“Grace, is it true?”
Grace turned, smiling through tears. “We’re going to Lagos.”
Deborah screamed and grabbed her. “I got mine too.”
The two of them jumped and held each other. “We made it. We actually made it.”
From the doorway, Mr. Johnson stood watching with a hardened expression.
“So this is what all this noise is about,” he said.
Grace turned and said excitedly, “Daddy, I got admission.”
But Mr. Johnson said nothing. He only nodded once and walked away.
That night, Grace could not sleep. She placed the letter beside her pillow, touching it from time to time just to be sure it was still there.
“This is my life,” she whispered to herself. “Nobody will take it from me.”
But sometime in the night, her door opened quietly.
Mr. Johnson stepped inside and stood over her for a moment, then slowly picked up the admission letter. He looked at it under the dim light, folded it, went outside toward the back of the house, and burned it.
By morning, Grace was already searching for her admission letter.
“Mummy, have you seen my letter?”
“No. You kept it yourself.”
“It’s not here,” Grace said, checking under her pillow again, then inside her bag.
She rushed to the sitting room. “Daddy, did you see my admission letter?”
Mr. Johnson did not look up from his newspaper. “Which letter?”
“My admission letter. The one from UNILAG.”
He slowly dropped the paper he was reading and looked at her. “You were not admitted,” he said flatly. “Stop disturbing yourself.”
Grace stared at him in shock. “That’s not true. I saw it. Mummy saw it.”
Her mother stood at the doorway, silent.
“Mummy, tell him,” Grace said, her voice shaking.
Mrs. Johnson looked down and said nothing.
Grace looked back at her father. “You’re lying.”
Mr. Johnson didn’t argue. He simply lifted his newspaper again as if the conversation meant nothing to him.
“Face your life,” he said coldly.
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