I woke up at dawn and saw my wife standing by the window, looking through it. I asked what she was looking at, and she said, “I heard a sound. It sounded like someone jumped over the wall.” I quickly got up and looked through the other window, scanning the surroundings to see if there was any intruder around.
FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP CHANNEL TO RECEIVE ALL STORIES IN YOUR INBOX
We stood by both windows for several minutes. We didn’t see even a shadow. It was around 4 a.m. when we went back to sleep. In the morning, I went around the wall looking for footprints. My mom saw me and asked what I was looking for. I told her about the sound we had heard. She answered, “I would have heard it if there was such a sound. I hadn’t been sleeping all night. It might be your ears playing tricks on you.”
My father died years ago. He was sixty-four years old. My mom was only forty-five when he died. She married my dad very early in life, so when he died, she was left very lonely at the peak of her life. We tried to keep her company. I even suggested she should get married again, but she brushed all that aside.
When my wife delivered, we brought my mom in to help with the baby. My wife’s mom had died years earlier too, and all she had left was her father. She took my mom as her own and related to her warmly, like a mother and daughter.
When my mom arrived, the first thing she looked out for was a church. The nearest church was not far from our house, so every Sunday, she went to church while we stayed at home. She became friends with the reverend of the church, so sometimes when she didn’t attend church, the reverend came to our house to ask why she had missed the service.
With time, we all started going to church with her on Sundays because this reverend was relentless. He would come home and ask questions. There was even a day he came with his Bible to hold a service for us because we hadn’t gone to church on Sunday.
Another night, that same sound happened again. We both woke up and looked at each other. I checked the time. It was 4:07 a.m. My wife said, “This can’t be a coincidence. It’s happening at the same time today too.” Again, we stood on either side of the windows and observed to see what was going on.
We didn’t see even a shadow on the wall. We went back to sleep. I started thinking carefully about the security of the house. My mom insisted that we were being paranoid.
“Someone jumps into this house at dawn and takes nothing?” she asked me. “What kind of thief is that?”
My wife answered, “Maybe he doesn’t get anything now, but one day, his stars will shine, and he’ll get something to steal.”
As the man of the house, I started monitoring the situation. I set my alarm for 4 a.m. I would wake up and check through the windows. I would see nothing or hear nothing and then go back to bed. I changed my tactics. I set the alarm for 3 a.m.
My wife laughed at me. She said I couldn’t catch a thief while standing by the window. If I was serious, I should step outside and watch.
I didn’t fall for that trap.
One dawn at 3 a.m., I went to the hall to get something from the fridge. All of a sudden, I heard, bam! Someone had jumped into the house. I quickly pulled the curtain to look outside, and guess who I saw.
My mother!
“Ei, okukuseku!” I screamed in my head. Where’s this woman coming from that she’s jumping over the wall? No wonder she’d been complaining about her knees every day.
I waited quietly, and just as she was about to enter her room, I said, “Oh, so it’s you. Where are you coming from at this time of the morning?”
She didn’t say a word. She just walked with a slight limp and entered her room. I followed her there.
“It’s 3 a.m. Now I know it’s you. Where have you been going?”
My wife had stayed in the room waiting for me, and when I didn’t return, she stepped outside to see what I was doing. She must have heard me talking in my mother’s room, so she came in, saying she had heard the sound.
My mom quickly retorted, “We are here. We didn’t hear any sound.”
When my wife left, I followed her out. It took my mom several days before she opened up to me. She asked if my wife knew about the wall-jumping incident, and I said no, I hadn’t told her. Then she thanked me.
She said she usually used the gate, but she only had to jump the wall whenever she wanted to go out and I had locked the gate and kept the keys. Sometimes I locked the gate and unconsciously took the keys inside. To me, at that time of the night, no one would need to go outside again.
She confessed that she had been going to see the reverend. The two of them had something going on, but they were both not ready to make it public.
The reverend’s wife had died and been buried less than a year earlier, so I could understand why they wanted to keep it a secret.
“But why didn’t you tell me earlier? You know I would have understood you.”
She kept begging me not to tell my wife about it, and I assured her I wouldn’t. I took out the keys to the gate and gave them to her. Even when I locked it, I made sure she had the keys so that at dawn, whenever she wanted to go out, she could do so without jumping over the wall.
This reverend was over ten years older than my mom, just as my dad had been many years older than her. My mom likes older men. My only concern is, what if this reverend dies and leaves her alone again? But she doesn’t care. She tells me love doesn’t have to last forever to be real.
I Called My Girlfriend And Another Man Answered The Phone
“Even if we break up along the way, even if we don’t amount to anything in the end, it’s still love in this moment.”
So I’ve stopped worrying about her. In church, I monitor their movements. You would never suspect something like this is going on. Who said our mothers aren’t baddies? They were brought up well, so they do it in the darkness where no one can judge them.
—Yaw
This story you just read was sent to us by someone just like you. We know you have a story too. Email it to us at [email protected]. You can also drop your number and we will call you so you tell us your story.
******