My wife refuses to sleep beside me on Friday nights because she says that’s the night her first husband returns to her body.
I used to laugh whenever she said it, but the day I watched her quietly fold a blanket at exactly 11:47 p.m. and walk out of our bedroom like someone sneaking away from trouble, something inside me shifted.
Melissa is thirty-four, soft-spoken, careful with her words—the kind of woman who doesn’t like noise.
But every Friday night, she behaves like someone preparing for an exam she never registered for. She carries her blanket to the guest room again, and I watch her open the door slowly as if scared the air in the hallway might talk.
Sharon’s door stays locked as usual. She’s Melissa’s teenage daughter—sharp-eyed and far too observant for her age. Whenever I greet her on Friday mornings, she answers with a forced brightness, like she’s trying to hide something. The whole house carries a strange tension, as if everyone is holding their breath except me. I lie there wondering if Melissa is traumatized from her previous marriage, or cheating, or hiding something bigger than both.
By Saturday morning she returns to her normal self, talking about breakfast and laundry as if the previous night never happened. Sharon barely looks at me when she comes out to drink tea. She keeps staring at her mother, as if waiting for a signal. The calm in that house is too perfect—like a bandage covering a wound.
Things started to make more sense when Mrs. Udo—our neighbor—stopped me at the gate. She lowered her voice and said,
“Daniel, I hope you people are okay. Your wife always rushes inside on Fridays like she’s dodging something. I just said let me check on you.”
I smiled, but my stomach tightened. What exactly was Melissa avoiding every Friday night?
Later, I met James at a suya spot in Lugbe. He’s my closest friend—the type who speaks before thinking. When I explained everything, he didn’t even blink.
“My guy, look well. This one fit be man matter,” he said, tearing into his meat like he was settling a case.
On Sunday, Clara—my younger sister, who never keeps her mouth shut—visited unannounced. She noticed Melissa’s tension immediately and pulled me aside.
“Daniel, your wife has a secret. Open your eyes.”
That night, while heading to the kitchen for water, I heard Sharon whisper urgently through Melissa’s door:
“Mummy, will he come again tonight?”
My heart almost stopped.
But the real shock came a few hours later, around 10:30 p.m., when I stepped outside to throw out the trash. I saw Melissa—my own wife—sneaking out the back door, looking around carefully like someone walking toward danger.
And then I saw her walk toward a man waiting outside the estate gate.
My heart froze, and what happened next…
Melissa was already at the gate when I stepped back into the shadows and held my breath, watching her pass a brown envelope to the plain-looking man who stood like he had been waiting for only her.
He took it quickly and tucked it under his arm as if the thing inside could burn him, then he walked off without even looking back.
Melissa stood there a few seconds like someone counting her steps in her head before she returned through the back door, moving quietly as if she didn’t want the ground to notice her.
I slipped into the kitchen before she came in and pretended to rinse a cup.
She entered with her wrapper tied tight, her face calm in a way that annoyed me because it didn’t match what I just saw.
I asked her where she went and she simply smiled the kind of smile someone uses to end a conversation before it starts.
She said she only stepped out to pick fresh air and that I must have imagined anything else. She didn’t raise her voice, she didn’t look scared, she just spoke like a woman telling me to stop digging into ground that had no treasure.
I watched her walk away and something inside me started tying itself into knots.
Sharon avoided me all through the next morning, and for the first time I noticed how she kept checking the time on her phone like she was counting down to something she didn’t want to face.
Any small sound from the corridor made her jump a little, then she would stare at Melissa as if waiting to know whether to relax or panic. That girl knew more than she wanted to say, and that made me worry even more.
By the next Friday I had decided I wasn’t going to sit in that house like someone waiting for quiz results. I called James. He didn’t ask too many questions; he just followed me back to the estate and parked a bit far from the gate. When Melissa stepped out again that night with another envelope and handed it to the same man, James leaned forward and whispered that we should tail him. We kept a bit of distance as we followed him through the streetlights until he stopped near a dark blue car.
A uniformed man came out of the driver’s seat, saluted him lightly, and called him “Officer Peter.” My heart shifted because this wasn’t looking like romance drama anymore. This was something else entirely.
The following week Melissa went to visit Mrs Lawson, the wealthy widow in our estate who always minded her business too much. I followed her there and waited outside the gate until she came out looking a bit shaken. When I confronted Mrs Lawson politely, she simply told me Melissa was helping her with “women matters,” then she shut her gate as if my questions were too heavy for her compound. That woman knew something too, I could feel it.
Clara came the next day, and after hearing the little I told her, she didn’t waste time. She called my uncles and my mother into a small family meeting right there in our sitting room and said Melissa might have a lover she was hiding. Melissa sat quietly through the whole chaos, her hands on her lap, her face calm like someone listening to rain.
That evening, after work, I was walking toward my car when I heard someone call my name in a low, firm voice. I turned and saw the plain-looking man from the gate standing there in his police vest. Officer Peter.
He walked closer, looked around to be sure no one was listening, then said quietly, “Daniel… we need to talk about your wife.”
Peter looked at me for a long time, with the eyes of someone who had stood too long between duty and fear.
“I can’t say much here,” he whispered. “But you need to know… Melissa isn’t betraying you. She’s protecting you.”
I couldn’t believe it. “Protecting me by sneaking around, handing envelopes to the police in the middle of the night?”
Peter glanced around, then pulled a creased photo from his pocket and placed it in my hand. In the picture was me… standing in front of my office building. And at the edge of the frame, in the darkness, was a shadowy figure holding a phone pointed directly at me.
“This person has been following you for over three months,” Peter said. “We have reason to believe you’re the final target in a revenge case connected to last year’s incident. Melissa discovered it before we did. Those envelopes you saw… they contained evidence she secretly gathered and passed to us, because she didn’t want you panicking.”
My hands turned cold. “But why didn’t she tell me?”
“Because she knew you’d rush in and try to handle it yourself,” Peter replied. “She knows you. And because the person stalking you… has ties to the Lawson family. Melissa couldn’t be sure who was friend and who was enemy.”
I stepped back, my head spinning. “Sharon… Clara… everyone thinks…”
“She let them think so,” Peter said quietly. “She wanted the danger aimed at her, not at you.”
I stood there for a long time, unable to speak. All this time, I had doubted the one person who had been standing in the storm to shield me without needing recognition.
When I returned home, Melissa was sitting on the sofa, her hands clasped together, her familiar calm expression—except this time, I could see the exhaustion beneath it.
I sat down across from her.
“I met Peter,” I said.
She froze for a moment, but didn’t look away. “So… you know.”
I didn’t blame her, didn’t question, didn’t demand explanations. I simply touched her hand.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Melissa exhaled, her eyes turning slightly red. “Because if anything happened to you… I wouldn’t survive it.”
A long silence filled the room, but this time it wasn’t the kind that made me suspicious. It was the kind shared by two people finally standing on the same side.
I held her hand tighter.
“No more secrets. From now on, you’re not protecting me alone. We do it together.”
Melissa nodded, and for the first time in weeks, her face softened.
Outside the window, a distant car horn echoed through the night. The storm was still coming, but at least this time, we would face it together.