Fiction : She left him when he needed her most

He was twenty seven, handsome, educated with a steady career, a house in Kigali and a caring family; in short he was the perfect bachelor, a guy every girl would die for. He was a reserved and God fearing man, he was the glue that held our family together. He was everyone’s favourite.But when it came to dating, he was really timid and choosy, he found fault with every girl. We wondered which kind of girl Chris would date. “I don’t want to see you here on weekends, you should be with your date not with us,” mum would tease him whenever he came to visit us. Dad sometimes also threw him a word of advice. “Son, you’re not getting any younger, it’s high time you found a suitor,” he would counsel. Among my many female friends who came to visit me at home, was Alice, a girl with a special case. She had hearing and talking disabilities (deaf & dumb). One weekend, she came to visit me. My brother Chris found her in the sitting room when I had gone to the bathroom and greeted her. In sign-language she tried informing him that she’s is deaf. He thought she was kidding. I confirmed it when I shortly joined them. Chris picked unusual interest in her. He even volunteered to escort her back to her home that evening, though he had no clue about sign language. It was astounding how they managed to communicate. In the days that followed, they met often and even started going out together. Unlike other guys who would feel uncomfortable keeping her company, Chris was proud of her. At first we perceived his attachment with her as an act of sympathy, but trust the old eye, mum noticed the ‘chemistry’ between them, they were inseparable. “Son, let me hope you know what you’re doing,” mum worriedly commented. Chris brushed it off with his usual humour. When he bought her a pricey phone, that’s when I started to smell a fish. The alarm went off in me. At first, I dismissed the feeling thinking that maybe I was just being envious, but I was thrown back when I confronted him and he confessed his love for her, the tone of his voice confirmed his seriousness. It came as a shock to all of us, mum cried for days, our brothers begged him to leave the chick but all in vain, no one could punch sense into him, he instead withdrew from us, he became more comfortable with Alice and her family. Whenever he visited us, we shed tears and begged him to stop the madness; he refrained from coming home, and despised everyone who talked disapprovingly regarding their affair. They moved in together and even gave birth to a cute baby boy. By this time, to some of us he was like a stranger, others had come to respect his choice. However, the arrival of the baby washed away my parents’ tears; they even started for her a business and formally welcomed her in our family. So far things were going so well, their kid grew to be a very handsome boy. One Sunday evening as Chris was from picking his wife from a hair saloon, they got involved in a head–on-collision. Chris had allowed his wife to drive yet she had no driver’s permit. One person died on the spot. However, Chris and his wife got off unscathed. He took full responsibility and claimed he was the one driving. He was subsequently thrown behind bars. We visited him regularly. To our astonishment, the wife visited him only during the first month and stopped. She would fabricate all sorts of excuses for not visiting him. “Just because your brother is jail doesn’t mean my life should stop”, she told me one day. She even started going out with other guys. We kept this from her husband. During Chris’s third month in prison, my sister-in-law got pregnant. How were we going to tell Chris? Some of us started dodging visiting him for fear he would sense something was amiss. We started sending his maid to visit him. When Alice heard that Chris was to finish his sentence in about a week’s time, she packed all her belongings, abandoned their home and went to her aunt’s home. Chris came back last month.“How could someone I loved so much treat me like this?” Chris said with misty eyes. “I sacrificed all I had for her. I deserted my family and friends for her but see what she paid me,” he lamented. The man, who made Alice pregnant, dumped her. Now she is at Chris’ home crying in the rain begging for forgiveness. Sometimes I feel the blame is on me. Hadn’t I brought Alice home, maybe Chris’s life would have taken a different route. Ends