Free The Lazarus Effect by H. J Golakai

American connection. Joshua had been six when his father had returned for good, never looking back.
    Nearly twenty years later, Joshua had boarded a plane. The reception he’d received had been far from rosy. The final slap in the face had come when an uninterested family on the African continent had refused to acknowledge his existence and a loving one in America had kindly advised that he bury the past for peace of mind. Older and wiser, he now called Cape Town home away from home. He’d never admit it, but Vee knew he drew an illicit thrill from the proximity to his old man. The hovering nightmare, the illegitimate pin itching to burst the well-constructed bubble of a traditional paterfamilias. Lazy vengeance was right up his alley.
    Vee idled at a red traffic light. She hadn’t seen Joshua in a while; his reappearance had dredged up a lot that she would much rather forget. If she was being completely unfair – and what was driving alone on a mild winter evening, back to an empty house, if not a green light to do whatever the hell she wanted? – then it could be said that her predicament was all Joshua Allen’s fault. He was friends with Titus Wreh, and Titus Wreh had torn her heart out and pissed on it. Had Joshua not been living here, maybe neither she nor Titus would’ve had the bright idea to leave New York, which spelled the beginning of their end.
    Fine, it was a stretch, and even she knew it. Titus had been hunting for a change of scene, preferably one on the continent and, like many in the know, to avoid the worst of the global economic crash. She’d hardly wanted to say it to his face but her ex, a Liberian–American hybrid who’d lived three quarters of his life abroad, tended to paint his expectations with an overly rosy finish. Before long, the empty romance of ‘returning to the Motherland’ had become reality, one she should’ve put brakes on. But … a woman in love was not a well-reasoning organism. She had a commendable master’s degree from a fine institution in hand, the world was her oyster, fortune favours the brave and love would find a way, and all that. She’d landed a temporary position with an independent news agency to complement Titus’s new job with Deloitte, and they’d packed their bags.
    Now, here she was. From engaged, employed and happy to a mess, drowning in the fulminant fuckery that was her new normal.
    The ghost of an ache, surely a phantom sensation, started up in her abdomen. Vee sneaked a hand under her sweater and rubbed the tiny ridge of a scar, one hand on the wheel. Wisdom and self-awareness had come at an astronomically high price. Waking up in a hospital post-op, minus an ovary and a foetus she’d had no idea she was nourishing. Signing on full time with a goddamn fashion magazine because she was out of job options. Being miserable, broke, abandoned … or, to put it another way, unceremoniously un-fiancéed, if there was such a thing. A blizzard of blows.
    ‘What am I s’posed to say when I’m all choked up and you’re okay? I’m falling to piiieeeces yeah,’ crooned Danny O’Donoghue of The Script, his heart breaking unevenly all over 5FM radio.
    ‘I hear you, o,’ Vee muttered, switching it off.
    Not since she was maybe ten years old had she anticipated a birthday, but turning twenty-nine in a month’s time held the promise of a new beginning. Twenty-nine felt like the last phase of a painfully drawn-out ripening. It would be wiser. Lonelier, more bitter, more sexually frustrated. Definitely poorer. But fuck it, she was ready.
    She taxied into the garage and slammed the door as she got out, a noise bound to bring her dog running. Having her own place was the best and she didn’t miss having a roommate. The last one, Mia, had been lovely, wild of hair and brimming with spiritual guru-ism, but time had exposed that she was about ninety degrees short of a right angle. Never had Vee met a person less suited to the sane, regular rules of cohabitation.