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Episode 6: When Marriage Meets Fire
The days that followed were a mix of silence and survival.
Ifeoma and I still lived under the same roof, but our conversations became clipped, like coworkers forced to tolerate each other in a shared space. The love was still there, somewhere, buried under suspicion, betrayal, and pride.
At night, she turned her back to me. In the mornings, she placed breakfast on the table without a word.
We weren’t fighting anymore.
But we weren’t living either.
—
Then one afternoon, I got a call from Amaka.
Her voice was frantic.
“Please, Ifeanyi, can you come over? It’s about Junior.”
Junior—her six-year-old son.
I didn’t hesitate.
When I got there, the boy was burning with fever. She looked exhausted and scared. She had called two neighbours for help, but none of them responded. Her mother, who used to help occasionally, had traveled for omugwo.
She had no one else.
We rushed him to a nearby hospital. I paid the bills, sat with her through the tests, and helped Junior take his meds.
She didn’t cry—but I saw the strain in her eyes.
After a few hours, when he stabilized, she turned to me and said softly:
> “I didn’t mean to become your problem. I just wanted to survive.”
—
When I got home that night, I met hell waiting at the door.
Linda.
Again.
But this time, she wasn’t smiling.
She was sitting in our living room, arms folded, with Ifeoma pacing angrily beside her.
“You’ve finally moved in with Amaka abi?” Ifeoma exploded. “That’s why you stayed out till past 10 p.m.!”
“I took her son to the hospital,” I said calmly. “The boy had a fever of 39.8°C. He could’ve died.”
“So?” Linda hissed. “You’re now her husband? Her emergency contact? Do you even see how you look?”
“Linda,” I said, eye twitching. “This is a family matter. Please excuse us.”
She scoffed. “Ifeoma, I warned you. But you like to form mature wife. Let me go before I say something that will scatter everything.”
And she left—deliberately banging the door.
—
Ifeoma looked me dead in the eyes.
“You don’t see anything wrong with what you’re doing?”
“I kept a promise to my dead friend,” I replied. “I didn’t sleep with her. I didn’t romance her. I didn’t promise her anything.
“ I’m tired of feeling like I’m competing with a widow.”
Her voice cracked on that last word. And for the first time in weeks, I saw something deeper than anger in her eyes.
Pain.
Not jealousy. Not rage.
Just pain.
—
Later that night, while we lay in bed in our usual silence, I said something I’d been meaning to say:
“I’m cutting ties with Amaka.”
Ifeoma said nothing.
“I can’t keep breaking my home while trying to fix someone else’s.”
Still, she said nothing.
But a tear slid down her cheek.
—
The next morning, I called Amaka and told her everything.
That I would still pay Junior’s school fees till the end of term, but I would step back.
She didn’t fight it.
She just said:
> “Thank you for trying. I understand.”
—
Days turned into weeks. Ifeoma slowly warmed up again. We talked more. We laughed again, occasionally.
But something was still broken.
Until the day I came home and found her cooking something I hadn’t tasted in over a year—ofe akwu with dried fish and snails.
My favorite.
She smiled when I stepped in.
“You’re home early.”
“I closed early,” I replied.
We sat. We ate. We shared memories.
And that night… for the first time in a long while, she didn’t turn her back to me in bed.
—
I thought we were healing.
Until I opened her phone one morning, not even searching—just helping her install a banking app.
And there it was.
A message from a man saved as “Bolaji – Travel Agent.”
> “Are you still planning to leave him after Junior’s graduation?”
What?!
—
I froze.
My hands trembled.
She was planning to leave?
Even after everything?
I looked at her—still sleeping peacefully.
—
🔥 To be continued in Episode 7: The Last Straw or the First Step?
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