It was mid-December, and Teddy had just come back from school completely drained.
Not the kind of tired that a good night’s sleep could fix.
This was December tired.
The kind that came from spending the better part of the holiday being dragged from one relative’s house to another, smiling at people you barely remembered, answering the same questions in slightly different forms, and pretending you were genuinely interested in hearing about someone’s neighbour’s daughter who had just secured a job in the Republic of Bellara.
Every Christmas, it was the same.
Wake up.
Dress well.
Get into the car.
Visit relatives.
Eat.
Smile.
Listen.
Repeat.
And, if you were unlucky, somebody would bring out an old photograph album.
Teddy hated those.
Not because he disliked his relatives. He simply had no idea why every family gathering had to become an annual shareholders’ meeting.
“How is school?”
“Fine.”
“Which year are you now?”
“Second year.”
“Second year? Eish. Time flies.”
Then came the inevitable question.
“And after school?”
Before Teddy could answer, someone else would proudly announce it for him.
“He’s going abroad.”
The phrase was always delivered with the same satisfaction.
Abroad.
As if Teddy had personally discovered a new continent.
As if the family had somehow acquired diplomatic relations with Bellara.
Sometimes it was Bellara.
Sometimes the Kingdom of Lydora.
Sometimes the Republic of Varelia.
The country changed depending on who was telling the story, but the meaning remained the same.
Teddy was doing well.
Very well.
And his parents were determined that everyone should know it.
That was the thing about Christmas in their family.
It wasn’t simply Christmas.
It was a reunion.
A celebration.
A competition.
And, occasionally, a very well-fed public relations exercise.
His parents had always taken the season seriously.
For Tom and Joly, it wasn’t really about showing off.
Not entirely.
It was about proof.
Proof that all the sacrifice had meant something.
Every school fee.
Every extra shift.
Every missed family function.
Every evening Tom came home late.
Every time Joly had to handle the children alone.
They wanted to look at their children and know that the struggle had produced something.
Every man has a goal.
At least, most fathers do.
To raise children they can be proud of.
It is rarely spoken aloud.
It doesn’t need to be.
It sits quietly somewhere inside a man’s chest, growing alongside his children.
Tom had carried that ambition for most of his life.
His own childhood had been nothing like Teddy’s.
He had lost his father during the colonial days and was raised by his aunt.
The story of Tom’s father was one that had been told and retold so many times that, by the time Teddy heard it, it had become something between family history and legend.
His grandfather had not been an ordinary man.
He had been among the rebels who resisted the colonizers, a young man who believed that the land beneath his feet belonged to his people and that no foreign flag had the right to decide otherwise.
He disappeared one evening.
The colonizers had arrested him after discovering his involvement with the resistance.
He was taken away in chains.
For months, the family knew almost nothing about where he had been held.
Then came the whispers.
A prison somewhere beyond the hills.
Interrogations.
Beatings.
Long nights in a cell built for men the authorities wanted forgotten.
He eventually returned home changed.
His body carried the evidence of captivity, but his spirit remained stubbornly intact.
He had been imprisoned for resisting men who believed they owned the country.
And when he finally came home, he brought with him almost nothing except a few scars, a fierce pride and the determination to leave something behind for his children.
He worked as a mailman for the colonizers.
It was an irony Teddy’s father would later understand.
The same system that had imprisoned his father was now the system paying him to carry its letters.
But he took the work.
He needed to.
Over the years, he saved what he could and eventually acquired a small tea farm.
It wasn’t much.
A few acres of green hills, misty mornings and stubborn soil.
But it became the family’s first real piece of wealth.
Then tragedy came.
Tom was still young when his father died.
His aunt took him in.
She had very little, but she noticed something about the boy.
Tom was bright.
Curious.
Always asking questions.
The kind of child who wanted to know why the moon followed them when they walked home.
The kind who dismantled things just to understand how they worked, then discovered that putting them back together was a completely different skill.
His aunt decided that his mind would not be wasted.
The tea farm paid for his education.
Tom went to school.
Then secondary school.
Then university.
For a boy who had started life with almost nothing, university was not simply an achievement.
It was a door.
And Tom walked through it.
Eventually, he found a job at a major corporation.
Then another opportunity came.
Then another.
His salary grew.
So did his responsibilities.
And somewhere along the way, Tom made himself a promise.
His children would never wonder whether they would have a future.
They would have choices.
The best schools he could afford.
