THE CONTRACT
899 Words
The wedding planner arrived at our house at eight o'clock the following morning.
I was still in my bedroom.
I hadn't slept. How could I have?
I had spent the night sitting at my desk with my law textbooks open in front of me — not reading them, just staring at the pages while my mind turned over the same thought repeatedly like a stone in a river.
Eighty million naira.
My father had borrowed eighty million naira from the Okonkwo family and told nobody. Not my mother before she passed. Not my older brother Emeka who lived in Abuja. Not me — his daughter who had spent three years studying contract law and could have told him, clearly and precisely, exactly what happens when you borrow from men like Chief Okonkwo and cannot repay.
You lose everything.
"Amara." My father knocked twice before opening my door, which he never did without waiting. A small, guilty courtesy. "They are downstairs."
"I heard." I didn't turn from the window.
He stepped inside. I could feel him standing behind me, his unease thickening the air between us until the room felt smaller. My father was not a cruel man. That was perhaps the most painful part of all this. A cruel man, I could hate with my whole chest. My father was weak, and weak men leave wounds that don’t heal clean, because they come folded in love, in shame, in the cowardice of men who refuse to account for themselves.
"Amara, I want you to know that I—"
"Don't." My voice was quiet. "Please don't explain it to me today, Daddy. I'm asking you." A pause. "Tell them I'll be down in ten minutes."
He hesitated.
Then left without another word.
I looked at my reflection in the window glass. The woman looking back at me had her mother's eyes and her grandmother's stubbornness and six years of legal training behind her.
You will survive this, I told her silently.
The wedding planner was a small, immaculate woman named Mrs. Fashola who wore perfume that arrived ten minutes before her and spoke like she was delivering good news.
Sitting beside her, on my father's couch, in the spot where Zion had sat the evening before, was a man I didn't recognize. Late thirties, expensive suit, glasses, carrying a leather document folder with the kind of careful attention that told me immediately he was a lawyer.
"Good morning, Miss Amara." Mrs. Fashola beamed. "I'm here to begin preliminary discussions about the ceremony. Mr. Okonkwo has been very generous with the budget and I must say, we have some absolutely wonderful—"
"Who is he?" I looked at the lawyer.
The man adjusted his glasses. "My name is Mr. Briggs. I am Mr. Okonkwo's personal legal counsel. Before we proceed with any wedding arrangements, my client has requested that you review and sign a prenuptial agreement."
Of course.
Of course there was a prenuptial agreement.
I almost smiled. "May I see it?"
Mr. Briggs looked mildly surprised — as if he hadn’t expected me to ask. As if he’d been expecting tears, or protests, or a young woman too overwhelmed to do anything except sign where she was told.
He opened his folder and slid the document across the table.
I picked it up.
It was forty-three pages long.
I read every single one.
Mrs. Fashola made a phone call. Mr. Briggs checked his watch four times. I read the prenuptial agreement from the first clause to the final signature page with rapt attention.
Fifty minutes later, I set it down
"There are six clauses I won't sign," I said.
My father made a strangled sound.
Mr. Briggs stared at me. "Miss Amara, this agreement has been prepared by a team of—"
“I’m sure it has.” I turned the document to face him and pointed to the first flagged clause. “This clause says that if there’s a divorce, I forfeit any claim to shared assets, no matter how long the marriage lasts. I will not sign that.” I moved to the next. “This one restricts my ability to practice law or take employment without my husband’s written consent. Apart from the fact that I refuse, it’s arguably unenforceable.” I went through the remaining four with the same calm precision. “These two clauses on children are so broadly worded they would sign away rights I haven’t even considered yet. And this final clause—” I tapped the page, “—limits my access to independent legal counsel during the marriage. I found that one almost insulting.”
Mr. Briggs had stopped blinking.
Mrs. Fashola was very quiet.
My father was staring at me with an expression I had never seen on his face before. Something between horror and what might — in different circumstances — have been pride.
"Miss Amara," Mr. Briggs said slowly, "I would need to take these concerns back to Mr. Okonkwo—"
"Please do." I straightened the document and slid it back across the table. "I'm available to review a revised version at his convenience."
His phone rang.
He looked at the screen. Something shifted in his expression. Thirty seconds later, he returned with a different energy entirely.
"Mr. Okonkwo would like to meet with you directly," he said. "This afternoon. His office. Four o'clock."
- Writer
