On the twelfth day, Dayo woke at 4:52 a.m. and knew he could not keep pretending indecision was caution. His first thought was Amaka. His second was 11:47. For almost two weeks, the night in Ibadan had returned in fragments: a clock, a wall, his mother's voice, his father's hand striking something that was not a person. He had spent eleven years believing distance was proof of escape. The pregnancy had ruined that theory. At 5:07, he called Amaka. The phone rang long enough for him to consider hanging up. Then her voice came thick with sleep. “Hello?” “I'm sorry.” He closed his eyes. “I know it's early.” “What happened?” She was awake now. “Are you okay?” “Yes. No. Nothing happened.” “Dayo.” “I need to see you.” A pause. “Now?” “If that's okay.” Another pause. “Come.” He was at her flat forty minutes later with coffee she had not asked for. Amaka opened the door wearing a wrapper tied over a tank top, her hair covered with a satin scarf. She looked at the coffee tray.
“You brought peace offering?” “I didn't know what else to bring.” “The truth would be nice.” “I'm trying.” She stepped aside. Her flat smelled like her. Clean cotton, books, the faint skin-musk of Parisian Musc that seemed to live in her curtains now because she wore it so often. On anyone else it might have been merely perfume. On Amaka it was the smell of nearness. She led him to the living room. He sat on one end of the sofa. She sat in the armchair opposite him. Not beside him. For a while neither spoke. The cardboard cup had softened slightly under his grip. Then he said, “I'm scared.” Amaka's face did not soften immediately. “Of the pregnancy?” “No.” “Yes. Obviously. But not exactly.” “Of me?” “No.” “Then what?” Morning had begun bleaching the sky behind the buildings. “My house.” Amaka waited. “The one in Ibadan?” “Yes.” “You haven't been there since I've known you.” “I haven't been there in eleven years.”
“I know.” The arithmetic startled him more than it should have. “You know?” “You told me you've not gone home since your early twenties.” “I didn't realize I said eleven years.” “You didn't. I can subtract.” Despite everything, a breath of laughter left him. It disappeared quickly. “My father drank.” Amaka's expression changed, not with surprise exactly, but with attention. “A lot?” “Enough.” “What did he do?” Dayo's jaw tightened. “Depends on the year.” She said nothing. He stood and walked toward the window. “There was a system.” “What system?” “I could tell what kind of night it would be from the gate. From his footsteps. From how my mother moved around the kitchen.” Amaka leaned forward slightly. Dayo kept his back to her. “If he put his keys down softly, maybe three out of ten. If he dropped them—six. If the gate hit the wall…” He stopped. “You had numbers?” she asked. “Yes.” “How old were you?”
“Nine, maybe.” “Don't,” he said. “Don't what?” “Look at me like that.” “Like what?” “Like something happened to me.” “Something did.” He turned. “That's exactly the problem.” “What is?” He returned to the sofa but did not sit. “The test was on the counter and suddenly I could see the whole house. Not memories. Not like a film. More like…” He searched. “Instructions.” Amaka frowned. “What instructions?” “How to become him.” Dayo finally sat. “I don't know what I learned without knowing I learned it. I don't know what's buried in me. I don't know what comes out when I'm tired for ten years, or broke, or ashamed, or angry, or when a child is crying and I haven't slept.” Amaka's hands tightened around her mug. “So you thought the safest thing was to disappear from me.” “I didn't think it.” “You did it.” His attention dropped to the cup. “Yes.” “Do you know what that felt like?” “No.” “Then ask.”
Dayo lifted his eyes. “What did it feel like?” Amaka inhaled slowly. “Like I had become a consequence you needed to manage.” He flinched. “I found out I was pregnant. I was terrified too, Dayo. I still am. And then I had to carry your fear as well because you wouldn't name it.” “I wasn't asking you to carry it.” “You don't have to ask. You disappear, and I'm the one left trying to work out what the silence means.” Amaka turned toward the window. Usually he could tell whether she was angry or thinking. This time, he could not tell which silence he was in. “I spent four days wondering if you regretted me. Then another week wondering whether I should prepare myself to do this without you.” His head came up. “I would never abandon a child.” Amaka held his gaze until the certainty in his sentence began to sound different to him. She did not raise her voice. “You think abandonment only counts if you leave the address?” He felt something inside him recoil. For a second, his father's sitting room flashed behind her. A man physically present. A whole family arranging themselves around his absence. Dayo stood abruptly. “That's not fair.” “No,” Amaka said. “It isn't. None of this is.” He paced once across the room. “I came here to tell you the truth.” “And I'm listening. But the truth doesn't become painless because you finally say it.”
He stopped. He hated her for three seconds. Then hated himself for needing her to be wrong. “I don't want to become him,” he said. Amaka's voice softened, but only slightly. “Then don't.” He laughed bitterly. “That's your solution?” “No. That's the beginning of one.” She stood and came closer, though she still did not touch him. “Tell me the rest,” she said. For two years he had loved this woman without giving the love a name. Then he began.