If you haven’t read the first part of this story, here’s the link. Kindly read it before starting this one.

So, I laid low for a while. I didn’t ask questions and I didn’t try to probe further. My wife isn’t a small girl. She realized I was up to something. She monitored my moves. Even when I was going around my normal business in the home, she watched me and studied my footsteps. Whenever I was quiet and thinking about things, she’ll ask me, “Is everything alright?” I would turn around and tell her, “Yeah I’m fine. Why do you ask?” She’ll say something like, “Nothing. I just want to know if my husband is feeling alright.”

In the night when she is coming to sleep, she’ll hold my hands and ask me to pray with her. If I ignore her, she’ll continue holding my hands. She’ll pray for several minutes before she let my hands go. Everything she said during prayers was centered around our marriage. God should take the wheels and resolve the unresolved issues between us. God shouldn’t allow the devil to win over our conscience blah blah blah. It didn’t stop me from thinking about the cheating issues.

After praying and speaking all the tongues there’s to speak, she will sleep with her phone under her pillow. I didn’t ask why she slept with her phone under her pillow but her own conscience pushed her to explain. “I get to work very later these days. Let me keep my phone under my pillow so when the alarm goes off, it will be loud enough to wake me up.” I didn’t argue. I was only waiting for the right time strike.

One day, I got hold of her phone when she was in the bathroom. The phone was tucked safely under her pillow. I picked it up and punched in the password. It said, “Wrong password. Try again.” She had changed her password. I tried all the combinations that came to mind, including the date she graduated from high school. None worked. That heightened the suspicion I had for her. I started monitoring to see the new combination she used to open her phone. Whenever I was close, she didn’t type her password. She’ll look first at me and see if I was looking at her.

We lived like the cat and mouse in our own house. She didn’t come out to play until I was out. She didn’t let her phone lie idle whenever I was close. Sometimes, she entered the bathroom with it. I said to myself, “One day, all these things would make sense”

Finally, I caught the password. We were both lying on the sofa when she started tapping away. Maybe she didn’t realize I was looking. I smiled when I got it but it wasn’t easy getting access to her phone. She was always having it in her hand or in her bag. One dawn, she woke me up complaining about waist pains. She was crying, screaming, and snapping her fingers out of pain. Nothing we did work. I had to call a taxi driver to help take her to the hospital. She was admitted.  I sat with her throughout the dawn until the next morning. When the pain subsided, she asked me, “Where’s my phone?” I said, “If you didn’t bring it then you left it in the house.” Her mood suddenly went mellow.

When I went home, the phone was safely resting under her pillow. Her WhatsApp had a different password so I couldn’t access it. But I sent Ato a message;

“Hello Ato, how are you?”

“I thought we agreed not to send messages to each other again.”

“Don’t worry, we can talk. I miss you.”

“I miss you too. Don’t forget to delete that.”

“I will delete. Don’t worry.”

“You wait, I’m calling you.”

Before I would get the time to send a response, his call came in. I Picked. Immediately he heard my voice, he hung up the call. I called him all day, he didn’t pick. But I had enough evidence to go with it. In the evening when I went back to the hospital and gave her the phone, she looked at me suspiciously but I didn’t say anything. I left all the messages on her phone so she would see the conversation. I stayed with her all evening but she didn’t say a word. The next morning, she was discharged and brought home.

I asked her, “So when are you going to tell me the truth about that guy? She answered, “I thought you spoke to him. You didn’t get the answers you were looking for?”

“I got what I was looking for. I only want you to tell me what is going on. You’ve agreed with him not to text each other. You’ve agreed to delete chat when it happens. What’s going on?”

“Nothing is going.”

“Call him right now and let’s find out.”

She called. The guy didn’t pick. She called again and again. The guy didn’t pick. She told me, “When he calls, I will draw your attention so you come and ask him the questions you want to ask.”

Through it all, she was calm and composed. A woman who had done something wrong would act jittery and jumpy but my wife was so calm, I couldn’t spot any pressure or fear in her demeanor. I concluded that she was a true liar. It takes an exceptional liar to be that composed in the face of her own exposed lies. She was eight months pregnant and in a situation where I couldn’t push her to the wall. I wanted the truth but I had to be careful with her. I said, “You’re not ready to tell the truth but let me tell you this, the day you give birth, that very day, I will do a DNA test. You can’t run away from the truth forever.”

She smiled subtly. She said, “If you don’t do the test, I will do it myself just so you know that I have nothing to hide. I’ve been faithful through it all but it’s unfortunate I allowed these things to happen. It’s my own fault.”

