Chapter 13
The silence was unbearable. It wasn't the kind that brought peace, but the kind that pressed down on the soul, suffocating it.
Freen and Becky sat frozen, watching their mothers—their expressions unreadable, their bodies stiff, as if paralyzed by the truth. It was impossible to tell if they were about to break down or lash out.
Then, Becky’s mother let out a breath—shaky, almost like she was struggling to stay standing. “You shouldn’t have told us.” Her voice was eerily calm, but it cracked under the weight of her pain.
Freen and Becky exchanged a look of confusion.
“What do you mean?” Becky asked hesitantly.
Becky’s mother clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms. “You shouldn’t have told us. That would have been fair.” Her voice wavered, then rose. “That would have been merciful.”
Freen’s mother let out a choked sound, almost like a bitter laugh. “How are we supposed to live with this?” she asked, voice thick with emotion. She looked at her husband, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. “How am I supposed to sleep at night? How am I supposed to look at myself in the mirror, knowing I was never truly loved?” Her voice cracked, and she covered her mouth to hold back a sob.
Becky’s mother shook her head, her whole body trembling. “We gave you our lives. We loved you with everything we had. And now you expect us to just... accept this?” Her voice turned sharp as she glared at Mr. Armstrong. “Do you think I don’t see the guilt in your eyes? That I don’t feel the way you pull away? That I don’t know what it means when a man never truly looks at his wife like she’s his world?” She let out a bitter laugh. “I thought it was just me. I thought I wasn’t enough. But all this time…” She trailed off, swallowing hard.
“Our whole marriage was a lie,” Freen’s mother whispered, her voice barely audible.
“It wasn’t a lie,” Mr. Armstrong tried, but the words felt weak even to him.
“It wasn’t?” Becky’s mother let out a humorless laugh. “Then tell me. Did you ever love me the way I loved you?”
Silence.
Freen and Becky sat frozen, helpless as their fathers lowered their heads, unable to answer.
“That’s what I thought,” Becky’s mother said, voice hollow. She wiped away a tear angrily. “You had your way for twenty years. Now it will go as we say.”
Mr. Chankimha flinched at the cold finality in her voice. “Please… don’t do this,” he begged.
But Freen’s mother was shaking her head, her voice growing desperate, frantic. “We cannot—” she clutched her chest, as if physically trying to hold herself together “—we cannot let this break us apart. We have spent twenty years building this family. Twenty years keeping it together. And now, because of your selfishness, we are supposed to throw it all away?”
Becky’s mother stepped forward, eyes blazing. “Do you know what will happen to us if people find out?” She let out a broken laugh. “Oh, of course, you don’t! Because nothing will happen to you. You’re men. Society will move on. But us?” Her voice cracked. “We will become a joke. The wives who weren’t enough. The women who were blind fools. The poor, pitiful wives left behind by their perfect husbands.”
Freen’s mother nodded, bitter tears slipping down her cheeks. “I won’t live like that. I can’t.” She looked at Mr. Chankimha with a kind of pain that cut deeper than anger. “I’d rather live a lie than live as a fool.”
Freen’s stomach twisted in unease. “Mom, no,” she tried.
But Becky’s mother turned on her sharply. “No? You don’t get to say no. You don’t get to lecture us about fairness. You have no idea what this feels like.”
Becky shook her head. “We’re trying to help you understand—”
“No,” Freen’s mother cut in. “No more understanding. No more pain.” She took a deep breath, as if forcing herself to be steel. “If we can’t love them, they shouldn’t love each other either.”
The words sent ice through the room.
“You don’t mean that,” Freen whispered, but she could already see it in her mother’s eyes. The truth had turned to bitterness.
“Oh, but I do,” her mother replied. "You swore to take this secret to your grave. That’s how it was supposed to be. But now? Now, the truth cuts deeper than any lie ever could. You have no idea what this means for us—the shame, the whispers, the humiliation we’ll have to endure. The pain is unbearable. I can’t even begin to imagine what we’ll face out there, how society will tear us apart. Our name will be stained with disgrace and ridicule. This secret should have remained buried. And now, it must stay between us—no one else can ever know."
