Three months. Not one night. Not once.
Three months.
Three months his mother had been sleeping outside while he lived across the ocean, believing she was being cared for.
Ada jumped up.
“She is talking nonsense. She only started working here. She knows nothing.”
“Three months,” Shindu repeated.
His voice was not loud, but heavy as stone.
Ada started to panic.
“Listen to me, let me explain…”
“Three months,” he said again.
He turned and looked at his mother. She still had her head lowered. No protest, no denial. Her silence said everything.
Shindu looked around the house again — everything he had paid for: the television, the sofa, the sparkling chandelier.
But his mother had no place here.
Ada stepped toward him, her voice suddenly softer.
“I just wanted the house to stay clean.”
Shindu looked at her for the first time in many years. He looked at his wife and no longer saw the woman he once loved.
He saw a stranger.
“Clean?” he asked.
He walked to the door, opened the iron gate, and pointed at the rain-soaked mat outside.
“That is where my mother sleeps so that your house can stay clean?”
Ada could not say a word.
Gozi, standing in the corner, trembled. His mother spoke quietly.
“My son, don’t make a big deal out of this.”
But Shindu turned and looked at her, his eyes softening.
“Mom,” he said gently, “I have been silent for seven years.”
Then he turned back to Ada.
“Tonight, the son of the mother of your husband has come home.”
Ada swallowed hard.
“What are you going to do?”
Shindu approached the table. There was a stack of papers on it. He recognized them immediately.
They were the transfer receipts he sent every month.
He picked them up.
“I sent money for my mother.”
He looked Ada straight in the eyes.
“But my mother sleeps outside by the door.”
Ada stepped back.
For the first time, real fear appeared on her face.
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