Chapter 11 - Cracks in the Armor
777 Words
The first week passed like a strange dream.
Adaeze developed a routine the way she always did when life handed her something unfamiliar. Routine was armor. Routine was the thing that made impossible situations feel manageable.
She woke at 6am. Showered. Made her own tea in the kitchen before Mrs Fashola arrived because she liked the quiet of early morning before the house stirred. She worked from home three days a week and went to her office in Surulere on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Emeka left the house by 7am every morning without fail.
He always stopped at the kitchen door on his way out.
Not to say anything particularly. Just a brief pause. A look in her direction. Sometimes a single word. Morning. Or sometimes just a nod.
She had started waking up slightly earlier without fully admitting to herself why.
On Wednesday of the second week she came home from work to find the house unusually quiet.
No Mrs Fashola sounds from the kitchen. No Blessing moving around upstairs. Just silence and the late afternoon light coming through the tall windows in long golden strips.
She dropped her bag on the sofa and was heading upstairs when she heard it.
Piano.
Coming from behind the door at the end of the ground floor corridor. The door she had assumed was a storage room.
She stopped.
She had not known there was a piano in this house. She had not known Emeka Okafor played piano.
She stood in the corridor and listened.
It was not a cheerful piece. It was something slow and complicated and a little sad. The kind of music that sounded like it was working something out. Like the person playing it was having a conversation with themselves that words were not adequate for.
She stood there for four minutes.
Then the music stopped abruptly.
Silence.
Then Emeka's voice from behind the door.
"You can come in Adaeze."
She pushed the door open.
It was a small room she had not seen on her initial tour. Shelves of books on two walls. A leather chair in the corner. And in the center a dark upright piano that looked old and well loved.
Emeka was sitting on the piano bench with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up. He looked at her without embarrassment.
"I did not know you played," she said.
"There are things you do not know about me."
"That is true of most people," she said. She looked at the piano. "What were you playing."
"Something my grandfather taught me."
She crossed the room slowly and stood beside the piano. Looked at the keys. Old ivory. Some of them slightly yellowed with age.
"He taught you," she said.
"Every Sunday afternoon for six years." He looked at the keys. "He said a man who could not sit still with himself for an hour was a man running from something."
"Was he right."
A pause.
"Usually," Emeka said.
She reached out and pressed one key softly. A single clear note rang out in the small room.
"I always wanted to learn," she said. "We could not afford lessons."
He looked at her for a moment.
Then he moved slightly on the bench.
Just slightly. Making space.
She looked at the space. At him. At the piano.
She sat down.
They were very close on the narrow bench. She could feel the warmth of him beside her. Could see the small scar above his eye clearly from this distance.
"This key," he said. His voice was quieter in the small room. He pressed a note. "Middle C. Everything starts here."
She pressed it herself.
The note rang out clean and simple.
"Everything starts here," she repeated softly.
Outside the sun was finishing its descent over Lagos. The golden light through the small window of the piano room caught the dust motes in the air and made them look like they were suspended in something precious.
Neither of them moved to turn on a light.
He showed her three more notes.
Just three. Simple. Patient. His hand occasionally moving near hers to indicate a key without touching.
When Mrs Fashola called them for dinner forty minutes later neither of them had noticed the time passing.
Adaeze stood up from the bench.
Emeka stayed seated. Looked up at her.
"Tomorrow," he said. "If you want. Three more notes."
She looked at him in the fading light of the small room with the old piano and the books and the last of the Lagos sunset coming through the window.
"Tomorrow," she said.
She went to dinner.
She did not examine the fact that she was smiling.
- Writer
