The silence in my flat was no longer peaceful—it was haunting. Subira had recovered.
I remember the night the call came. The city was asleep, but my mind wasn't. I was scrolling mindlessly through photos of some influencer's beach holiday when the phone rang—Subira's school name glowing on the screen like a warning flare in the dark.
"Miss Neema? Please don't panic—but Subira's collapsed during sports. She's at the hospital now."
The world tipped sideways. I don't remember how I got there. Just flashes—taxi lights slicing the wet streets, my hands shaking so badly the driver had to help me count the notes. The smell of disinfectant. Nurses murmuring into radios. My daughter's tiny body on a bed too big for her, pale and still.
They said it was exhaustion. Dehydration. Stress. She'd been holding in too much, the doctor hinted. Had there been a recent change at home? Was there anything going on emotionally? I nodded numbly. Everything had changed.
She opened her eyes the next morning, and I cried like I hadn't in years—heaving sobs that came from some hidden part of me, one I thought I'd locked away long ago.
And as I held her, I knew something had shifted.
I had traded the warmth of a family for the cold shine of appearances. The parties, the colleagues who admired my new wardrobe, the laughter I faked at rooftop bars—it had all come at a price I hadn't seen until that night.
But every time I looked at Subira, the illusion cracked.
She started drawing pictures at school—family portraits that always showed three people. Even after the divorce, even when Yona had stopped coming around. He had retreated into silence, replying to messages with monosyllables or not at all. Subira would ask, "Why doesn't Daddy visit anymore?" and I'd say, "He's just busy, love." I didn't know the truth then, not fully. Not yet.
Sometimes I caught myself staring at his contact name on my phone, fingers hovering, unsure whether I wanted to apologise or justify. But I did neither.
And then, one rainy Thursday evening, it came.
And still, I hadn't hit bottom.
That came days later, when I bumped into one of Yona's cousins outside the supermarket. She looked at me the way people do when they're about to say something they know will hurt.
"You don't know, do you?" she asked.
I blinked. "Know what?"
Her lips pressed together, then parted with brutal softness.
"Yona's gone."
The words floated in the air between us, as if they hadn't quite found their way into my ears. I stared at her, waiting for her to laugh, to say it was a joke in poor taste, or that she meant something else—gone to another province, perhaps. Gone travelling. Anything but—
She didn't blink. Her silence confirmed it.
I didn't cry. Not there. Not then.
I nodded, said something polite—I don't remember what—and pushed the trolley forward as if I still needed tomatoes, bread, and dish soap. I walked the aisles as if grief hadn't just cracked open the world beneath my feet.
But later, at home, after I'd put Subira to bed and poured myself a glass of wine I didn't want, I sat at the kitchen table staring at the condensation on the bottle and finally let the truth settle.
He was dead.
He'd died quietly, they said. In his sleep. His neighbour found him the next morning when the gate was still locked at noon. Some said it was his heart. Others whispered about sadness that swells until the body gives up.
Yona had been broken long before his body was.
I buried my guilt under a pile of empty words. He wanted the divorce too. He never fought for us. We just weren't happy anymore. I told myself all of it, on repeat. But none of it explained why my chest felt hollow, like something essential had been carved out.
I didn't attend the funeral. Couldn't. Wouldn't. I told everyone it was because of Subira, her recovery, her need for stability. The truth was uglier: I didn't know if I could face his mother, his brothers, the church elders. Or worse—his absence.
Instead, I stayed in bed that day and let the hours pass like a punishment. I scrolled through photos of us—years ago, smiling outside our old flat, his hand on my belly when I was pregnant, his proud grin the first time he held Subira. I hated how easily I had cast all that aside. How quickly I'd mistaken attention for affection, noise for fulfilment, freedom for peace.
Now, the silence pressed on me like a weight I couldn't lift.
Balancing work, motherhood, and whatever remained of my social life became a slow, daily war.
Subira grew quieter. Not withdrawn, exactly, but… observant. She watched me the way Yona used to—eyes full of questions she never asked out loud. Sometimes I'd find her lying awake, staring at the ceiling, her face blank. Once, I heard her whisper, "I miss Daddy," to her stuffed giraffe. I didn't know what to say.
I tried to be everything: the cheerful mother, the responsible professional, the graceful ex-wife. I packed lunchboxes with little notes, sat in endless meetings about marketing trends, forced myself to laugh at brunches I no longer enjoyed. But inside, the cracks were spreading.
There were nights I'd lie in bed scrolling through old messages, re-reading the ones I never replied to. I'd type out long paragraphs—I'm sorry, Yona. I didn't know how to stay. I thought I was drowning, but maybe I was just impatient. Then I'd delete them, one after another.
