The Bridge|| Completed✓

8|•

Sunday Surprise 🎉 You're welcome ;) Unedited chapter but kindly make do.

maramartha this is for you girl. I loooove your comments ❤️❤️
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"You were talking about moving in with your grandma," she supplied.

"How helpful," he drawled and then sobered up, as he continued his story.

"I got better when I was with her. She didn't know the full extent of my suffering, but she helped me in her own way. I wrote my terminal examinations while under her roof and I stayed with her for the rest of that summer. Before cruel old fate struck again.

"She found out about my knack for art. All the drawings I made and stuff. So she encouraged me. Bought me my first paint set and taught me to channel all my angst and pain into art.

"I threw myself into it and I completed so many artworks that year. I was a beginner but it was clear that I had a talent for art, my grandma had always sworn.

"Being the influential, highborn woman that she was, Grandma Mae offered to help promote my art but I declined. I was still self conscious and didn't think it was any good.

"She respected my wishes but I must admit that her praises made me feel good. That was the one thing she recognised that I lacked: attention.

"She tried extra hard to make up for the deficit and paid attention to even the littlest things I did or said. I always played it off like it was annoying to me but I secretly loved it. And she knew too, but she never said anything to confront me."

"This was before the worst happened. We were three that lived in her house, minus Mallam Abu, the gateman and Uncle Kunle, the driver. It was me, Grandma Mae and Bilikis, the young housemaid. She refused to use her driver most times but on my insistence, she let him, come around more often.

"I had gone out for a walk that evening. Long walks always helped me to clear my head a bit, whenever the demons were being particularly vicious.

"That day though, my mind was more unsettled than the usual and a strong sense of foreboding tugged at me. So I cut my walk short and went back to the house only to meet commotion.

"A hysterical Bilikis kept repeating that Lady Mae, as she liked to be called by her employees and everyone else, had fainted. To cut the long story short, she had a partial stroke and was only lucky that we got her to the right hospital in time."

Her gentle gasp was expected, since that seemed to be her go-to reaction, from what he had noticed.

"She stayed in the hospital for a while so I had no choice but to go back to my parents house, no matter how much I detested it. I couldn't add looking after to me to her troubles.

"Did she survive it?" she asked.

His full lips curled up slightly as he answered: "Yeah, she did. She was lucky so there was no damage to her brain. She did have to go through physiotherapy for a while before regaining full function of one of her hands and legs. She's still alive, up till now." His smile faded once he remembered his sweet grandma.

Writing his farewell letter to her was one of the hardest things to do. He didn't mention outrightly that he was going to kill himself but he just prepared her for the worst.

He knew she would be gutted by his news, hysterical even and he hoped, no, he knew that she was going to get over it. She was tough after all. Mae McCarthy was not really an emotional woman. For her, it was logic over emotions.