Daniel arrived at four on Saturday.
He drove up the long driveway with the particular energy his arrival always carried, movement and warmth and the sense that the house was about to become more of itself than it had been an hour ago. I had come to appreciate that about my brother. He filled spaces not by dominating them but by being genuinely glad to be in them.
Adaeze was in the passenger seat.
She got out and stood looking at the estate the way everyone stood looking at it on first arrival, the recalibrating pause, the quiet adjustment of expectation upward. Then she turned and looked at me directly and smiled with the ease of someone who was comfortable meeting new people not because they performed comfort but because they were actually comfortable.
I liked her immediately.
She wa
