Twenty-two years later, Daniel Adebayo stood beneath a chandelier in the family home while forty-seven people sang happy birthday at him. He counted because counting gave him something to do with his face.
"Twenty-two candles are a fire hazard," he told Victoria when the song finally ended.
She laughed and touched his cheek. "You will always be my baby."
"That is precisely the problem."
David raised his glass from across the room. "Let the woman enjoy herself. She paid for the cake."
"She paid too much for the cake."
"Exactly. Respect the investment."
Daniel laughed.
It was easy with David. Their relationship had always been built out of ordinary things: football arguments, terrible jokes, driving lessons, school reports, the year Daniel insisted he could cut his own hair and David took photographs before allowing the barber to rescue him.
Victoria loved more anxiously.
She called twice when he was twenty minutes late. She sent vitamins to his apartment despite the fact that he lived fifteen minutes away. She still kept the emergency contacts of three of his university friends.
Daniel complained about it constantly.
Secretly, he liked knowing someone would notice if he vanished.
He worked in product design for a Lagos technology company rather than Adebayo Holdings, a decision Chief Bamidele Adebayo would probably have treated as treason if he were alive. The old man had died nine years earlier. His will had been executed exactly as written. David controlled the company. The family name had its heir.
But Daniel had no interest in being trained for a throne.
"You will change your mind," Victoria often said.
"About corporate construction?"
"About responsibility."
"I have responsibility. I pay rent."
"You live in an apartment your father owns."
"Details."
Tonight his colleagues mixed with family friends, cousins and people Daniel suspected Victoria had invited because their parents had once attended somebody's naming ceremony. Music moved beneath the conversations. Waiters passed small plates and champagne. Daniel escaped to the balcony with his friend Tunde.
"You look hunted," Tunde said.
"My mother has introduced me to four unmarried women tonight."
"Only four? She is losing focus."
"One of them called my mother 'Mummy' within thirty seconds."
Tunde shuddered. "Run."
Daniel leaned against the rail, smiling. From there he could see his parents through the glass doors. David was speaking to a director from Adebayo Holdings. Victoria stood nearby, one hand resting against David's arm for a photograph.
They looked good together.
They always did in photographs.
Daniel knew their marriage had cooled over the years. Children knew things parents imagined they hid. His parents rarely fought, which sometimes felt worse. They moved around each other with courtesy sharp enough to cut.
Still, they showed up.
Every birthday.
Every graduation.
Every stupid football injury.
Whatever had gone wrong between them had never been allowed to become his problem.
"Who's that?" Tunde asked.
Daniel followed his gaze.
Near the entrance stood a woman in a pale gold dress. She was perhaps in her mid-thirties, composed, striking without seeming interested in being watched. She held no drink. When she passed close enough for Daniel to notice, a warm floral scent moved with her—orange blossom softened by amber and vanilla, polished without being sweet. He registered it only because everything else about her seemed so controlled. While everyone else looked toward the cake, she looked directly at Daniel.
Not admiringly.
Studying.
The shape of his eyes.
The line of his nose.
The small scar near his eyebrow from falling off a bicycle at eleven.
Daniel frowned.
"Do you know her?" Tunde asked.
"No."
The woman looked away when Victoria approached her. Later Daniel found his mother near the staircase.
"Who is the woman in gold?"
Victoria's expression changed so slightly he almost missed it.
"What woman?"
"Near the entrance earlier."
She glanced toward the crowd. "Probably one of the foundation guests."
"She was looking at me like I'd stolen her car."
Victoria laughed too quickly. "You probably reminded her of someone."
Daniel shrugged.
Before he could leave, Victoria caught his wrist and straightened a cuff that did not need straightening.
"You are happy?" she asked.
The question was so serious he laughed. "At my own birthday party? Moderately."
"I mean generally. Work. Your apartment. Everything."
Daniel softened. "Mum, I'm fine."
Her fingers stayed on his sleeve a second longer. He mistook the look on her face for ordinary maternal anxiety. He kissed her cheek and went to rescue Tunde from an elderly aunt.
Victoria watched him cross the room with the terrible gratitude of someone who had spent twenty-two years believing happiness could be confiscated by one question. Across the room the woman in gold was leaving.
For one second she looked back.
Their eyes met.
Daniel lifted his glass in a small, questioning salute.
She did not smile.
Her name was Joyce Williams.
And unlike everyone celebrating in that room, Joyce knew Daniel Adebayo had been born with another name waiting for him.