A week at her mother's house had not healed Mina, but it had forged her. The shattered pieces of her spirit had been gathered and set in a new, tougher configuration. The quiet, introverted teacher was gone. In her place was a woman who had stared into the abyss of her own marriage and decided she would not fall in.
She stood on the familiar dusty street, looking at the imposing Dared compound. It no longer intimidated her. It was just a house. A very large, very cold house where a business negotiation was about to take place.
She had called ahead. Not to Adams, but to Hajiya Zainab. The conversation had been brief and icy.
"I am coming to collect the rest of my things and to speak with my husband. Alone. Please ensure we have the space."
The "please" was a formality, not a request. Hajiya Zainab, for perhaps the first time, had been rendered speechless, only managing a tight "Very well" before the line went dead.
Now, Mina pushed open the gate and walked in. The air itself felt different. The silent judgment was still there, but it bounced off her new armor. She went straight to the living room.
Adams was already there, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. He looked like he hadn't slept. He was vibrating with a nervous energy, his eyes wide with a desperate hope she knew she was about to extinguish.
"Mina," he breathed, taking a hurried step forward, his hands half-reaching for her before he thought better of it. "You're here. Thank God. I've been… I didn't know… are you okay?"
She didn't answer. She looked past him. Hajiya Zainab was positioned in her usual armchair, a queen holding court, pretending to read a newspaper. Aisha lurked near the doorway, trying and failing to look disinterested.
"I said alone, Adams," Mina stated, her voice calm and clear, not looking at the other women.
"This is my home," Hajiya Zainab said without looking up from her paper. "I will sit where I please."
Mina finally turned her gaze to her mother-in-law. The look was not one of anger, but of cold, dismissive finality. "Then you will sit there and listen while I tell your son I am leaving him. It's your victory. You may as well enjoy it."
The newspaper lowered an inch. Hajiya Zainab's eyes narrowed, but she said nothing. Aisha's jaw dropped.
Adams flinched as if she'd struck him. "Mina, no… please… we can fix this. I'll do anything. We can move out. Today. Right now. I'll find a place. Just… don't say that."
"It's too late for promises, Adams," she said, finally focusing on him. Her eyes were dry, her expression weary but resolute. "You've been making them for months. You promised to handle things. You promised to talk to your mother. You promised to be a husband. The only promise you kept was the unspoken one—that you would always choose them over me."
"That's not true! I'm choosing you now! I'm ready to leave!" he pleaded, his voice cracking.
"You're not choosing me," she corrected him, her tone lethally soft. "You're begging me. There's a difference. You're choosing me only because I've forced your hand by leaving. That's not a choice; it's a last resort."
She took a step closer, her gaze unwavering. "You had a thousand chances to choose me when it was hard. When it cost you something. You chose not to. Every single time."
He had no answer. The truth of her words hung in the air, undeniable.
"So here is my ultimatum," she said, her voice dropping, making him lean in to hear the sentence that would decide his fate. "You want to fix this? Prove it."
"Anything," he whispered, a desperate man clinging to a shred of hope.
"Leave. This. House." She enunciated each word with cold precision. "Not for a night. Not for a week. Permanently. You find a job—any job. You get a small apartment. You learn to live without your father's money and your mother's approval. You learn to stand on your own two feet, without the crutch of this… this gilded prison."
She saw the panic flash in his eyes. The sheer, primal terror of the prospect. It was the fear she knew would be there.
"And if I do that?" he asked, his voice trembling. "If I do all that?"
"Then," she said, pausing to let the word sink in, "you will have taken the first step toward becoming a man I could potentially respect. And in a year, if you have managed to build a life of your own, a real one, you can call me. We can discuss, for the sake of our daughter, what happens next."
The hope in his eyes died, replaced by a cold dread. A year. The condition was a life sentence.
"A year? Mina, please… don't do this…"
"This is not a punishment, Adams," she said, and for the first time, a sliver of the old pain showed in her eyes. "This is your only chance. You cannot fix a marriage from inside the nest of the very people who helped break it. You need to know who you are without them. And I need to know if that man is someone I can ever trust again."
From her chair, Hajiya Zainab finally spoke, her voice dripping with contempt. "This is foolishness. You would have him throw away his inheritance, his family's support, for your pride? You are a selfish girl."
Mina didn't even look at her. She kept her eyes locked on Adams. "That's your mother's voice. The one you've been listening to for months. The question is, are you still listening to it? Or are you finally listening to your wife?"
She had backed him into a corner. The two women in his life, representing two utterly futures, and he had to choose, right then, in front of them both.
He looked from his mother's icy, confident face to his wife's weary, resolute one. One offered the comfort of the familiar, the path of least resistance, and eternal shame. The other offered a terrifying unknown, brutal hard work, and a sliver of light so distant it was almost invisible.
His shoulders slumped. The fight left him. He looked broken.
"I don't know if I can," he whispered, the admission torn from him.
Mina nodded slowly, the last flicker of hope in her own heart extinguished. She had her answer.
"Then we have nothing left to discuss," she said, her voice flat. She turned to leave. "My lawyer will be in touch regarding custody of Trisha. I will be taking my daughter with me."
That finally broke him. "No! Not Trisha! Mina, you can't—"
"I can, and I will," she said, turning back for a final time. "You can't even choose a one-bedroom apartment over your mother's sofa. What makes you think you can choose what's best for our daughter?"
She walked out of the living room, leaving him standing there, utterly destroyed. She went upstairs, packed the rest of her and Trisha's things with a swift, clinical efficiency, and walked out of the Dared compound for the last time.