What Remains

I wonder what Mike would like for dinner. Maybe I can surprise him with his favorite. 

Tonight needs to be special. I want him to feel like the only man in this whole wide universe, for all he has been to me. We aren’t celebrating anything in particular. We are celebrating life. The kind  that feels earned. The type that shows up after you have been broken. 

My hair is freshly styled, parted down the middle, framing my face in a way that makes my features stand out. I am wearing my bold red lipstick, it that makes a statement without any apology. I am wrapped in a red silk dress and a scent he always eats up. 

I catch my reflection in the mirror. A beautiful, well-groomed woman looks back at me. I am feeling myself tonight! 

Mike has been away on a business trip all week and I can't wait to surprise him tonight.

I am finishing dinner when I hear the door. “Mike, did you forget your keys?” I call out as I walk towards the door. 

Two men stand at my front door. Black jackets. Badges clipped to their waists. Police.

“Are you Ashley Cole?” 

“Yes, I am” 

They ask to come in. Ask me to sit. 

My palms are damp. My throat tightens; there is a big painful lump. My heart drops before they say  a word. 

“There was an accident,” one of them says. “I’m sorry. Your husband, Mike, didn’t make it.” 

The room becomes blurry. My body falls to the floor. Everything goes black. A sound escapes from me, a scream I am terrified to ever hear again. 

_______________________________________________________________________________

It has been one week since Mike left me and the children. 

My beautiful man. The one God handpicked and wrapped carefully to gift me, Ashley Adunni Cole. Mike was the love of my life. I know nothing will ever be the same. 

My younger sister, Bose, arrived the night we got the news and hasn’t left since. I hear her before I  see her, moving through rooms, answering the children, keeping the day from falling apart. Some days, her presence is the only thing keeping me sane. 

The children are home too, but I can’t bring myself to sit with them. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to be their comfort when I can’t find my own.

Most days, I stay in bed for as long as I am allowed. Time slips past me. Funeral plans. Family traditions. I let them remain untouched. 

“You need to get up,” Bose says softly. “The children are asking for you. Aunty Sade & Daniel will be here by noon, it is already 11:00am” 

Sade and Daniel are Mike’s siblings. They became mine the day I married him. I get out of bed. I wash my face and try to look like a woman who still belongs in this world. 

________________________________________________________________________________

The years before I met Mike were hard.

There’s a saying about rock bottom, that once you hit it, there’s nowhere else to go. I was beneath it. Not in a way people could easily see, but in a way that felt permanent, like something heavy pressing me into the ground. 

At 35, I was stuck in a dead-end job managing a fast-food restaurant and was a university dropout. Renting a room in a 4-bedroom townhouse with students young enough to call me aunty. I kept my distance from my family and honored them with news that I was alive and healthy. I couldn’t  survive their judgment. 

As the first daughter and second child, I somehow became the black sheep. Every phone call came with advice I didn’t ask for. My only priorities were staying clean, paying rent, and feeding myself. I wasn’t living. I was just existing. 

Shame followed me everywhere!

There was a time when I was full of life. The girl with the big afro that sat like a crown. Sometimes  braided. Sometimes dyed. I had big dreams and wanted to see the world. I was the life of the party. I was top of my class, even when I partied too much. 

I told myself weed wasn’t a problem. It’s just weed, I used to say to my older brother, Tade.  Sometimes I experimented with other things, but weed was my comfort. Weed and other things, but the consequences caught up with me. 

One night, at a party, I took a few puffs from a rolled joint. I didn’t know it was laced. I woke up in a hospital bed with tubes in my arm. Tade sat beside me, half asleep in a chair. “You’re awake,” he said. “Thank God.” 

I promised myself I would stop. I didn’t. 

By my final year of university, I had been to rehab 3 times. I stopped going to class. Eventually, I  dropped out. Every relapse confirmed what I already believed - that I was a failure.

Years passed. I got clean. I stayed alive. And I accepted that merely existing was the punishment I  deserved. 

On my 36th birthday, something shifted. I realized I had orchestrated this life, wasting opportunity,  wasting love, hiding in shame. 

