by Leylah Attar
Mists of the Serengeti
Copyright ©2017 by Leylah Attar
Editing by Lea Burn
Proofreading by Christine Estevez
Cover Design © Hang Le
Interior Design & Formatting by Christine Borgford, Type A Formatting
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN: 978–1-988054–01–8
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products and locales referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Contents
MISTS
Prologue
Jack
Rodel
Rodel
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Jack
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For my husband and son,
with all my heart,
except for a teeny, tiny part,
for
Nutella
IF YOU HAD asked Jack Warden what his favorite things were before that afternoon, he would have reeled off a list without hesitation: black coffee, blue skies, driving into town with the windows down, Mount Kilimanjaro wreathed in swirling clouds in his rear-view, and the girl who owned his heart making up the words to the song on the radio. Because Jack was absolute and precise, as clear as the African Savannah after the rain. He’d weathered his share of storms—losing his parents as a child, losing his college sweetheart to a divorce—but he knew how to roll with the punches. He’d learned that early in life, on dusty safaris in the Serengeti, where hunter and hunted played hide and seek amidst tall, swaying elephant grass.
Jack was a survivor. He got knocked down, but he always got back up. And the times when his daughter visited the coffee plantation over her summer break were golden days—mud-squelching, popcorn-munching, frog-hunting days. Jack had the kind of presence that turned heads when he entered a room, but on those days, he was like the sizzling crack of a thunderbolt—all lit up from the inside.
“Lily, put that back,” he said, as she opened the glove compartment and pulled out a bar of chocolate that looked like it had just been dragged out of a sauna.
“But it tastes so good when it’s all melted like this. Goma leaves it there for me.”
“Goma is ninety. Her brain is about as mushy as that chocolate.”
They laughed because they both knew that Jack’s grandmother was as quick and sharp as a black mamba. She was just full of eccentricities and marched to her own beat. It’s what had earned her the name Goma, from the Swahili word for drums: ngoma.
“Lily, no. You’ll get it all over your costume. Li—” Jack sighed as her chubby, eight-year-old fingers tore through the foil. He could have sworn he heard Goma laughing from the foothills of the mountain, as she sat on the porch. He smiled and turned his eyes back to the road, taking a mental snapshot of the way his daughter looked—big-eyed and curly-haired, in a rainbow tutu and sunflower hat, with chocolate smudges around her mouth. These were the moments that got him through the long months when she was back in Cape Town with her mother.
As they entered the roundabout into town, Jack rested his elbow on the window frame. His skin was tanned, much like the tourists who rolled in from the beaches of Zanzibar, but his color was permanent, earned by years of working outside under the Tanzanian sun.
“Are you going to record the dance recital?” asked Lily.
It was an unspoken agreement between them. Lily spent entire afternoons making him and Goma watch and re-watch her performances. She gave them scorecards, and the numbers slowly inched up, because she wouldn’t let them leave until she got exactly what she wanted out of them.
“Watch it again,” she’d say, because they had obviously missed her perfect timing here, or the double tap there.
“Can you sign me up for more lessons?” she asked.
“Already done,” Jack replied. It meant an hour-long drive to Amosha and back, on half-baked roads riddled with potholes, but watching his daughter dance made his heart grow ten times its size. “Is Mum going to enroll you in dance class when you get back?”
“I don’t think so.” It was so matter-of-fact, with the same kind of acceptance she had adapted after learning her parents were going to live thousands of miles apart, that Jack felt a sharp pang of sadness.
He had met Sarah at the university in Nairobi. They were both away from home—young, free, and hungry. He could still remember the first time he’d seen her—black-skinned and sophisticated—her sleek, shoulder-length braids falling around her face as she took the seat next to him in the lecture hall. She was all city-girl, he was all country-boy. She liked to jot things down—goals, plans, lists, dates. He liked to live day by day, hour by hour. She was meticulous and cautious. He was exuberant and impulsive. They had been doomed from the start, but when does that ever stop anyone from falling in love? He’d fallen hard—as had she—and what a ride it had been. In the end, the isolation and unpredictability of life at the coffee farm had been too much for Sarah. But Kaburi Estate was Jack’s livelihood, his birthplace, and his legacy. Its raw, rushing beat pulsed through his veins like rich, dark espresso. He knew Lily had it in her too, that hot, frothy swirl of magic and madness. It was why she loved to dance, and there was no way he was going to stand by and watch all of her pure, vibrant essence get washed away just because she spent the majority of her time away from the farm.
“Maybe if I get better grades this year,” Lily continued.
