The next morning, the rain was gone, but Amara felt it in her chest — that familiar ache that came after something beautiful, like a dream fading too fast. She sat at her kiosk, her hands busy with dough, but her eyes kept scanning the road for Dimeji.
He didn't come.
Not that day.
Not the next.
By the third day, Amara was no longer just curious — she was worried. She closed the kiosk early and walked the path through the banana trees again. The old wooden house looked even lonelier now, wrapped in silence. She hesitated, then knocked.
No answer.
She pushed the door gently. It creaked open.
Inside, the air smelled of turpentine and time. Canvases leaned against every wall. Some finished. Some half-touched. And then she saw it — his sketchbook on the table.
Her fingers hovered over it, trembling. She knew she shouldn't… but her heart overruled her mind.
She opened it.
Page after page, there she was — laughing, crying, smiling in ways she never knew she did. But then, in the back pages, something else: a different woman. Older. Regal. Tragic.
She was painted in dark, haunting colors. Beneath her portrait, a name: "Mama Ife — gone, but never gone."
And then the last page — a letter. Half-written. Smudged with something that looked like rain… or tears.
> "Amara, I see her in you. Not just her face… but her fire. I've been afraid to care again. To feel again. Because the last time I did, it destroyed me. But you... you're different. You remind me that pain can bloom into something gentle. Something… beautiful. If you ever read this, it means I'm not brave enough to tell you myself. Not yet."
Amara closed the book gently, tears gathering in her eyes. She understood now.
Dimeji wasn't running from her.
He was running from the past — and maybe, just maybe — she could help him stop.
Suddenly, she heard a noise behind her. She turned — and there he was, standing at the doorway, eyes wide, heart exposed.
"I… I didn't mean to pry," she whispered.
"I wanted you to see it," he said. "I just didn't know how to let you in."
She walked up to him, slowly. "Then let's learn. Together."
He reached out, gently brushed a strand of hair from her face.
And for the first time, the silence between them wasn't heavy — it was hopeful.