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“How did you get in here?” he demanded, placing himself between Amara and Zara.
“I have a key,” Amara said. “I’m sorry. I just needed to understand.”
“You broke into my home,” Amecha said. “Get out. Get out right now or I’m calling the police.”
“Please,” Amara said, raising her hands. “Just give me five minutes. Five minutes to talk. Then I’ll leave if you want me to.”
“I don’t want your explanations.”
“She’s my daughter,” Amara shouted.
The words burst out of her before she could stop them.
Zara whimpered and hid behind Amecha.
Amecha’s eyes filled with tears.
“You lost the right to say that when you believed I was dead without questioning anything. When you didn’t fight for me. When you gave up.”
“I thought you died,” Amara said desperately. “What was I supposed to fight? A motorcycle accident? A funeral? I stood beside your coffin, Amecha. I watched them lower it into the ground.”
“And you never wondered why it was empty?” he asked. “You never asked to see a body? You never questioned anything?”
Amara opened her mouth, then closed it.
Because he was right.
She had not questioned anything.
Grief had swallowed her whole.
“Your mother told you I died,” Amecha said bitterly. “And you believed her. Just like you believed everything else she told you about me.”
Amara felt as if she had been punched.
“What are you talking about?”
Amecha laughed, but there was no joy in it.
“You really don’t know, do you?” he said. “You have no idea what she did.”
“Who did what?”
But even as she asked, she knew.
Her mother.
“Daddy, I’m scared,” Zara whispered.
Amecha took a deep breath and knelt in front of his daughter.
“Baby girl, go to your room and put on your headphones. Listen to your songs. Can you do that for Daddy?”
Zara nodded, but her eyes stayed on Amara.
“Is that woman going to hurt you?”
“No, baby. No one is going to hurt anyone. We’re just going to talk.”
Zara ran into her room.
When the door closed, Amecha went downstairs.
Amara followed him into the kitchen.
He stood on one side of the small table.
She stood on the other.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Amecha took a deep breath.
“Your mother hated me from the moment she met me,” he said quietly. “Did you know that?”
Amara wanted to say no.
But deep down, she had always known. She had simply refused to see it.
“She never wanted you to marry me,” Amecha continued. “I was too poor. Too ordinary. A mechanic with no family name, no connections, no money.”
“Amecha—”
“No,” he said, raising one hand. “You asked for five minutes. Let me finish.”
Amara nodded.
“At first, it was small things,” he said. “Comments that sounded like jokes but weren’t. She would say, ‘Oh, Amecha, you’re wearing that shirt to dinner? Well, at least it’s clean.’ Or, ‘Amara, are you sure you want Amecha to drive your car? His hands are used to spanners, not steering wheels.’”
His voice grew quieter.
“After we got married, it got worse. She would call me when you were at work. Every day. Sometimes twice a day. She told me I was dragging you down. That I was an anchor around your neck. That I would ruin the Okafor name.”
Amara felt sick.
“I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t,” he said. “Because I didn’t tell you. I thought I could handle it. I thought if I worked harder, earned more, proved myself, she would accept me.”
He laughed bitterly.
“I was a fool.”
“You weren’t.”
“It got worse,” he said. “She started coming to the house when you weren’t home. Walking around. Touching things. Moving things. Criticizing everything. ‘This house is too small. Amara deserves better. You can’t even provide a decent home for my daughter.’”
His hands tightened around the back of a chair.
“Then one day, two months after we got married, I found out you were pregnant.”
Amara stopped breathing.
“I found the test in the bathroom bin,” he said. “You hadn’t told me yet. I think you were planning to. But I found it, and I was so happy.”
His voice cracked.
“I bought a small cake and a card. I wanted to surprise you. I was going to make dinner and tell you I already knew.”
His face darkened.
“But I never got the chance. Your mother came to the house that afternoon.”
Amecha remembered that day perfectly.