Days later, I asked her, “So you want to tell me that Ato never called back?” She asked me to come closer. She played a voice note she had sent to him that was still not delivered. She said, “It looks like he has blocked me. I sent him this voice note for him to know that I was the one calling and not you. It’s still hanging. When I call his line too, they keep telling me it’s busy. What else do you want me to say or do?” I said, “There’s something you’re not telling me. That’s what I want to know.”

“Ok, let me tell you everything. I’d wanted to tell you after delivery but the burden on me to prove my innocence is too heavy for me to carry.  I will tell you the truth now. You can choose to believe me or not.”

Ato wasn’t the man’s real name. It’s a name she gave to him just to keep his identity from me. When she was in school, she told me about a man who was also chasing her. The man was very serious about her and wanted to marry her while she was in school. He had the money to do it and was ready to go all out to marry her. She told me she didn’t like him. She told me she’s committed to me because she sees a future with me than the man. But the man was very kind to her. He visited her often with a lot of the things a student needed to be comfortable in school. He gave her money whenever she asked so it was difficult for her to cut him off.

When we were dating, she told me she had cut the man off long ago and they were no longer talking. That was a lie. She confessed; “Even a night before our wedding, he was on the phone with me, begging me not to break his heart. I told him there was nothing I could do and he hung up. I didn’t hear from him again until he popped up from nowhere last year talking about how he had missed me and how I had broken his heart and how he hadn’t been able to heal. I shouldn’t have entertained him. That was my first mistake. I thought I was already married so nothing could happen.”

They spoke every day and chatted when they could. He sent her money weekly for her upkeep. I asked why he sent her that much every week and she said, “I asked him for money. Just once. He sent me more than I requested but a week later, he sent another money and did it again a week later. I asked why and he said he’s doing that just in case I was shy to ask him for money.”

So, along the line, my wife was drawn emotionally to him. She said. “Whenever he told me he loves me, I also said I love him too.” She was drawn to her but didn’t think it was dangerous. After all, the man was living far away from us so she couldn’t meet him or be involved with him. But one day the man called to tell her that he was coming to town. “He said he was coming for a meeting. He was going to spend two nights in town so I should book a hotel room for him. He sent the money and I booked the hotel room. The day he was coming to town, I was in the hotel room waiting for him when my conscience kicked. What if he comes and wants to do something with me? What if someone sees me here with him and reports it to my husband. Why am I waiting for a man who wants to have something to do with me? I’m even pregnant. Why allow another man to water what my husband had planted? So, I hurriedly left the hotel room, locked the door, and in haste, put the key in my bag. It didn’t occur to me that I’d left with the key until you found out that day. I’m sorry I lied but it was the only way I could make things make sense to you. Because I lied, I had to do so many things to cover up the previous lies. It hasn’t been easy for me. This is the whole truth. I’ve prayed about it. I’ve asked for forgiveness. I accept my weakness and mistakes.”

“He didn’t get angry when he came to the hotel and didn’t meet you there?”

“He was angry and disappointed. I told him you suddenly fell sick so I had to rush back home. He didn’t buy it but I wasn’t keen on convincing him either. He didn’t call and I didn’t call him until he texted me when he was leaving. When he texted, I told him not to text me again because you’re suspecting something.”

There were two voices fighting in my head as I sat listening to her. The voice that said she was lying and the voice that said she was saying the truth. I sat quietly, reading her facial expressions and body language just to pick a hint of lies from what she was saying. In the end, I said, “The truth will finally come out when the baby is born.” She responded, “I have nothing to fear. I’ve told you my truth. I’m not saying you should believe me. It’s my truth. You can do everything within your legitimate powers to find your own truth too. I will support you each step of the way to find what you’re looking for.”

Somehow, my spirit rested. I slept one night and the sleep was deeper than any other sleep I’d ever had since the start of the cheating saga. I ate and actually got the taste of the food right. Oil tasted like oil and not worm juice. A week ago, she kicked me with her leg while we were sleeping. When I woke up she said, “You’re snoring. I can’t sleep.” I turned over and continued sleeping. She kicked me again later but I didn’t bother. She kicked again, this time harder than the first. I got up with anger only to hear her say, “It looks like the baby is coming.”

The following morning, “I had the baby in my arms while she slept out of exhaustion. I looked at the face of the baby critically. Eyes, mine, nose mine, forehead for the mother, fingernails mine, lips for the mother. “How could a girl take everything that’s mine?” I asked myself. When she woke up, the nurse took the baby from me and handed her over to her.

We’ve been discharged and are in a taxi going home. She asked me, “So when are we doing the DNA test?”

“Mtcheew”

–Ahia

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