The pregnancy test was lying between the salt shaker and the bowl of limes when Dayo came into the kitchen. For one confused second, he thought it was a thermometer. Then he saw the two lines. He stopped with one hand still on the doorframe. Amaka sat at the small dining table by the window, one knee crossed over the other, her fingers around a mug she had not touched. She wore the loose grey T-shirt she slept in when she stayed over. Her hair was gathered into a careless knot. She looked exactly like herself, which made the object on the counter feel more impossible. Outside, Lagos argued with itself through horns, generators and somebody dragging a metal gate shut. “Is that yours?” Dayo asked. Amaka looked at him. “No,” she said. “I collect them.” Under any other circumstance, he would have smiled. He crossed the kitchen and looked down without touching the test. “How accurate are these things?” “Very.” “You tested once?” “Three times.” His eyes lifted. “The other two are in my bag,” she said. “I didn't think arranging them on the table like evidence would improve the evening.” He nodded as though this were useful. “How late?” “Six days.” “Have you seen a doctor?” “Not yet.”
“We should confirm properly.” “Dayo.” He reached for the bottle of water by the sink, drank, and replaced it exactly where it had been. His shirt still carried dust from the construction site. Beneath it was the dry fig and sandalwood of Gris Charnel, the fragrance he had worn for years because it smelled like a life he had chosen for himself. Tonight it smelled unfamiliar. Amaka set down her mug. “Say something that isn't a medical instruction.” There were dozens of things available to him. Are you okay? Are you scared? What do you want? Come here. He could have crossed the two metres between them and taken her hands. He could have admitted that the sight of two lines had opened a door in his chest and behind that door was a house in Ibadan he had not entered in eleven years. Instead he said, “I am fine.” Amaka's face changed. Not anger. Recognition. “Okay.” He hated the word immediately. “I just walked in,” he said. “And I have been in this kitchen for forty-seven minutes.” He glanced at the microwave clock without meaning to. 7:16. Thursday. Cold moved along his spine. Amaka noticed. Of course she did. She spent her working life reading bodies for what they refused to say, and she had spent two years learning his. She stood. “I found out this afternoon. I came here because I didn't want to tell you over the phone. I wasn't expecting fireworks. But I thought you might ask how I feel.” His shame arrived as irritation. “You haven't exactly told me how you feel.” Her eyebrows lifted. “There he is.”
“What does that mean?” “It means we're about to discuss what I failed to communicate instead of what you're refusing to say.” “That isn't what I'm doing.” “It is exactly what you're doing.” The kitchen felt smaller. The refrigerator hummed. The lights blinked once and held. “I need a minute.” “Take one.” He walked into the living room and stood in front of the muted television. A baby. That was not the problem. He liked children. He had imagined fatherhood somewhere in a respectable future where income, property, marriage and certainty arrived in the correct order. The test had dragged that future into Thursday evening without permission. But behind it came another living room. An expensive brown sofa. His father's glass on the side table. Footsteps on the stairs. Heavy: bad. Slow: worse. Quick and uneven: go to your room. “Dayo?” Amaka called. He closed his eyes and could almost smell whisky that was not there. “Come back.” He did. Amaka had put the test inside a clear plastic pouch and picked up her bag. “You're leaving?” “Yes.” “Why?” “Because I can't sit here and watch you disappear while standing in front of me.” “I haven't disappeared.”
“You're halfway gone.” At the doorway he caught her wrist gently. Amaka looked down at his hand, then at him. He almost said it. I am scared. Three words. Small enough to survive being spoken. His grip loosened. “I'll call you,” he said. She waited a second too long. “Okay.” The door closed behind her. Dayo stood in the centre of the flat, listening to the lift descend, and became nine years old again, measuring danger by sound. For the first time in eleven years, he understood that he had not left everything behind. Some things had left with him.