I cleaned his office every night. I arranged his papers, polished his glass table, emptied his bin. He never looked at me twice.
One afternoon, as he moved some files, my name badge fell to the floor.
“Lucia?” he read aloud. “Does your name ring a bell? You worked in Enugu before?”
I forced a small smile. “No, sir.”
He didn’t push. Just returned to his laptop, as if I were invisible.
That night, I overheard him in the conference room laughing with colleagues:
“I once got a girl pregnant in high school,” he chuckled. “She said it was mine. But you know how poor girls are—they’ll say anything.”
They all laughed.
I dropped the mop and ran to the bathroom, sobbing for an hour.
“Why, God? Why me?”
That night, I wrote a letter—my hands shaking:
“You may not remember me, but I remembered you every night as I watched our son gasp for air. You never came back. But I cleaned up your mess daily—both in life, and now, on your floor.”
I folded it and slid it beneath his mug on his desk.
