Lara's Lace Adventures: A Novella (The Aso-Ebi Chronicles, Book 3)

By Sharon Abimbola Salu

Lara Adefuye stumbles on an old picture, which brings her face-to-face with the bitter truth behind her name. Then, a chance reunion with an old university classmate leads her to start an adventure of her own, working undercover as a private investigator at a prestigious secondary school.

As Lara works to solve a puzzling mystery, she discovers the power of relationships, especially when she finds herself entwined in a romance she was not expecting.

Set in Lagos, Nigeria, Lara’s Lace Adventures is the third novella in the Aso-Ebi Chronicles, a series of novellas following the lives of four young Nigerian women, solving crimes and finding love in the ever-busy Lagos metropolis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sharon Abimbola Salu
• Release date: Nov 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370781010

Sharon Abimbola Salu

Sharon Abimbola Salu grew up in Lagos, Nigeria where she lived until she relocated to the United States of America where she currently resides. Her stories are mostly set in Nigeria, and she writes stories she would like to read. A professed lover of spicy foods, she loves experimenting with new recipes, to the dismay of non-spicy food lovers. Apart from writing, photography is her other hobby. Visit her blog at http://www.sharonsalu.com

Book preview

Lara's Lace Adventures: A Novella

(The Aso-Ebi Chronicles, Book 3)

By

Sharon Abimbola Salu

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Copyright © 2015 by Sharon Abimbola Salu

Cover Illustration by Qaaim Goodwin

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author at the address below.

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Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Discover other titles by Sharon Abimbola Salu:

The Day I Will Never Forget

On the Road to Makurdi

Toasting Her

Shine Your Eye

With Love from Asaba

The Life and Times of Two Flared Nostrils

1, 2, 3 Disappear

Stay in Berlin

The Aso-Ebi Chronicles

Bewaji's Ankara Adventures

Wura's Woodin Adventures

Violet’s Velvet Adventures

August Fiction Series

Unfriending Mama

Hotel Surprise

An Understanding Woman

At the End of a Long, Loose Braid

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

About the Author

One

Omolara Adefuye discovered the truth behind her name in an unconventional way. It made her question everything. The truth was that her name, Omolara, which when translated means a child is family, was not the product of careful deliberation, thought and care. It is widely believed among the Yoruba that a person's name will become his destiny. The name itself is a prophecy for the unknown future of a child.

But, in Lara's case, her name was a painful reminder of the past. It had been so since she was born, but like they say, ignorance is bliss. It appeared that almost everybody knew this truth, except her. Until that day.

That day was a Friday, a day normally reserved for night vigils, clubbing, bar hopping, movie watching or pottery making, if you were so inclined. For Lara, a 22-year old woman who was unemployed, or like someone told her, unemployable, Friday was the end of the work week, another reminder that she was jobless. Subconsciously, she had started avoiding places she frequented because people were asking questions.

Why don’t you have a job?

Don’t you think you should do your Master's now?

Followed by the numerous suggestions:

You're still very young. Why not go back to school?

Find a man to marry you now, before you're too old.

Lara did not know how to tell these people that at 22, she felt she was too young, inexperienced and highly unqualified for so many things, including marriage, and that there was still so much of the world she wanted to see, learn, explore, understand, before settling down as anybody's wife. But she kept these things to herself, knowing that her protests would be met with more opposition.

Everyone seemed to know what she ought to be doing with her life, except her. All she knew was that there had to be more to life than these pre-conceived, pre-fabricated, one-size-fits-all plans that people were always throwing at her.

It was this thought that pervaded her mind that Friday night. Her parents had travelled to Kaduna for a revival. Her two older brothers, Yemi and Teju, who were in their late 20s, gainfully employed, but still tenants in their parents' house, were out with friends. No curfew for them. But if it was her now …

The perks of being a woman … or girl. Which one am I? she asked herself as she finished rinsing the last spoon and storing it away in the dish drainer. She was in no mood for movies, so she went to her room with an idea. But as soon as she stepped into her bedroom, that peculiar thing that happens happened: she forgot what she had just planned to do. The grand idea she had conceived for Friday evening simply vanished from her mind.

