FORECASTING LOVE IN MARRIAGE

CHAPTER 3: THE WEIGHT OF OUR DREAM

– THE WEIGHT OF OUR DREAM~

The scream began not with a sound, but with a light.

It was the cold, blue light of a smartphone screen, illuminating Fatimah’s horrified face in the pre-dawn gloom of her bedroom. She had woken early to study, but a news alert had hijacked her intention. Now, she sat frozen, the words on the screen branding themselves onto her mind.

EXCLUSIVE: BARRISTER ABDULSALAM ISA’S MARRIAGE COLLAPSES! SECRET DIVORCE LAWSUIT ROCKS POLITICAL CAMPAIGN.

The article was vicious. It detailed the filed petition, painting Abdulsalam as a ruthless careerist so focused on power he was discarding the wife who stood by him for two decades. It quoted "anonymous sources close to the couple" who spoke of "irreconcilable differences" and "a house divided." And, most cruelly, it wove in Mariam’s interview quote, twisting it into a public confirmation of their private ruin. “I can see the man he used to be,” the article repeated, framing it as Mariam’s epitaph for their dead marriage.

Fatimah’s hand flew to her mouth. The betrayal was a physical blow. Her father? Filing for divorce? It couldn’t be true. And yet, the evidence was there, in black and white, for the entire nation to consume like a morning snack.

She ran out of her room, the phone clutched in her trembling hand, and collided with Khalid in the hallway. He was already dressed, his face a mask of grim acceptance. He didn’t need to ask. He had seen it too.

“It’s everywhere,” Fatimah whispered, her voice breaking.

Khalid simply nodded, his jaw tight. “I know.”

The silence of the house was shattered. The digital scream had given voice to the tension, and it echoed through the halls, reaching the master bedroom where Abdulsalam’s phone was already ringing incessantly.

---

Downstairs, Mariam was in the kitchen, attempting the normalcy of preparing breakfast. The kettle whistled, a shrill, anxious sound. Her own phone had been buzzing with calls from family and frantic friends, but she had ignored them all. She was operating on a different frequency, her mind replaying the anonymous caller’s words. “The snake is not in the grass. It is in the house.”

Nasir. It had to be.

A memory, sharp and clear, surfaced through the panic. The woman’s voice on the phone… there had been a familiar lilt to it, a specific cadence she hadn’t registered in the moment. Binta. The name meant something. She closed her eyes, sifting through the archives of her past.

University. Zaria. A lively, sharp-witted girl from Kano, always top of their law class. Binta Garba. They had been friends, rivals, then friends again. Binta had been fiercely principled, often arguing with Mariam about the moral compromises of politics. She had said she wanted to work in the system to change it from within.

Mariam’s eyes snapped open. It was her. The voice, the conviction, the courage to make that call—it all fit. Binta was the whistleblower. This was no longer an anonymous tip; it was a warning from a forgotten ally.

Fueled by this certainty, Mariam marched into the living room just as Abdulsalam descended the stairs, his face pale and ravaged by a sleepless night, his phone pressed to his ear.

“Nasir, I don’t care how they got it! Contain this! Issue a statement now!” he was barking into the phone.

He saw Mariam and Fatimah standing together, their accusatory silence more powerful than any shout. Khalid leaned against the doorframe, observing, his arms crossed.

Abdulsalam ended the call. “Mariam… the children… I can explain.”

“There’s no time for your explanations,” Mariam cut in, her voice cold and steady. “I know who leaked the lawsuit.”

Abdulsalam stared at her, bewildered. “What are you talking about? It was Kabiru’s people! They have spies everywhere!”

“It was Nasir,” she stated, the name dropping like a stone in the quiet room.

A bitter, disbelieving laugh escaped Abdulsalam. “Nasir? Don’t be absurd! He’s the one trying to fix this! He’s drafting the denial as we speak!”

“The call I received yesterday,” Mariam pressed on, her eyes locked on his. “It wasn’t anonymous. It was Binta Garba, my old classmate from university. She’s a clerk at the court. She saw Nasir in a meeting with Kabiru Danladi, the day before the lawsuit was filed.”

The revelation hung in the air. Fatimah gasped softly. Khalid’s observant eyes narrowed, processing this new variable.

But Abdulsalam shook his head, a man clinging to a sinking life raft. “No. This is paranoia. This is you trying to find a villain because you can’t accept the political reality! Nasir has been with me for ten years! He’s my most loyal ally! Why would he do this?”

“Why does any snake bite?” Khalid’s voice, deep and calm, cut through his father’s desperation. “Because it’s its nature.”

“Stay out of this, Khalid!” Abdulsalam snapped, his composure cracking.

“Why? Because I’m telling you the truth you’re too blind to see?” Khalid shot back, pushing off the doorframe. “You trust a man who whispers in the dark more than you trust your own wife, who has stood in the light with you for twenty years.”

The truth of his son’s words was a physical blow. Abdulsalam looked from Khalid’s defiant face to Fatimah’s tear-filled, disappointed eyes, and finally to Mariam’s resolute gaze. He felt the walls of his reality crumbling. But the programming ran deep. Nasir’s logic was the operating system of his political life.

“You’re wrong,” he insisted, though his voice had lost its conviction. “You are all wrong. Nasir would never betray me. This Binta woman is probably on Kabiru’s payroll, feeding you lies to turn my family against me!”

The family stood divided in the wreckage of their living room, the weight of the public scandal crushing down upon them. But it was the private betrayal, the refusal to be believed, that was causing the deepest fractures.

It was then that Abdulsalam, backed into a corner by the united front of his wife and children, said the thing that would change everything. He looked at Mariam, not as his wife, but as a political obstacle.

“And even if I did believe you,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, chilling register, “what would it change? The lawsuit is real, Mariam. I filed it.”

A stunned silence.

“But… you said it was a strategic move… a pretense…” Fatimah stammered.

“It is strategic!” he exploded, the carefully constructed facade finally shattering. “Don’t you understand? This marriage, this ‘perfect family’ dream—it has become a weight! A millstone around my neck! Every decision I make, I have to calculate how it will play for the ‘Isa Family’ brand. Our love, our problems, our life—it’s all become a political asset to be managed! And in this game, assets that become liabilities must be shed!”

The room went utterly still. The word “shed” seemed to hang in the air, toxic and final.

He wasn’t just admitting to the lawsuit. He was reducing their twenty-year marriage, their shared dreams, their children, to a calculable liability. The shocking, brutal honesty of it was more devastating than any lie.

Mariam did not cry. She did not scream. She took a slow, deliberate breath, as if absorbing the poison he had just released. The last flicker of hope in her eyes extinguished, replaced by a cold, clear resolve.

She looked at her children—at Fatimah’s shattered expression, at Khalid’s grim understanding—and then back at her husband.

“I see,” she said, her voice eerily calm. “So that is the weight of our dream. To you, it was just a burden.”

She turned and walked away, not to the bedroom, but to the study. She closed the door softly behind her, leaving Abdulsalam standing alone in the wreckage of his own making, finally understanding that the fall of Barrister Abdulsalam Isa would not begin with a political scandal, but with the silence of the wife he had just called a liability.