Becky’s mother turned to her husband, her voice chillingly empty. “We’ll divide everything. The business, the assets. I don’t care how much it costs—just as long as neither of you ever speak to each other again.”
“But the business isn’t something you can just split just like that—” Mr. Armstrong started.
“Then give it to them,” Becky’s mother snapped, gesturing toward Freen and Becky. “Let them run it. Let them have all of it. But you two?” Her voice turned sharp as a knife. “You will never interact again. You will never look at each other again. You will never—ever—see each other in secret again.”
“And neither will you two,” Freen’s mother added, turning to Freen and Becky.
Becky flinched. “What?”
“You already hate each other. Good. Keep it that way,” her mother said coldly. “I don’t want history repeating itself.”
Freen felt the ground shift beneath her. “Mom, that’s insane—”
“No, it’s necessary,” her mother interrupted. “Final terms.”
Becky’s mother stood abruptly, her spine rigid. “We will break all ties with each other’s families. We will live as if none of this ever happened. That is how we will keep our family’s name safe & protective in society"
Freen clenched her fists. “You’re making a mistake.”
“No. We’re preventing one.”
Becky’s mother’s lips trembled, but she refused to break. “We’re not just protecting our family’s name—we’re protecting our sanity.”
She turned to her husband, her voice trembling with finality. “You are my husband. And you will remain that way, whether you like it or not.”
With that, both mothers turned on their heels and left, their silhouettes fading into the darkness of the hallway.
The silence they left behind was suffocating.
Freen and Becky sat in shock, the weight of the moment settling in. Just when everything between them had started to feel right, this happened. And now?
They weren’t just fighting for their family’s happiness anymore.
Now, they were fighting the very fate that their parents had forced upon them.
First, their dads spent a lifetime in denial. Now, their moms had made the same choice—to live out their days pretending, suppressing, and burying the truth. No one wanted to face the consequences of reality. No one was willing to give truth a chance. How is it that the weight of society’s expectations, its rigid norms and suffocating stereotypes, always triumphs over love? How deeply rooted is this fear that we would rather suffer in silence, trapped in pain, than dare to confront the truth and fight for love?
And with that final act of defiance, all four of them sat in silence, frozen in the aftermath of it all. The weight of unspoken emotions hung heavy in the air, pressing down on them like an invisible force. No one dared to move, to speak, to even breathe too deeply—as if any sudden action might shatter the fragile illusion they had just chosen to uphold.
_________
The night had settled thick and heavy over the estate, the garden bathed in a soft glow from the distant mansion lights. The air smelled of damp earth and blooming jasmine, but neither of them could take solace in it.
Freen’s mother, Mrs. Chankimha, sat on the stone bench beneath the grand old tree, her hands trembling as she wiped away tears that refused to stop. Beside her, Becky’s mother, Mrs. Armstrong, knelt in the grass, her face buried in her hands, shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
For a long time, neither spoke. Just the sound of quiet, broken breathing filled the space between them. It was strange—after everything they had said inside, after the harsh words and the anger, here they were, holding onto each other like they were the only things keeping the other from falling apart.
Mrs. Chankimha exhaled shakily, forcing a bitter chuckle. “We were horrible, weren’t we?” Her voice cracked under the weight of her emotions.
Mrs. Armstrong lifted her tear-stained face, eyes red and swollen. “We were.” She sniffled, wiping her face roughly. “And yet… what else were we supposed to do?”
Silence.
The question lingered, raw and unanswered.
Mrs. Chankimha leaned back against the bench, staring up at the sky, at the stars that had witnessed it all. “I don’t know how to process this. I don’t know how to be okay with it.” Her voice wavered. “I love him. I have loved him my entire life. And suddenly, I’m supposed to accept that… that none of it was real? That I was just someone he settled for because he couldn’t have what he truly wanted?”