So I joined a gym. And a book club. I needed community. I needed air. 

That’s where I met Mike. 

He was kind. Tall. Caramel-skinned, with big arms and gentle eyes that paid attention. He loved  books the way I did, and he wanted to know me, not the version I edited, but all of me. 

We walked. We talked. We sat in cafés across the city, losing track of time. Conversations came easy, but so did silence. The comfortable kind. The kind that pulls you closer without asking. 

On our second walk, he confessed, he remembered me from high school, he knew the first day I walked into the book club meeting. We had gone to school  together, though I was 2 years ahead. He remembered who I had been when I had forgotten her. 

Mike reminded me I was intelligent. He spoke about my mind like it was something solid. He encouraged me to finish my degree and start my business. He never judged my past. He believed in me, with his time, his money, his patience, and his love. 

And there was no mistaking the chemistry between us. 

The way my body responded to him felt effortless. The flutters in my belly. The way his presence steadied me, even when we weren’t speaking. A look. A brush of his hand. Enough to make it clear that I was wanted, fully. Not for who I could become, but for who I already was. 

With Mike, my mind and body felt alive again. 

He made me feel chosen. My heart belonged to him, and I know, without question, that he chose me too. As long as he was here, I would never walk this earth alone. 

____________________________________________________________________________ 

We are all in the living room: Bose, Sade, Daniel, the children, and me, pretending we are not in pain over who we have lost. 

The doorbell rings. 

I open the door and find a woman I have never seen before. 

She looks exhausted, like she had been crying for days. Her eyes are swollen. Sadness sits plainly on her face. Still, she is beautiful in the kind of way that turns heads without trying. She is wearing a  yellow summer dress. Her skin glows. She is years younger than me, grown but still carrying the softness of youth.

“Hello. Good afternoon” she says.

“Hello” I reply. 

“Are you Ashley Cole?” 

“Yes, I am.” 

“My name is Yeni,” she says. “I was a close friend of your husband, Mike.” 

Before I could respond, Lore steps forward. Mike’s best friend. He came with her. I usher them inside. The children are sent upstairs. We sit. 

Yeni speaks. Slowly. Carefully. As if choosing the least painful words might soften what she is about to say. 

She tells us she had been in a relationship with Mike for 2.5 years. She tells us she only recently found out she is 2 months pregnant. She didn’t know Mike was married. 

Lore confirms it. He found out about Yeni 6 months ago. 

Since Mike became a Group Senior Director 4 years ago, his role required him to split his time between two offices, one in our city and one 4 hours away, where Yeni lived. 

The entire time Yeni is speaking, I say nothing. 

Not a word. 

“Ash,” Bose whispers. “Ash.” 

I can’t find my voice. 

My body feels cold, like ice water. My hands tremble in my lap. I pinch my arm, just to be sure I am awake. 

My own Mike??! 

How did he keep this kind of secret so tightly? What else could surface now that he is gone? His siblings had no idea. This feels worse than the news of his death. 

I feel betrayed. And worse, I can’t see him. I can’t yell. I can’t ask questions. I just sit there, holding the weight of it all. 

I wonder how someone could be so gentle with me and still leave me with this kind of pain. Was my whole life a lie? 

I look at Yeni. She is young. Full of time. Sold a future that would never arrive. Promised a love that ended before it could begin. I feel sorry for her. I want to reach for her. To hold her. To hug her. 

But I can’t move. I stay seated, searching for words that do not come. 

I think about what life will look like now. About my children and the sibling they will one day have to know. About a will that must be read. About a baby who did nothing wrong. I am not cruel enough to pretend Yeni and her child do not exist. 

This is a lot to carry. But it is my reality. 

Mike loved me deeply. Of that, I am certain. And still, he has left a permanent hollow in my heart, one shaped not only by his absence, but by everything I will never get to ask.

__________________________________________________________________________ 

What Remains is a short story written by Abi Sanni

What Remains is a story about love, loss, and the quiet aftermath of truth. It explores what it means to grieve not only a person, but the life you believed you were living. This piece lived in my head for years before it found its way onto the page.