"The hardest apology is the one you owe yourself—for the love you didn't allow."
Haneefa didn't find Fadilah in the courtyard, or in the kitchen, or even curled on the floor of Mama Adunni's favorite sitting room where Aisha sometimes sat to write letters she never posted. Fadilah was on the rooftop.
Always there, always above. That was how she lived. Somewhere higher than the rest of them, not because she was prideful, but because she couldn't breathe when people got too close.
The wind flirted with her scarf as she sat cross-legged beneath the twilight sky. She looked at her youngest sister but didn't smile. Just gave her that small nod that meant "You can sit here too, if you need to."
Haneefa sat.
They stayed in silence for a while. Fadilah never rushed to speak. Her words, when they came, felt like rituals—measured, thoughtful, never wasted.
"You know why I always come up here?" she asked finally.
Haneefa turned to her.
Fadilah smiled, barely. "Because when you're up here, no one can ask you to stay. And no one can ask you to leave."
There was something lonely in that.
She reached for a small brass ring she wore on her pinky. Turned it slowly, like winding back time. "I don't tell my story much. Mostly because I chose my pain, and I don't think people know what to do with that."
Haneefa blinked.
"Everyone understands being abandoned. Being lied to. Being cheated on. But what do you say to a woman who left a good man? Who hurt someone who actually loved her?" Fadilah tilted her head slightly. "You say she's cold. Or scared. Or broken. Or worse… ungrateful."
"But none of that is true?" Haneefa asked.
"Oh no. All of it is true," Fadilah said with a half-laugh. "I was scared. I was cold. And I was broken. But I was also… young enough to believe I was being wise."
It began two years ago, just after Damilola's heartbreak, when Mama Adunni's house was thick with the scent of cloves, pepper, and whispered pity.
Fadilah had been standing in the kitchen, slicing bitterleaf, when he walked in. Not a loud entrance—he wasn't that kind of man. No charm, no arrogance. Just presence. The kind that fills a room quietly, like dusk.
His name was Malik.
He came to drop off a package for Efe, who had ordered cloth from the North. But his eyes found Fadilah. And for the first time in a long time, she didn't flinch at being seen.
He didn't try too hard. Didn't call her sweet names or ask for her number. He just nodded at her, and said, "You look like someone who forgets to rest." Then he left.
That night, Fadilah stared at the ceiling and whispered to no one, "What kind of man sees weariness before beauty?"
They began to talk.
Not often. Not intensely. But slowly, in a way that felt like unfolding rather than chasing.
He asked her about her favorite books. She told him she didn't read fiction, because her mother's life was already too dramatic for anything else. He laughed like he understood, not like he pitied her.
When he brought her roasted groundnuts from Sokoto, she nearly cried. Not because they were her favorite, but because he remembered.
He remembered.
It was terrifying.
"I knew he was the one," Fadilah told Haneefa, voice low, "and that was exactly why I ran."
She ghosted him.
No fights. No lies. Just silence. She stopped replying. Stopped opening the door. Pretended not to see him when he waited at the junction in the rain.
"Why?" Haneefa whispered.
Fadilah swallowed. "Because I saw what love did to Mama. To Aisha. To Bisola. To Damilola. I thought if I kept my heart in a box, no one could shatter it."
She turned her head, eyes fierce now.
"I didn't want to cry into rice bowls like Grace. Or listen to my own silence like Efe. I didn't want to beg a man to choose me. So I chose to be alone. It felt safer than needing."
Haneefa said nothing. Just listened.
"I thought I was protecting myself. But I wasn't," Fadilah said quietly. "I was punishing myself for loving."
One day, she opened the door and found Malik gone. Not literally—he was still around, still friendly, still kind. But he had closed the door she had refused to open.
She watched him laugh with another woman.
She watched him move on.
And it wasn't jealousy that broke her.
It was the realization that she had never given him a chance to love her loudly.
She had only allowed him to try… quietly.
And now it was too late.
She stood, pulled the scarf tighter around her head as the sky began to darken.
"When I left him," Fadilah said, "I thought I was choosing strength. But real strength is allowing someone to see you. The weak, tender, scared version. I wasn't strong. I was just… hiding."
She looked down at Haneefa with an aching smile.
"You'll hear people say: 'Don't settle.' 'Don't love too hard.' 'Don't need too much.' But what they should tell you is: Don't run from love just because it doesn't arrive with armor. Sometimes the safest man is the one who doesn't try to save you… but chooses to stay even when you won't let him."
Haneefa's heart was full.
Fadilah took a step toward the stairwell.
"Come," she said, her voice softer now. "Let's go see Mama. She's making pepper soup. Maybe she'll tell you the real reason she married seven times."
And with that, the rooftop was quiet again.