And there it was again. Structure, form, function, discipline. Not that it was a bad thing for a kid, but anything that fell outside those parameters was cut and discarded. Jack had watched it rinse his marriage of joy, until it sat like a colander full of thawed out, freezer-burned vegetables, with no color and no flavor. Sarah had left little room for joy, for simple moments to just be, and now she was doing the same thing to Lily. She had a plan in place for their daughter, and it did not include pursuing personal passions.
“Well, baby girl, your mum is right.” Jack turned to face her. “We both want you to do well in school. Work hard on those grades when you get back. But today, you dance! And when you—” He blinked as a burst of light momentarily blinded him.
“Lily, you’re going to use up all the film,” he said.
“So?” Lily pull
ed out the milky Polaroid that was starting to develop, pointed the camera at herself, and snapped a shot.
“Give me that camera.”
“No!” She squealed and pushed him away with sticky fingers.
“Ugh.” Jack wiped the chocolate from his face as they passed crooked shops with Coca-Cola and Fanta signs, archaic trees with bright green canopies, and patches of red, volcanic soil. “You got it all over the camera too.”
“I can fix it.” She took off the hat that Goma had sewn for her and wiped the camera clean. “All good!”
Jack smiled and shook his head as they turned into the mall where her dance group was performing. It was a short, informal production for family, friends, and weekend shoppers.
“Come on. Miss Temu will be waiting!” Lily jumped out of the car as soon as they found a parking spot. Saturday was the busiest day at Kilimani Mall, and there was also some kind of convention going on.
“Hold on,” said Jack. He was almost done rolling up the windows when his phone rang. It was one of the staff from his farm, asking if he could pick up a few supplies while he was in town.
Lily came around to his side of the car. The window was tinted, so she pressed her palm against the glass and peered inside. She made funny faces at Jack until he hung up.
“Let’s go, baby girl,” he said, taking her hand.
The recital was being held on the lower level, in a small hall off the food court. As they made their way there, Lily stopped in front of a balloon vendor.
“Can I get a yellow one for Aristurtle?” She tugged on one of the helium-filled balloons.
Aristurtle was Lily’s pet tortoise, who had remained nameless until Goma started calling him that because of all the grand questions Lily consulted him on.
“What is Aristurtle going to do with a balloon?” asked Jack.
“You know how he’s always getting lost?”
“Because you let him roam all around the house.”
“Because I don’t like caging him in. So, if I tie a balloon around his shell, we’ll always know where he is.”
“You know, that is so absurd, it makes sense.” Jack laughed and pulled out his wallet. “We’ll take a yellow one.”
“Sorry, they’re six in a bouquet,” the man replied. “I have other singles, but I’m all out of the yellow ones.” He gave them a curious glance, but Jack was used to it. It had started when he and Sarah were dating, and had continued after they’d had Lily. A mixed-race couple with a biracial daughter. The contrast seemed to fascinate people.
Jack glanced at Lily. Her eyes were fixed on the bright, sunny ones. “Fine. I’ll take all six.”
As he bent down to give her the balloons, she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed. “I love you! You’re the best daddy ever!”
A flurry of strangers milled around them, but Jack was hit with a sweet stillness in that moment, a surge of warmth and purpose in the middle of an ordinary day.
“Don’t tie them to Aristurtle all at once or he’ll fly away,” he said.
Lily giggled and broke away, taking the escalator down, the balloons bobbing around her like golden sunburst.
“Lily!” her dance instructor called, when they got to the recital hall. “You look great!”
“It’s a rainbow.” Lily twirled around, showing off the tutu that Goma had made. “My favorite.”
“It’s perfect.” Her instructor turned to Jack and smiled. “Hello, Jack.”
“Miss Temu.” He nodded, instinctively taking in her lithe dancer’s body and smooth cocoa-powder skin.
“It’s Mara,” she corrected, as she had done many times before. She had made her interest in him clear, but Jack knew better than to mess with the dynamics of his daughter’s dance class. In a room full of mothers, he was the only father who showed up with his child. They fawned over him, not just because Jack was a powder keg of testosterone—his voice, his hands, his gestures—but also because of how playful and nurturing he was with Lily. It drew them to him, and Jack had learned not to stir up any jealousies by keeping all his attention on Lily.
“Set up is this way.” Miss Temu started ushering Lily to the back.
“Here, Daddy!” Lily handed him the balloons. “How do I look?”
“Beautiful. As always.”
“Is my ponytail okay?”
Jack knelt and adjusted it. He dropped a kiss on her forehead and wiped a smudge of chocolate from her cheek. “There. All good?”
“All good!” She nodded, barely able to contain her excitement at going up on stage. “Sit in the front row so I can find you, okay?”
“I know the drill, Lily. Have I ever failed you?”
“Don’t forget to record it!”
“Go.” Jack laughed. “Dance up a storm.”
Lily took a deep breath and smiled. “See you on the other side.”
