The Heir Who Returned

Chapter 8

She couldn't fall in front of the kids. Mrs Sarah thought as she struggled to keep her balance.

"Yes dear, I'm fine. Mummy is just tired," she said, trying to hide her pain.

She held the old cracked wall near her to support her balance and made her way to her bag.

She searched for her drugs and found them. She opened it and saw there were five pieces left. She took one and swallowed it.

"Mummy, see I dusted this frame clean!" Lily ran inside, smiling as she held the frame above her head.

"Good girl, go and rest okay," she told Lily. Caleb and Ethan helped her clean the place. It was her father's house. It was small but manageable. They had a garden at the back of the house which had died because no one could care for and manage it. She thought to herself that they could use it to sustain themselves and sell some.

She knew living in her hometown was hard, but she had no other options.

That evening, Mrs Sarah sat on an old wooden chair and watched her children work. Lily dusted every frame she could find, humming a small song to herself. Caleb swept the floor with an old broom he took from his mother. Ethan carried buckets of water from the well outside, back and forth, without complaining once.

By the time the sun went down, the sitting room looked better than it had in years. The dust was gone from the shelves. The windows let in fresh air instead of the smell of an old, closed-up house. Mrs Sarah managed a small smile, even though her body still ached.

"We did it," Lily said proudly, looking around the room.

"You all did it," Mrs Sarah said. "I only sat here and watched."

The next morning, Mrs Sarah woke up early. Her chest still hurt from the day before, but she pushed the pain aside and walked to the back of the house. The garden was worse than she remembered. Weeds had grown tall and wild. Old dead plants lay flat on the ground. A broken fence leaned to one side.

Ethan came out and stood beside her, looking at the mess. "Do you want us to clear it?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "If we can bring this garden back to life, we won't have to worry so much about food, or money."

The three children worked hard for many days. Caleb pulled out the weeds with his bare hands until his palms were sore. Lily picked up small stones and threw them into a bucket. Ethan fixed the broken fence using old wood he found near the shed. Mrs Sarah could not do much heavy work anymore, so she sat nearby and told them where to plant and how deep to dig the soil, remembering what her own father had taught her as a child.

Slowly, the garden began to change. They planted tomatoes, peppers, and rows of leafy vegetables. They also planted a small patch of maize at the back, near the fence. Every morning before school, Ethan and Caleb watered the plants. Every evening, Lily checked the leaves for insects and pulled out any new weeds.

Weeks passed, and the garden began to grow green again. The first tomatoes came out small and hard, but soon they grew red and soft. Mrs Sarah picked a basket of vegetables and walked to the small market near their street. She was nervous at first, standing behind a wooden table with her basket, not knowing if anyone would buy from a stranger in the town.

But people came. An old woman bought a handful of pepper. A young mother bought tomatoes for her soup. By the end of the day, the basket was empty, and Mrs Sarah held a small handful of money in her palm. It was not much, but it was something. It was theirs.

From then on, selling from the garden became part of their life. Mrs Sarah went to the market three times a week, and slowly, more people began to know her. She used the money carefully, buying only what they truly needed, and saving a little each time in an old tin box she kept under her bed.

Caleb still had his rough days, especially when he thought about aunty Vicky and Mr Garrick, and how they had once mocked his family for being poor. But when he looked at the garden they had built with their own hands, something in him felt proud instead of ashamed.

Ethan worked quietly, saying little, but always doing more than his share. At night, when everyone else was asleep, he would sometimes stand outside and look up at the sky, thinking about how his family was doing, especially his mother, and the secret he still carried inside him. He never spoke of it. He only kept helping Mrs Sarah, the woman who had taken him in and asked for nothing in return.

Slowly, the small house that once felt broken and forgotten began to feel like a home. The walls were still cracked, and the roof still leaked when it rained hard, but there was food on the table, and there was laughter in the evenings.

Mrs Sarah still took her medicine in secret, hiding the small bottle at the bottom of her bag. Some nights the pain came back sharply, and she would sit alone in the dark, breathing slowly until it passed. But she never let her children see it. As far as they knew, their mother was only tired, the way any hardworking mother would be.

She did not know how much time she had left. But she knew one thing for certain: she would use every bit of strength she had left to give her children, and the boy who called himself Ethan, a life worth remembering.