Mrs. Armstrong shook her head fiercely. “No.” She clutched Mrs. Chankimha’s hand tightly. “We were not just placeholders. We were his family. His life. Maybe not in the way we wanted, maybe not in the way we thought, but we were still his.”
A painful pause.
Mrs. Chankimha let out a shuddering breath. “Then why does it feel like I’ve lost everything?”
Mrs. Armstrong didn’t have an answer to that. Instead, she pulled Mrs. Chankimha into a tight embrace. They weren’t just crying for themselves; they were crying for their husbands, for their daughters, for the life they had all built together—an illusion so beautiful, they had chosen to live in it rather than face the reality.
A single sob escaped from Mrs. Armstrong’s lips. “I don’t want my life to change.”
Mrs. Chankimha clung to her. “Neither do I.”
And there it was—their deepest, most unspoken truth. It wasn’t just about society. It wasn’t just about shame. It was about fear. Fear of losing the life they had spent decades building. Fear of waking up tomorrow and realizing they no longer had a family. Fear that without this carefully crafted illusion, they might not survive the heartbreak.
“We did what we had to do,” Mrs. Armstrong whispered.
Mrs. Chankimha nodded against her shoulder. “We protected our hearts the only way we knew how.”
Mrs. Armstrong wiped at her tear-streaked face, her voice barely above a whisper. “But you know we’re wrong. You know this isn’t right.”
Mrs. Chankimha inhaled shakily, her chest rising and falling with the weight of emotions she couldn’t contain. “I know.” Her voice cracked. “But we need a break… a pause to breathe, to think it through. We need to gather ourselves—our broken pieces—before we can be strong enough to face it. So for now… just for now, let it be like this.” She swallowed hard, her sobs muffled against the night air.
“While the pain is still fresh, while it still hurts this much… let it hold us together. Let the feeling of keeping them as our family calm this storm inside us.”
Mrs. Armstrong nodded slowly, her heart aching with the unbearable truth. “You’re right. For now, let’s just hold onto them—not as husbands, maybe… but as friends.” Her voice trembled with fragile hope. “Maybe one day, we’ll find the strength to face it. Maybe, slowly, we can set them free.”
Mrs. Chankimha let out a small, bitter laugh between her sobs. “They suffered in silence for so long… burning in the agony of living a life that wasn’t truly theirs. And yet, through it all, they gave us their best. They never let us feel any less loved—not until we learned the truth.”
Mrs. Armstrong’s expression darkened, her tears drying into something heavier, something more painful. “That’s what hurts the most.” Her voice was laced with disappointment. “Not that they loved each other. Not that their hearts belonged elsewhere. But that… we were supposed to be their best friends first, before we were their wives. We were supposed to be their safe space. And yet, they couldn’t tell us the truth.” She exhaled sharply, her breath shaky. “They never trusted us enough to share this part of themselves. And that… that’s the real heartbreak.”
Mrs. Chankimha gripped her hands tightly, nodding through the blur of her tears. “Yes. That’s where the pain truly lies. Because while they gave us all the happiness in the world, they suffered alone. And maybe—just maybe—it’s our fault too.” Her voice broke into a whisper. “We, as a society, failed love.”
Silence fell over them, thick and suffocating.
Mrs. Armstrong looked up at the night sky, her jaw tightening. “And even though it hurts… this is the price we have to pay for the people we love. We have to let them go” She turned to Mrs. Chankimha and pulled her into an embrace, holding on tightly.
“Soon,” Mrs. Chankimha whispered, her body trembling against Mrs. Armstrong’s hold. “But not now. Please… not now.”
And with that, she broke completely, her sobs unrestrained, her pain too vast to hold in any longer.
They held onto each other, their grief mingling in the cold night air, their hearts aching with a truth they weren’t yet ready to face.
A silent promise was made between them—not today, not tomorrow, but one day… they would make things right.
Slowly. Steadily.