Chapter 9 - Almost Done

The days between were strange. He slept in the back room. I slept in the bed we had slept in together. He still fixed things — the kettle I hadn't told him was broken, the geyser that gurgled, the belt on the washing machine. He still made coffee in the morning and left a mug on the kitchen counter for me. He didn't ask me anything. He just kept showing up to the small acts of the house like a man who had decided he was going to stay until he was carried out.

I let him stay because I couldn't think of a way to make him leave that didn't feel like a worse crime than the one I'd already done.

Xoli came over on the Tuesday. I told her everything. The affidavit. The three years inside Leeuwkop. Mama dying on a Wednesday. The man in my back room who had carried a plan in his head for three years.

For once she didn't have a quick answer. She sat at my kitchen table for a long minute with both hands around her wine glass.

Tell me how I'm not the villain in this story, Xoli.

Sipho is the villain, sis. Sipho ran the fraud. Sipho wrote the affidavit. Sipho told you to sign without reading it. You're not the villain.

But I signed.

But you signed.

She drank her wine. Set the glass down.

Sis. You're not the villain. But you helped one. The fact that Sipho used you — that's one thing. The fact that you let yourself be used — that's the other. Those things both have to live in you now. You don't get to put either one down. You just carry them.