Those words still echo in my head like a cursed bell. My heart sank immediately.
“I never set out to destroy anyone’s marriage,” I whispered to myself as I sat in my one-room apartment, staring at her last message, ‘I’m late. I think I’m pregnant.’
It all started innocently, or so I told myself. I joined the church choir two years ago, fresh out of a messy breakup. I was always there for midweek services, rehearsals, and the occasional late-night prayer meetings.
Sister Ada, the Pastor’s wife, was our choir leader; she was warm, kind and oh so beautiful. I would always remind myself that this woman was married to the pastor, therefore, untouchable.
Her husband, Pastor Emmanuel, was the kind everyone adored. He was a fiery preacher and devoted leader, but he was never really present. He travelled constantly, leaving her to handle most of the church’s activities.
The closeness began with late-night calls about choir arrangements, then her checking on me when I missed rehearsals. “You need someone to talk to,” she’d say. Before I knew it, we were sharing secrets, then laughter, and one rainy night after vigil, a kiss.
I should have walked away. It felt so wrong, but I couldn’t stop myself.
The affair lasted six months. We met in discreet hotels, sometimes in her car after midweek service. I was blinded by the thrill, by her attention, by the forbidden nature of it all. Until the day she said, “I’ve missed my period. What are we going to do?”
My heart sank. We? There was no we. She had a husband, a congregation, a reputation. I begged her to consider a discreet solution, but she said, “I won’t kill my child.”
Now, I’m living in fear. She’s three months gone, and her belly is starting to show. Her husband suspects nothing yet, but how long before he starts counting months? She says she’ll tell him the child is his, but what if it doesn’t look like him?
Sometimes I lie awake, drenched in guilt and panic, thinking about leaving the church, even the city. “You brought this on yourself,” a friend told me when I confided in him. Maybe I did.
If this blows up, it won’t just ruin her marriage; it could destroy the church, and me with it. I keep asking myself, was the pleasure worth this kind of torment?
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