The house was quieter than usual the next morning.
Even the birds seemed to chirp a little softer, as if they too had heard Adunni's story the night before and were mourning with them.
Haneefa sat by the kitchen window, nursing a cup of lukewarm tea she'd long forgotten to drink. Her eyes were swollen, rimmed red from crying herself to sleep. But it wasn't just the sadness that lingered.
It was dread.
Something about the way her mother had ended the story—quiet, composed, but with eyes that looked like they had cried too many times to bother anymore—had left a weight on Haneefa's chest.
And now… she was afraid.
There was still seven more men to ask about.
But the second one… she didn't know why, but it frightened her the most.
Maybe it was the way her mother once paused years ago when someone mentioned the name "Kunle"—a name that floated like ash in the air before she brushed it away, smiling too quickly.
Maybe it was the fact that, after that first heartbreak, her mother had still dared to love again. And somehow, it went even worse.
She wanted to know. God, she needed to know.
But she couldn't just walk up to her mother and say "Tell me about him" like it was casual.
This wasn't gossip.
This was her mother's undoing—piece by piece.
So she waited.
All day.
She cleaned the house. Watered the flowers. Read two pages of a book she couldn't remember the title of. And still, her mother stayed in her room, silent behind that closed wooden door.
When night came, and the shadows grew long across the walls, Haneefa stood outside her mother's door, her knuckles hovering mid-air.
She didn't knock.
She couldn't.
Not yet.
Instead, she whispered into the silence, barely louder than breath:
"Mama… how did you survive him?"
No reply.
But she thought she heard something on the other side.
A soft sigh.
A rustle.
And then, that same silence—the kind that screams without sound.
A few seconds passed.
Then the door creaked.
It wasn't wide—just a narrow crack, enough for Haneefa to glimpse her mother's face bathed in shadow. Adunni didn't speak. She didn't have to. Her eyes, rimmed with weariness, carried the invitation.
Haneefa stepped inside.
Her mother's room smelled faintly of shea butter and old prayers. The curtains were drawn, letting in only moonlight, soft and silver, enough to make everything in the room feel like memory.
Adunni sat on the edge of the bed, the wrapper around her chest pulled tighter, like she was bracing herself. She patted the space beside her. Haneefa sat.
Neither of them spoke for a while.
Then, Adunni said quietly, "I was twenty-five. And stupid, yet again."
She exhaled like the memory itself hurt.
"After Kabeer… I thought my heart was beyond breaking. I thought I had seen the worst of men. The ones who disappear when you're pregnant and barely out of school. The ones who smile with lies in their teeth.
"But then I met Kunle. And I realised… heartbreak is not always loud.
Sometimes… it's slow. Silent. The kind that takes pieces of you without you even noticing until you wake up one day and you are unrecognisable."
Her voice was calm. Too calm.
"I met him at a job interview."
She gave a little laugh, not a joyful one. "I was trying to get a receptionist role at a small PR firm in Ikeja. Wearing borrowed shoes and foundation too dark for my skin. But I had hope. Aisha was three. I needed to give her something better than boiled yam every other night."
"He was one of the interviewers."
Haneefa said nothing. She just listened, her hands curled into fists in her lap.
"He didn't pick me for the job. But two days later, I got a call."
Adunni turned her face slightly, as if she could still hear the voice through the old Nokia phone she used to own.
'You may not be the right fit for the company,' Kunle had said, 'but I'd like to know you better. Have coffee with me.'
"And like a fool… I went."
Haneefa's chest tightened.
"He was charming," Adunni continued. "Not the flashy kind. The kind that asks about your day and remembers your answer a week later. He loved books. Told me I had the voice of a writer. Bought Aisha a talking teddy bear that first week, and I cried like a fool that night."
She closed her eyes. "No one had ever been that kind."
"And that's how they get you," she whispered. "Not with violence. Not at first. But with softness that feels like healing… until it becomes a cage."
Haneefa's lips parted. "What did he do?"
Adunni opened her eyes.
"He married me."
The words landed like a blade.
"I became Mrs. Adunni Adekunle. And I thought… maybe, this was my happy ending."
She turned slowly to her daughter.
"But happy endings don't come with bruises. Not the kind you can't show."
Adunni stared ahead, her voice a thread of silk and sorrow.
"Kunle was the kind of man who made you feel like you owed him everything."
She folded her hands tightly in her lap, knuckles pale. "He never raised his voice. Never lifted a hand. People like to think those are the only kinds of men to fear. But the worst ones? They love you quietly… and then they undo you quietly too."
"I wasn't allowed to work anymore. 'Why should you suffer?' he said. 'Rest. Take care of Aisha. I'll provide everything.'"
She chuckled bitterly. "And at first… he did. New clothes. Fresh groceries. He even paid for a private lesson teacher for Aisha. I told myself, This is what love looks like. This is what I've earned after suffering."
"But what I didn't realise… was that dependence is its own kind of prison."
