My wife and I had beautiful dreams when our love was new. We dreamt of building a business where she was the boss and I was the assistant. In our dreams, we had a beautiful house full of kids who brought joy to our hearts. The only disagreement we had was about the “full of kids” aspect of our dream. How many kids made a house full? She said six, and I said two. She even went ahead and split the genders of our future kids: “Three boys, three girls,” she would say with a dreamy smile on her lips.

We had our first child when our marriage was barely a year and a half old. A boy. We named him Hector. She called him “Buba” because he was a bubbly kid. Two years after Buba, Amanda came. Amanda gave her a lot of trouble during pregnancy and delivery. It was very tough for her, and at one point, she nearly lost her life. So, we decided our definition of “a house full of kids” was a house that had Ama and Buba in it. We closed the curtains on childbirth, and to avoid an accidental pregnancy, I had a vasectomy.

A beautiful wife. Two adorable kids. A place we could call home. Life was good for us. All that was left was to start building our own business. She couldn’t wait to be the boss, and I couldn’t wait to push her to the top.

I had travelled to see my parents on Easter when I received a call from a strange voice: “Sir, your wife has been admitted to the intensive care unit at [hospital name]. Currently, she’s responding to treatment, but we’ll need you here to sign some papers.” I asked who he was and what was wrong with my wife. “I spoke to her just last night, and she was in great spirits,” I said.

I returned home that evening, went to the hospital, and saw my wife in a hospital bed with a mask over her nose. Her condition looked critical. The doctor told me, “Your wife attempted an abortion with a dangerous drug. She was brought in here quite late. The drug caused significant damage, but we are doing our best.”

I asked the doctor, “You said she attempted what? Suicide?” He repeated, “She attempted an abortion, and it didn’t go well.”

“My wife? An abortion?”

I was overwhelmed with a cocktail of emotions. Should I be worried about her? Should I be angry? I didn’t know how to feel, but I couldn’t wait for her to get better so she could tell me in her own words how she got pregnant. The next morning, I received the worst news of my life: “Your wife couldn’t make it.”

When I was a boy, my grandpa told me a story about a man who died just as he was about to tell his kids where he had hidden the family treasure. The story traumatized me. All day, I kept thinking, “How could the man do that? Why didn’t he say it earlier instead of waiting until his dying moment?” I felt sorry for the kids. All their lives, they wouldn’t know where the treasure was. They would starve and die, even though they had a fortune sitting idle somewhere.

When I heard the news of my wife’s death, I cried like a baby. Just moments ago, I saw her as the pillar of my life, the beauty of my dreams. Now, she was gone—just when she had something to tell me, an explanation to give. I knew my wife. She could have had a reason, or maybe the doctor was wrong. Even if it was true, we would have fought about it. We would have gotten angry and threatened to end each other’s lives, but in the end, we would have held hands again as husband and wife. Because what we had and what we had built over the years was stronger than a single act of infidelity.

I didn’t get to hear her reason. Worse still, her family blamed me for her death. They said, “A man like you can’t take care of a third kid, so you drove your wife to her death.” I told them, “You don’t understand, and nothing I say will make you believe me.”

A few weeks later, the family laid her in state for friends and family to pay their last respects. As her husband, I should have been the first to see her, but I couldn’t go in. I didn’t want to face her. I was scared of what might come out of my mouth, so I declined to see her corpse. The last image I have of my wife was from that afternoon when her body was being lowered into her grave. I told her, “So you’re leaving without telling me anything? Who got you pregnant? Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

I felt tears streaming down my cheeks. Tears are usually warm, but mine were cold. It felt like they were flowing from a special place in my spirit. They weren’t normal tears. We said our goodbyes. I left my ring on her coffin and walked away from the cemetery.

I was haunted. I thought about her every day. Amanda had a striking resemblance to her mom. I couldn’t look at my own daughter because I was scared. One morning, a thought flashed through my mind: “How long did she cheat with the guy who got her pregnant? Could it be that the same guy is the real father of my kids?”

I decided to do a DNA test. Some days, I was ready to go ahead with it, but other days, I was terrified. “If the results come back and these kids aren’t mine, I’ll kill myself,” I thought. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to know. But the thought never left me. It kept haunting me until one day I decided to do it.

Amanda was mine. Buba wasn’t.

Jesus Christ!

“Buba was our first. How could this be?”

They say alcohol wipes the hurt away. No matter how much I drank, the pain persisted. Nothing could put me to sleep. I was dead and alive at the same time. I was depressed. Everything about me showed I was just a facade of who I used to be. People said I was taking my wife’s death too hard. They didn’t know what else was eating away at me.

One night, when the kids were asleep, I hung a rope and thought about how easy it would be to end the pain once and for all. Well, you know I didn’t do it because if I had, you wouldn’t be reading this story.

I lay on the bare floor, face up, staring at the dangling rope. That night, I fell asleep. It was the deepest sleep I’d had since my wife’s death. When I woke up, I felt a strange sensation. It was as though a piece of my burden had been lifted. I realized I needed a good night’s sleep, not the forever kind.

The next morning, I went to work and walked straight to my boss’s office. She’s a woman I’ve always trusted. I poured my heart out to her. I cried. I cried some more. Then she said, “Cry, but not too loudly, or your colleagues will hear you.” I cried again. And again. And again.

She said, “Your wife did you so much wrong. It’s hard, especially because you didn’t get closure. But hey, she’s dead and gone. She’s sorry. She would have apologized if she were alive. You might have forgiven her if she had. The apology didn’t come, but please accept it. Forgive her and be thankful for the beautiful kids she gave you. Buba is yours. He calls you father. Forget about what the DNA says. What you believe to be true is the truth. Buba is yours, and that’s the truth.”

My boss became my healer. She checked up on me every day to make sure I was doing okay. “Don’t tell anyone else about this,” she said. “It might spread, and you’ll have to bear the shame. Keep your story to yourself and live the rest as it comes.” Life wasn’t easy, especially the thought of seeing Buba every day and thinking he wasn’t mine.

But so far, so good. I realized that the only way to bring revival and warmth back into my life was to forgive and move on. It hasn’t been easy. Memories of what happened haven’t left me. I live with them every day, but I’m conscious that they are just memories. They can’t control my life if I don’t allow them. Buba is mine. Amanda is mine.