The best opportunities.
The things he had once watched other children have from a distance.
He would give them everything.
And he did.
Perhaps too much.
Tom worked.
And worked.
And worked.
By the time Teddy was old enough to understand what his father did for a living, he had already accepted that seeing his father at home during weekdays was something of a special event.
Joly carried most of the parenting by default.
She was young herself when the children came along, still figuring out motherhood while Tom figured out how to build the life he had promised them.
She handled school meetings.
Sick days.
Homework.
Uniforms.
Arguments.
Birthdays.
Lost shoes.
Broken toys.
And all the tiny disasters that come with raising children.
Tom handled the bigger picture.
Or at least, that was how they had divided the work.
He built the house.
She built the home.
And every December, when the family travelled to the village, Tom got his moment.
He had built a mansion there.
A huge white house standing above the surrounding homes, its walls catching the afternoon sun.
The villagers had named it before the family ever did.
The White House.
Teddy found the name hilarious.
“Next thing you know,” he once told Cara, “we’ll have security guards and a president.”
Cara had laughed.
Tom had not.
He was rather proud of the name.
Christmas was when the White House came alive.
Cars arrived.
Relatives filled the compound.
Children ran everywhere.
Aunts argued about recipes.
Uncles debated politics with the confidence of men who had never held public office.
Someone was always grilling meat.
Someone else was always looking for a missing child.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, Tom would sit back and watch.
His children were growing.
They were educated.
They were doing well.
His sacrifice had produced something.
That was what Christmas meant to him.
For Teddy, however, the holiday was becoming exhausting.
The endless handshakes.
The endless introductions.
The endless stories about how well everyone else’s children were doing.
He wanted one quiet afternoon.
One walk.
One moment where nobody asked him about school.
That was why, when the family finally reached the sharp corner near the gate, Teddy almost didn’t notice the woman walking slowly along the road.
Almost.
Something about her made his chest tighten.
He stopped.
He stared.
There was something familiar about the way she walked.
The tilt of her head.
The way she carried herself.
His mind hadn’t caught up yet, but his heart had.
“Isn’t that Sarah?” he whispered.
Cara was, as usual, glued to her phone.
“Huh?”
“I think that’s Sarah.”
Cara finally looked up.
“Sarah who?”
Teddy didn’t answer.
Because now he was sure.
Sarah.
His Sarah.
Well…
Not his.
Not really.
But once upon a time, she had felt close enough to be.
“Oh my…”
His father heard him.
Tom turned.
Joly followed his gaze.
Then she smiled.
Not the smile of a mother who had discovered something.
The smile of a mother who had remembered something.
“Yes,” Joly said.
“That’s your old crush.”
She paused.
“And in broad daylight.”
Teddy groaned.
“Mom.”
Joly laughed.
Cara looked between them.
“Wait. What crush?”
“Nothing,” Teddy said quickly.
Cara narrowed her eyes.
“No. No, no, no.”
“What?”
“You can’t say ‘Sarah’ and then ‘nothing.’”
“Cara.”
“Who is Sarah?”
“Nobody.”
Joly laughed.
“She’s definitely not nobody.”
Teddy looked at his mother.
“Thanks, Mum.”
Cara was now fully invested.
“Wait. Is this the Sarah?”
“What Sarah?”
“The Sarah you used to..”
“Cara.”
“..walk home with?”
Teddy froze.
Joly looked away, pretending to be fascinated by something outside.
Cara’s eyes widened.
“Oh my God.”
“There’s no God in this conversation.”
“There absolutely is.”
Teddy shook his head.
“Can we just go home?”
They did.
The car pulled into the compound, tyres crunching over the gravel.
Teddy got out before the engine had fully settled.
He grabbed his bag and headed inside.
Cara followed.
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“You liked her?”
Teddy kept walking.
“Teddy.”
“Cara.”
“You loved her?”
He stopped.
Turned.
“Go help Mum.”
She smiled.
“That means yes.”
He walked away.
The house was suddenly too quiet.
Teddy dropped his bag on the bed and stood there for a moment.
Then he looked out the window.
The road where Sarah had disappeared was still visible beyond the gate.
He could have left it there.
He should have.
Instead, he opened his suitcase.
For a man who had spent the afternoon complaining about how tired he was, Teddy suddenly discovered an extraordinary amount of energy.
He changed his shirt.
Then changed it again.
The first one looked too formal.
The second made him look like he was attending a job interview.