"One day, I mentioned wanting to start a small blog, just to write—nothing serious. He smiled, kissed my forehead, and said, 'Why would you waste your time with that?' And I laughed… like he was right. Like my dreams were too small to matter."
She looked up at the ceiling, voice shaking now.
"Soon, everything I loved, he folded neatly and put away. My books? 'Clutter.' My old classmates? 'Bad influences.' My voice? 'Too loud.' My opinions? 'Too emotional.'"
"And I let him."
"Because he never shouted. Because he paid the rent. Because he told me I was the only woman he had ever truly loved."
"And when I began to fade… into just Aisha's mother, just Kunle's wife… no one noticed. Because I still smiled at parties. I still cooked egusi and wore lipstick on Sundays. People don't mourn women who disappear slowly."
Haneefa felt like she couldn't breathe.
"Mama…"
Adunni turned her face slightly. "Then Bisola came."
A long pause.
"She was the only light in that house. That little girl smiled like she didn't know her mother had become a ghost. I thought she would save me. That having another child would make Kunle look at me again like he used to."
"But love doesn't fix broken men."
"And children cannot unmake cages."
She took a long, trembling breath.
"One night, I found out he had been sleeping with the nanny."
Haneefa gasped softly.
"But it wasn't even the betrayal that broke me." Adunni's voice dropped to a whisper. "It was the way he looked at me when I found out. No guilt. No apology. Just… calm."
"I'm a man," he had said, buttoning his shirt. "You'll get over it."
"And I realised then… that I was not a wife. I was a possession. A painting on the wall, meant to be admired but never heard."
Adunni reached over and gently held her daughter's hand.
"Never forget this, Haneefa: The worst thing a man can do is not break your bones—it's to break your spirit and convince you it was love."
Tears slid down Haneefa's cheeks.
"How… how did you leave?"
Adunni looked at her. A quiet fire flickered in her eyes now.
"I woke up one morning. I looked at Bisola—her cheeks round, her breath soft. And I imagined her growing up to marry someone just like him."
Her voice trembled.
"And I couldn't let my daughter inherit my silence."
Adunni didn't sleep the night before she left.
She lay beside Kunle on their shared bed, staring at the cracked ceiling, listening to the rhythm of his breathing. She memorized it—not out of affection, but so she would never forget the sound of comfort twisted into control.
She had packed slowly that day. Not out of hesitation, but out of caution. Her life was packed into a duffel bag and a plastic file: birth certificates, a tattered copy of her senior secondary school certificate, Bisola's immunization card, and a black leather-bound journal where she wrote every time she felt herself unraveling.
She left the wedding album behind.
"I didn't cry," Adunni said now, her voice strong, like steel drawn from fire. "Not when I stepped out of the house. Not even when the keke I flagged down pulled away from that compound and I saw the curtains flutter behind our bedroom window."
"But when Aisha looked at me from the passenger seat and asked, 'Mummy, are we going on a trip?'" — she paused — "I cried then. Because I knew what I had stolen from her and her sister a future without a possible father. But I also knew what I had given her… a future without fear."
"I slept on the floor of a friend's salon for two weeks. Took up two jobs. One in a school canteen, one cleaning offices after hours. I'd walk home with Bisola on my back, wrapped in Ankara, holding aisha's hand, humming songs just so they wouldn't hear my knees shake."
She looked directly at Haneefa now, the way only mothers who have bled truth look at their daughters.
"There is no glamour in survival. No applause. No spotlight. Just one day after another, choosing to breathe through the ache."
"But eventually…" Her eyes softened. "I remembered how to laugh again. How to dream again. I enrolled in an online course. Wrote at night when Bisola and aisha slept. I became… me again."
"And when people asked why I was single with two daughters and no ring, I said: 'Because I loved myself too much to stay, and my daughters too much to raise them inside a lie.'"
She reached out and wiped Haneefa's tears.
"Kunle did not break me. He dimmed me. But even a dimmed flame remembers how to burn."
Haneefa sat still, her hands trembling slightly as the weight of her mother's words pressed down on her chest. For the first time in her life, she truly understood what it meant to survive—to rise after falling, and to rebuild when everything that should've been solid crumbled.
She wiped her eyes, feeling the tears come faster than she could catch them. Her heart was full, torn between anger and admiration.
So this was survival. Not just the strength to leave, but the courage to rebuild from nothing. To live after being torn apart. To love again, despite everything.
Adunni's voice broke the silence.
"I loved him, Haneefa. I loved him with all my heart, and I thought he'd be the one to heal me. But sometimes… love isn't enough. You have to heal yourself."
Haneefa couldn't speak. She simply nodded, her tears mingling with a newfound understanding. She had inherited her mother's strength, and now, she understood just how far it would take her.
The quiet between them wasn't awkward anymore. It was the kind of silence that spoke volumes—a daughter listening, and a mother's truth finally set free.