The Forgotten Letter

By Diane Godwin, Abuja, Nigeria

Jessica was sixteen, a girl whose notebooks were always filled with half-written poems, character sketches, and doodles that looked more like restless dreams than art. Her mother said writing would never cook a pot of soup, but Jessica felt that words, in their own way, fed her.

It was on a hot Wednesday afternoon in Makurdi that she found the letter. She had been sent to help her grandmother, Mama Ifeoma, clean out the old family trunk; one of those heavy iron boxes where secrets seemed to sleep. As Jessica pulled out moth-eaten wrappers and photographs browned with age, her fingers touched something crisp, folded neatly in an envelope with a faded red seal.

Curious, she opened it.

The handwriting inside was bold, firm, and urgent.

“If you are reading this, then it means I never made it back. Do not trust the man who smiles too often. He is not what he seems.”

No signature. No date.

Jessica frowned, heart racing. Who had written this? Why was it hidden in her grandmother’s trunk? She slid the letter into her pocket just as Mama Ifeoma walked in.

“All done?” her grandmother asked, her eyes sharp despite her seventy years.

“Almost,” Jessica said, forcing a smile.

That night, the words on the paper haunted her. Do not trust the man who smiles too often. She thought of her Uncle Chike, Mama Ifeoma’s eldest son, who had a grin that stretched like it had no boundaries. He was wealthy, owned shops across town, and everyone called him “a good man.” But Jessica remembered whispers she had overheard once; rumors that his success was not entirely clean.

The next day, while delivering palm oil to Uncle Chike’s shop, Jessica’s curiosity overwhelmed her.

“Uncle,” she asked casually, “did you ever know anyone who… disappeared?”

For a moment, his smile froze. Just a flicker. Then he laughed loudly, too loudly. “Ah, my dear Jessica, always imagining stories. You are your father’s child.”

But as he turned away, Jessica noticed his hand tremble slightly.

Days passed. Jessica began piecing together clues. Old neighbours remembered a man named Okoh who lived next door years ago. He was her grandmother’s cousin. He had been a union leader, outspoken about corruption. Then, one rainy season, he vanished. People said he had traveled, others whispered darker things.

Jessica brought the letter to Mama Ifeoma.

Her grandmother’s face drained of colour. “Where did you get this?”

“In the trunk,” Jessica admitted. “Grandma, what happened to Okoh?”

Mama Ifeoma looked at her long and hard, tears welling in her eyes. Then, slowly, she whispered:

“Okoh was your real father.”

Jessica’s breath caught. “What? But…my dad…”

“Your mother remarried after Okoh disappeared,” Mama Ifeoma said softly. “We never told you. It was too dangerous then. Okoh was betrayed by someone close. Someone with power. Someone… who smiled too much.”

Jessica’s world tilted. The letter wasn’t just a forgotten relic; it was her father’s final message.

And the betrayer? Every instinct screamed the truth. Uncle Chike.

For weeks Jessica wrestled with the secret. She wanted to confront him, shout his crime into the open. But she was just a teenager, a girl with nothing but her words. Who would believe her?

So she did what she always knew how to do. She wrote.

She poured the truth into a story, veiling names but sharpening every detail. She submitted it to the nationwide creative writing contest, her hands trembling as she clicked “send.”

Two months later, her story was published as the winning entry.

The nation applauded the teenager who dared to write about betrayal, corruption, and truth hidden in family trunks. But in her own town, people began to whisper again, this time about Chike, whose smile was no longer so easy.

Jessica never said a word. She just kept writing. Because words, she now knew, could not only feed the soul, but they could expose the shadows.