The third survived inspection.
He ran a hand through his hair.
Stopped.
Looked at himself in the mirror.
“You are being ridiculous,” he muttered.
He smiled.
Then grabbed his wallet.
He was going to find Sarah.
There was only one problem.
She was no longer on the road.
She had already reached her mother’s house.
Teddy knew where it was.
Of course he did.
He had spent half his childhood there.
Back then, before phones became extensions of people’s hands and before every location could be sent through a pin, you simply knew where people lived.
You knew which path Sarah took home.
You knew which river she liked.
You knew which tree had the best shade.
You knew which shop sold the freshest samosas.
You knew because you had walked there.
You had time.
That was the beauty of those days.
There was no “Where are you?”
You just went.
No “Send me your location.”
You followed the road.
No live updates.
No status.
No last seen.
If you wanted to see someone, you knocked on their door.
So Teddy walked.
The afternoon had begun cooling, and the village was settling into that gentle hour between day and evening.
Children kicked a half-deflated football near a dusty field.
Women sat outside their homes sorting vegetables.
A cow pulled lazily at a rope, entirely unimpressed by the movement of humanity around it.
Teddy reached Sarah’s mother’s house and stood at the gate.
For a moment, he hesitated.
Then he knocked.
A few seconds later, the door opened.
Sarah’s mother looked at him.
Her face lit up.
“Teddy?”
He smiled.
“Mama Sarah.”
She laughed.
“Look at you!”
She stepped outside and hugged him.
“Where have you been?”
“School.”
“School?”
“University.”
“Ah.”
She stepped back and looked at him properly.
“Come inside.”
Teddy smiled.
There had always been something about Sarah’s mother.
She had loved him.
Not in the way mothers loved their children’s friends because they were polite or because they helped carry groceries.
She had seen something.
Something Teddy and Sarah themselves were too young to understand.
Mothers have instincts.
The kind that do not require evidence.
The kind that notice a glance held half a second too long.
A hand that lingers.
A boy who suddenly remembers how to smile whenever their daughter enters the room.
She had seen it.
Back then, Teddy would arrive and Sarah’s mother would simply smile.
“Sarah is outside.”
Or:
“She went to the river.”
Or:
“She’s at the market.”
She never asked why he was there.
She already knew.
Maybe she had known before they did.
“Teddy,” she said, smiling, “you have really grown.”
“So have you.”
She laughed.
“Don’t start.”
He smiled.
“Is Sarah here?”
Her mother’s eyes moved over his face.
There it was.
That knowing smile.
“She just arrived.”
Teddy’s heart skipped.
“She is inside.”
Before he could respond, a voice came from the back.
“Mum?”
Sarah appeared in the doorway.
She stopped when she saw him.
For a second, neither spoke.
Then she smiled.
“You came.”
Teddy shrugged.
“I said I would.”
“You said you’d bring something for the kids.”
“I will.”
She smiled again.
“Come.”
He followed her.
And as they stepped into the fading light, Teddy found himself remembering those old days.
Before technology had made everyone permanently reachable.
Before relationships could begin with a message and end with a block.
Back then, if you liked someone, you walked.
You walked to the river.
You walked to the market.
You walked home after school even when home was the opposite direction from where you actually needed to go.
You walked because there was nowhere else you needed to be.
Sometimes Sarah and Teddy would spend an entire afternoon by the river, throwing stones into the water and talking about the lives they imagined they would one day have.
Sometimes they went to Kambe just to buy snacks.
Sometimes they had no money at all.
Teddy would still find something.
A few coins from his pocket.
A little from the savings he kept hidden.
Whatever he had.
He would buy her roasted maize, a samosa, crisps, sometimes sugarcane.
Nothing expensive.
Nothing impressive.
Just enough to make her smile.
He never told her that sometimes he went hungry so she could eat.
He never told her that he counted the coins before meeting her.
And she never asked.
That was love then.
It wasn’t grand.
It didn’t arrive in a bouquet.
It came wrapped in newspaper.
It smelled of roasted maize.
It tasted like cheap crisps.
It lived in long walks and longer conversations.
And somewhere between the river and the market, between childhood and adulthood, Teddy had fallen in love with Sarah.
He just hadn’t been brave enough to say it.
Now, years later, they walked together again.
And Teddy couldn’t help wondering whether some roads remembered the people who had once walked them.
Because somehow, after all this time, he and Sarah had found themselves on the same road again.