The world had narrowed to the rhythmic clatter of bus wheels on asphalt and the blur of green rushing past the window. Mina had spent the last of the emergency cash she'd kept hidden in her wallet—a pathetic, crumpled sum—on a ticket to the only place that had ever felt like a true sanctuary: her childhood home in a quiet, unassuming suburb of Lagos.
She didn't remember the journey. It was a haze of exhaustion and shock. She'd gotten off the bus and walked the familiar, dusty streets on autopilot, her small bag feeling like it was filled with stones.
And then, she was there. Standing before the modest bungalow with its chipped blue paint and the vibrant, unruly bougainvillea crawling up the porch. The home her parents had built with love, not wealth.
The front door was open, only the screen door keeping out the afternoon heat. She could see a figure moving inside. Her mother, Mama Nneoma, was humming, setting a pot on the stove.
Mina didn't knock. She couldn't. She simply pushed the screen door open, its familiar creak a sound that bypassed her broken heart and went straight to her soul.
Mama Nneoma turned. She was a woman whose strength was woven into the lines on her face, her hair a stunning crown of silver. Her eyes, usually bright with wit, took in her daughter in a single, devastating glance: the travel-worn clothes, the empty eyes, the way she stood in the doorway as if she might break if she took another step.
"Nne m," her mother breathed, the Igbo endearment—'my mother'—a soft, heartbroken exhale. The wooden spoon clattered into the pot, forgotten.
That single word, that familiar term of love, was the key that unlocked the vault holding Mina's pain. A single, ragged sob escaped her lips. Then another. The dam broke.
She didn't move. She just stood there, in the middle of the simple, clean kitchen, and wept. It was a silent, body-wracking crying, the kind that had no sound but stole all the air from the room.
Mama Nneoma didn't rush to her. She didn't ask questions. She simply walked over, her movements slow and deliberate, and wrapped her arms around her daughter. She was a small woman, but her embrace felt like the strongest fortress in the world.
"I'm here, nwa m," she murmured into Mina's hair, her voice a steady rock in the torrent of her daughter's grief. "Your mother is here. You are home."
She held her like that, for minutes that felt like hours, until the worst of the storm had passed. Then, gently, she led Mina to the old, worn sofa in the sitting room, its familiar floral pattern a stark contrast to the cold minimalism of the Dared mansion.
She disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a glass of cold water and a warm, damp cloth. She pressed the cloth into Mina's hands. "For your face," she said softly.
Mina obeyed, pressing the warmth to her eyes, the simple, practical care undoing her all over again.
"Where is my grand-daughter?" Mama Nneoma asked, her voice carefully neutral, though her eyes were sharp with a fear she wouldn't voice.
"With him," Mina whispered, her voice hoarse. "She's… she's safe. They have a nanny." The words 'They have a nanny' tasted like ash, a confession of her own failure.
Mama Nneoma nodded, a world of understanding in the gesture. She didn't press. She just waited.
The story came out then. Not in a organized, linear fashion, but in broken fragments, pushed out between hiccupping breaths. The accident. The job loss. The flood. The move to Abuja. The cold, calculating cruelty of Hajiya Zainab. The slow, insidious erosion of her spirit. Adams's retreat into silence. The constant, grinding feeling of being an unwelcome visitor in her own life.
She told her about the vase. About the nanny. About the way Trisha now reached for another woman instead of her.
Mama Nneoma listened, her face a mask of growing sorrow and simmering anger. She didn't interrupt. She just held her daughter's hand, her grip firm and anchoring.
Finally, Mina came to the part she could barely force out. The argument. The words she'd spat at him. The look on his face. And then…
She couldn't say it. She just touched her own cheek, her eyes wide with a fresh wave of shame, as if she were the one who had done something wrong.
Mama Nneoma's breath caught. Her eyes hardened into flint. She reached out and gently tilted her daughter's face toward the light. There was nothing to see now but the ghost of her pain, but her mother saw it all.
"He raised his hand to you?" Her voice was low, dangerous.
Mina nodded, a fresh tear tracing a path through her mother's memory of the blow.
For a long moment, Mama Nneoma was silent. The air in the small room crackled with a protective fury so potent it was a physical presence. Then, she pulled Mina into another fierce embrace.
"Listen to me," she said, her voice fierce and clear. "You hear my voice? This is not your shame to carry. That mark? That is his shame. That is the brand of a weak man who could not handle the strength of the woman he was blessed with. You did not make him do that. His failure is his own."
The words were a balm, washing away a layer of the poison. Someone else saw it. Someone else named the truth.
"I have nothing, Mama," Mina wept, the core of her despair finally laid bare. "No home. No money. No job. I lost everything."
"You listen to me," her mother said, pulling back and cupping Mina's face in her hands, forcing her to meet her gaze. "You have you. You have the same two hands that built a life once. You have the same mind that taught children and charmed a man into building an empire with you. You have a daughter who needs her mother. And you have me. This house is your home. It has always been your home. You have not lost everything. You have only lost what was never truly yours."
It was the first clear, true thing Mina had heard in months. The Dared wealth, the penthouse, the status—it had never been hers. It had been a loan, contingent on her obedience, on her silence, on her smallness.
Here, in this small, warm house, she was just Mina. And that, her mother was telling her, was enough.