So, she stood in front of the full-length mirror in her room, staring at her reflection, waiting for the idea to float back into her head.

I wonder how tall I am now …

The last time she had measured her height was less than a year ago, and she had discovered that contrary to what she had willed herself to believe, she was just 5' 7''. In her mind, she was much taller, and people often guessed that she was taller because of her slim, long figure.

You should model, you know.

Lara had heard this so many times that she finally knew how annoying it was for 6 foot plus people to keep getting asked if they played or planned to play professional basketball. So because you're tall, basketball is automatically the only sport you're qualified to play? What if you want to be a sprinter like Usain Bolt?

But Lara's height and shapely figure were not the only aspects of her physique for which she often received compliments. Her makeup artiste friends loved to compliment her eyes when they asked her to help model looks for them.

"Oh babe, I am sure I can comfortably fit like 8 different colors of eye shadow on your lids at the same time!" her friend, Tobore, had once remarked while applying some eyeliner to complete a smokey eye look.

Or another time, Mrs. Tijani, her mother's friend said,

"Lara, come and share your eyes with us, ke! You have enough for three people, at least!"

Lara had taken them all in her stride: the naked compliments, as well as the poorly-concealed insults, packaged and delivered as compliments. As far as she was concerned, her eyes were gifts from God, and she especially thanked God for the extra thing that came with eyes as large as hers: the power of observation. Hardly anything escaped her notice.

Suddenly, it came back. The original plan for Friday night.

Aha! I was going to look at those old pictures.

Lara, of course, was referring to old family pictures, and she knew precisely where they were. All the pictures were stored in empty cardboard boxes, some in envelopes, others arranged in some order in photo albums. Most of them were in a jumbled mess in those boxes, boxes which bore the labels of products they held once upon a time: soap, noodles, and many other dry goods.

The pictures Lara had in mind were supposed to be in one of her brothers' rooms. Unfortunately, they both kept their doors locked. There was only one more set of albums in her parents' room, and they were the ones she went in search of that night.

The house was a bungalow with four bedrooms and two bathrooms. Her parents' room was not the largest room. Ironically, Teju's room was the largest in the house even though he was the 2nd child. He was more assertive, and frankly, more aggressive, than his elder brother, and that room was his prize. Although her parents' room was smaller than Teju's room, it felt quite spacious and was very neat. Back when they still had housemaids, her mother kept this bedroom off limits. The housemaids could clean all the other rooms in the house, but Mrs. Adefuye kept her bedroom as a sanctuary, meaning it was completely off limits to housemaids, outsiders and to an extent, her own children. Even while growing up, Lara and her brothers had felt like they were entering a forbidden place, whenever they set foot in their parents' room for anything. That off limits command had been seared into their brains as children. Even now in her early 20s, Lara still felt like she was breaking some sort of rule by venturing into her parents' bedroom in their absence.

I'll be quick and put it back before they notice anything, she told herself, as if that somehow made it okay.

Once inside the room, she secretly thanked God that the family pictures were in here, at home, not in the public eye on some website like Facebook. Silver-framed photos of family members lay isolated on a wooden desk. There was one with Teju at age 2, running around in nothing but a striped cotton pant, while Yemi, his older brother who was almost 4 years old, looked at him with contempt. He still had the same serious look on his face. Some things never change.

Lara was not born when that picture was taken, but there was a separate framed picture of her, riding a life-sized toy car and grinning at the camera, her hair braided in koroba. That particular picture was the one she would hate any non-family member to see. Why? Because in her eyes, the lips of the 2 year old in the picture shone with the unnatural luster that comes from stuffing your face with fried food, and in one hand, this child clutched the remains of what looked like puff-puff. Or buns. Why couldn’t she have been photographed flying, or at least, riding an airplane? Why did it have to be puff-puff? Most importantly, what was her father thinking when he took that picture? Lara shook her head as she always did when she saw that picture. Only God knew the answers to those questions.

After evaluating the framed pictures, the first place she checked for the photo albums was under her parents' iron bed, the one she had begged them to change because it was too antique-looking. They had, of course, ignored her.

She looked in