“See you on the other side, baby girl.” He watched her disappear behind the curtains.
“Jack . . .” Miss Temu tapped him on the shoulder. “The balloons. They’re kind of distracting. Would you mind putting them away?”
“Of course.” Jack looked around the hall. It was filling up, but the first two rows were reserved for family. “Do I have time to run to the car and drop them off?”
“Five minutes, but Lily is up third, so you should be okay.”
“Great. I’ll be right back.”
Jack took the escalator back up to the parking lot. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee hit him as he passed the café, reminding him of the travel mug he’d left in his car. Nothing beat the taste of rich Arabica coffee beans from the farm. There was a precision that led to its distinct flavor—from planting to picking to roasting it in a rotating drum over a gas flame. Jack unlocked the car and retrieved his coffee, taking a deep, satisfying swig.
He was about to put the balloons inside when a burst of sharp, loud cracks rattled the air. His first thought was that the balloons had popped, in quick succession, but the sound had an echo, a boom that reverberated through the parking lot. When it happened again, Jack felt a bone-deep chill. His marrow congealed. He knew guns. You don’t live on a farm in rural Africa without learning how to protect yourself from wild animals. But Jack had never used a machine gun, and the shots ringing out from the mall sounded very much like one.
They say that a person’s true strength comes through in times of calamity. It’s a strange and unfair measure of a man. Because disasters and catastrophes are absurd, freakish monsters lurking in the periphery of your vision. And when one of those formless, shapeless shadows shows itself and stands before you, naked and grotesque, it completely incapacitates you. Your senses witness something so unexpected, so bizarre, that you stop to question the reality of it. Like a blue whale falling out of the sky. Your brain doesn’t know what to do with it. And so Jack stood paralyzed, holding his coffee in one hand and the balloons in the other, in Parking Lot B of Kilimani Mall on a clear Saturday afternoon in July, as shots rang out from inside, where he’d just dropped off his daughter.
It was only when the screaming started, when a stampede of panicked shoppers tumbled through the doors, that Jack blinked. He didn’t feel the burn of coffee on his feet as his mug split open. He didn’t see six yellow balloons drifting off into a blue whale of a sky. He just felt the desperation of a father who needed to get to his daughter. Instantly.
If someone had flown over the mall in that moment, they would have witnessed a strange sight: a mass of people scrambling, pushing, fighting to get out of the building, and a lone, solitary man scrambling, pushing, fighting to get inside.
It was more conviction than strength that got Jack through the crowd. Inside was pure chaos. Gunfire rattled through the mall. Discarded shoes, shopping bags, and spilled drinks were everywhere. The balloon cart stood, abandoned and unaffected, smiley faces and Disney princesses gaping at the havoc. Jack did not stop to look left or right. He didn’t care to differentiate friend from foe. He rushed past the café, past the half-eaten a
lmond croissants and crushed cookies, past the cries for help, with a single-minded purpose. He had to get downstairs to the recital hall.
Sit in the front row so I can find you, okay?
I know the drill, Lily. Have I ever failed you?
He was almost at the escalator when a toddler, going the opposite way, came to a halt in front of him. The boy was lost and had cried himself into a state of exhaustion. Jack could barely make out his soft whimpers over the pounding of his own heart. For a moment they stood there, the little boy with his face painted like Batman, colors smudged from tears, and the man who, for a split second, was torn between getting him to safety and getting to his own daughter.
Then Jack stepped aside. He was sure he would always remember the toddler’s face, the look of expectancy in his big, round eyes, the pacifier pinned to his shirt. As he stuffed his shame into a dark recess of his soul, someone started shouting.
“Isa! Isa!”
From the way the boy turned at the woman’s voice, she was obviously the person he’d been looking for.
Jack heaved a sigh of relief and rounded the escalator.
“Mister! Stop. Please. Get my son out of here.”
She was lying on the floor, about ten feet from Jack, beside a stroller that had toppled over, holding on to her ankle. She was hurt. And pregnant.
“Please get him out of here,” she begged.
People were still fleeing the mall, terrified blurs of motion, but of all the people, of all the people, she was asking Jack. Perhaps because Jack was the only person who had heard her. Perhaps because he had stopped long enough to acknowledge a crying toddler in the middle of the chaos. She had no concern for her own safety, no request for herself. And in that, they were united. They both just wanted to get their kids out.
Jack felt the escalator belt sliding under his hands as he stood at the top of the stairs.
Go down.
No. Help them.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Every second he wasted was a second that kept him from Lily.
He should have averted his eyes then, but he caught the moment the boy embraced his mother, the slackening of his little body, the relief at having found her, the belief that everything would be all right—in complete contrast to the utter desolation and helplessness in her eyes.