“Yes,” said Kimmy with a broken voice. “We were born before you, in different times, but we were thrown away like garbage.”
“By who?”
“By her,” Adola corrected bitterly. “Bimbo. The woman who gave birth to us and tossed us into the river.”
“That’s a lie!” shouted Sod, trying to stand.
“It’s not,” said Kimmy, holding her. “Listen. We didn’t know either. But we were saved, separated, and after many years we found each other again, and we discovered the truth.”
“But how do you know?”
“She paid men to take us from the village when we were babies. She bought the silence of midwives, but she did not count on kind fishermen or elders who knew how to spot hidden evil.”
Adola stood up, trembling.
“She rejected us, hated us, and now—now she pretends you are all she has. You’re not an only child. You’re the third attempt.”
The world collapsed in silence around Sod. Her tears fell without her even noticing.
“Why? Why would she do that?”
Kimmy replied with sad tenderness, “Because we had marked faces. Because we were thin. Because we were not pretty enough. But she loves you now,” said Adola. “After God shattered her inside, after she saw how her own mistakes set her house on fire. But the love born of guilt does not erase abandonment.”
Sod dropped to her knees.
“I don’t understand. I just wanted to know who I am.”
The two sisters knelt beside her. The lamp flickered. The silence said more than words.
“Sod, you are our sister, and we love you,” said Kimmy, hugging her.
“We always knew one of us was out there,” said Adola, touching her hand.
In that simple hut, Sod cried like never before. But for the first time, she was not crying alone.
The following days felt like a sweet secret hidden in her chest. Sod began to meet her sisters in silence. They would see each other in a clearing near the river, hidden among trees and untold stories.
They laughed, sang, sometimes danced, talked about their childhoods, what they had suffered, what they dreamed of.
Sod felt alive.
“I thought I was a mistake,” she said during one of the meetings.
“No,” replied Kimmy. “You’re the missing piece.”
“And Mama—she’s not ready for that yet,” said Adola with a hardened look. “She had her chance.”
“But maybe one day,” Sod began.
“Maybe,” Kimmy answered. “But for now, let the truth grow in silence like a tree’s root.”
Sod nodded and looked toward the river nearby. The same river that had once nearly been her tomb. Now it was a bridge, a bridge between broken pasts.
And she knew the time for truth would still come.
But until then, she had something she never thought she would have.
Family.
That hot night, Bimbo opened the front door and saw her daughter standing on the porch, eyes wet, face calm like never before.
“Sod, it’s late. What is with that look?”
Sod stared at her for a long time, then spoke with a calmness more painful than any scream.
“I know everything, Mama.”
Bimbo’s soul froze.
“What are you talking about?”
“Kimmy. My sisters. Your daughters. The water jug.”
Bimbo dropped the jug she was holding. It shattered on the dirt floor. She stumbled back, grabbing the doorframe.
“No, no, it can’t be.”
“You threw us away like rotten yam, one by one.”
Bimbo dropped to her knees.
“Sod, please. No.”
Words would not come. Only sobs, moans, the sound of regret buried for years.
“I was young, foolish, so ashamed of how you looked. I thought… I thought no one would accept a mother of deformed daughters.”
“So you chose pride,” Sod replied. “And now you are harvesting silence.”
Bimbo crawled to her daughter’s feet.
“Forgive me for everything I did.”
She clung to Sod’s ankles as if afraid she would vanish in that instant.
Sod took a deep breath. Then she knelt and hugged her.
“I forgive you, Mama. Not for you, but for me.”
And in that moment, two generations of pain met in an embrace where crying was no longer punishment. It was relief.
“But Papa can’t know,” said Sod, looking into her eyes.
“He can’t,” Bimbo repeated, eyes wide with fear. “He already sees me as a mistake. If he finds out about this, he’ll never forgive me.”
“Then we’ll keep this secret.”
But truth is alive and knows how to wait.
In the days that followed, Sod, Kimmy, and Adola continued seeing each other in secret in an old forgotten barn in the hills. They laughed, they talked, they healed. The three, united by the same abandonment, were now being stitched together by acceptance.
And Bimbo watched from afar, like a ghost at the edge of her own story. She wanted to get closer, but she knew it was not time yet. She spent her nights awake, pacing, whispering prayers, sometimes yelling at God, other times crying into her pillow.
Then came a clear morning—too clear for what was about to happen.
The father came home from work earlier than usual. He found Bimbo seated at the table, her eyes lost.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” The question came dry.
She froze.
“What are you talking about?”
“Three. Three girls with your face—at the market, at the river, on the road home.”
He threw a cloth onto the table. It was a floral scarf, the same one Bimbo had sewn for Adola months earlier.
“I saw them. I followed them. I listened.”
His voice was low but lethal.
“You lied to me. Three daughters—three—and you made me bury one in the name of a lie.”
“I… I didn’t know how to tell you—”
“But you knew how to deceive me.”
Bimbo stood, trying to hold his hand.
“I repented. I changed.”
“Too late.”
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