a degree in a country that didn't ask as many questions?

Sixteen years ago, I was born a secret. A complication. My mum was twenty-four and waitressing in a dusty bar on the outskirts of Accra when she fell in love with a man she had no business loving. A man who was already five years into his marriage with a military officer and raising a toddler.

She ran. Pregnant, scared, and convinced that keeping me away from that world was the only way to protect me.

I met my father when I was five.

That day, Grandma Lizzie told me we were going for ice cream. Instead, she drove us into a clean, gated neighborhood where the houses had roses and security guards and silence. We stood in front of a door I'd never seen before. When it opened, the man behind it blinked like he'd seen a ghost.

"Good morning," Grandma had said, her voice firm but kind. "I'm Lizzie Kerington, mother of Seli. This is your daughter, Kerington Effah. I know your wife and daughter aren't home. I'd like to have a word with you."

I didn't understand what was happening. But he did.

My father told me later that he knew instantly. He saw his own mother in my face.

That was the moment my life split into two: before he knew about me, and after.

The visits started slowly. Weekends in public places. Park meetups with Sumaya under adult supervision. The first time I was invited into their home, my mother cried like it was a funeral.

Aunt Jamila—because calling her 'stepmother' felt presumptuous and calling her by name felt wrong—was polite. She kept her distance. She didn't correct my father when he called me his daughter in front of guests, but I saw the way she avoided using the word herself.

I didn't spend the night there until she suggested it herself. One weekend, she asked my mother if I could sleep over. It was said casually, like it didn't take her weeks of internal debate to get there. Mum dropped me off, cried in the car before driving away, and left me standing in the foyer like a package no one asked for.

It got better. Or it appeared to. We found a fragile rhythm.

But Sumaya... she was different. At first she tolerated me. Then one day, she stopped. She didn't yell or throw a tantrum. She just said, quietly and clearly, that she didn't like me. I was thirteen. I didn't ask why. Some truths don't need explanations.

And now, here I was again. Seventeen. Grandma was gone. Mum was in another country. And I was here with a father who was trying his best, a stepmother who still wasn't sure what to do with me, and a half-sister who hated the sight of me.

I'd be starting school at St. Michael's, Sumaya's former school and a sacred rite for every woman in the Effah family. They thought that would help me settle in. Make me feel like I belonged.

I tried not to laugh.

But it wasn't all bad. I met Damien during visiting day—Sumaya's friend, law student, charming in that infuriating way that older boys are when they know they're good-looking. He introduced me to his sister, Alexa, who had a mouth like a machine gun and became my best friend within a week.

They were my escape when I started to unravel.

The pills began quietly. A leftover prescription. A little something from Aunt Jamila's drawer. Something to take the edge off the awkward silences and the tightness in my chest I couldn't name.

No one knew. Not Alexa. Not Damien. Not even Mum when we spoke on the phone and I assured her everything was "fine."

I was good at hiding.

Until Sumaya's twenty-first birthday.

I wasn't meant to be there. But Aunt Jamila insisted I come and even encouraged me to invite a friend. I brought Alexa. Damien was already on the guest list.

Sumaya ignored me the whole evening. Her friends pretended I was invisible, except when they couldn't help dropping snide remarks. I handed Sumaya a gift in private—something thoughtful, something expensive—and she muttered a half-hearted thanks and tossed it onto her bed without opening it.

I went looking for my pills and realized I'd left them behind. Out of desperation, I opened Aunt Jamila's drawer and took what I could find. I locked myself in the bathroom and sat on the cold tile floor, waiting for the relief to wash over me.

That's when Sumaya found me.

Her eyes flicked from the pillbox in my hand to my face. I expected her usual sneer. What I saw instead was panic. Pain.

She didn't say a word. Just knelt beside me, took the pills gently from my hand, and helped me to my feet.

The next morning, I waited for the judgment. For my father's anger. For exile. But it never came.

Sumaya gave me a choice: let her help me, or she'd tell my father.

No threats. No drama. Just a deal between two girls who had spent years pretending they weren't sisters.

I said yes.

And for the first time, she didn't look at me like I was a problem she couldn't solve. She looked at me like I mattered.