Because the dead don't read texts.
And the living have to carry on.
I used to think freedom would taste sweet. That once I shed the weight of a failing marriage, I'd be lighter, freer, more myself. But freedom, as I found it, came at the cost of echoes—echoes of little feet running down the hallway, of Yona's deep voice humming in the kitchen on Sunday mornings, of laughter that used to fill our home without the need for effort.
Now, silence sits at my table. And Subira, my sweet girl, looks at me with a confusion I cannot soothe.
Work became my refuge. I drowned myself in meetings, client pitches, and after-work cocktails. My social circle swelled—women who never married, others who had left behind their own families, all of them dressed in confidence, heels, and well-practised detachment. I tried to fit in, smiling through evenings filled with shallow laughter and deeper emptiness.
Weeks passed. At work, I was praised for my resilience.
"Neema, you're amazing," one of my colleagues said after I led a successful client pitch. "After everything… you're holding up so well."
I smiled—tight, rehearsed. The kind of smile that sits just below your eyes and never quite reaches your heart.
In truth, I was barely breathing. I existed in compartments. The professional Neema in tailored blazers with tidy bullet points on her slides. The mother who rehearsed Subira's spelling words while stirring sauce on the stove. And then, the private Neema—the one who sat in the bathroom at midnight with the tap running, staring at herself in the mirror and asking, How did I get here?
Evenings became the hardest. Subira's routine anchored me: dinner, homework, bedtime story, prayers. She'd ask about Yona sometimes, always softly, as if afraid of unbalancing me.
"Mummy… does Daddy watch us from heaven?"
"I think he does, darling."
"Even when I'm naughty?"
"Especially then," I whispered, kissing her forehead.
But I knew she missed him in ways she couldn't explain. Her drawings at school featured only one parent. Her teacher asked for a meeting one Friday.
"She's quiet lately. Withdrawn, compared to before. I just thought you should know."
I nodded, thanked her, promised to talk to Subira. But I didn't know what to say that wouldn't unravel us both.
At home, she kept her sadness tidy, like her bedroom—neatly folded and silent.
One night, I found her asleep with one of Yona's old T-shirts pressed to her face. I hadn't even realised she'd kept it. I stood in the doorway, watching the slow rise and fall of her breath, the innocence that grief had no business stealing. And I broke.
I sat on the edge of her bed and cried for the first time—not for Yona, or the marriage we lost, but for the weight I'd made my daughter carry.
I had told myself that freedom meant space, opportunity, reinvention. But here I was—tethered to a version of myself that was always pretending, always performing.
The first crack in my sense of freedom didn't come with grand regret. It came with the quiet shame of seeing Subira parent herself while I chased fulfilment I couldn't name.
And once the crack appeared, more followed.
I tried to convince myself it was just a bad week.
The deadlines. The meetings. The early morning rushes. The empty side of the bed.
But then came the after-work drinks—harmless, casual, the kind of gathering I used to scoff at as unimportant. Now, I clung to them like a life raft. Laughter, wine, loud music—they dulled the ache.
Jonas, a colleague from the marketing team, had been overly attentive for weeks. He smiled too long, touched my elbow when he didn't need to. I didn't encourage him—but I didn't stop him either.
That Friday, after too much Prosecco and too little self-restraint, I let him walk me to my car. When he leaned in, I didn't pull away immediately.
It wasn't a kiss, not really. Just a pause too long, breath too close. A silent betrayal of the woman I used to be.
The guilt didn't come from Jonas—it came from the woman in the mirror the next morning. The one who avoided her own gaze as she packed Subira's lunchbox.
I was late picking Subira from school that Monday. The teacher had called three times before I saw the missed calls.
"She's been quiet again," Ms. Clara said, clearly concerned. "And today, she cried during reading. She said she had a stomach ache, but I think… maybe she just needed you."
I knelt beside Subira as she stood beside her teacher, hugging her backpack like armour.
"I'm sorry, baby," I whispered. "Mummy's here now."
But her hug was slower, reluctant. As if she wasn't sure which version of me she'd get.
I drove home in silence. Not even the radio dared to speak. I had thought freedom would bring clarity—but all I had now were fragments: half-truths, restless nights, and a daughter slipping through my fingers.
And still, I kept pretending.
At work, I laughed too hard. At home, I played make-believe. To the world, I was holding it all together. But I felt the walls tightening.
And then came the letter from the school—an invitation to a grief support workshop for children. I stared at it for a long time.
Maybe it was time we both stopped pretending.