The Debt Bride

Chapter 18 - The Morning After

She came downstairs the next morning and everything was the same.

That was the first thing she noticed.

The kitchen. The morning light through the tall windows. Mrs Fashola moving around with her efficient warmth. The smell of coffee and fresh bread.

Everything exactly the same as every other morning.

Emeka was at the table.

Dark suit. Coffee. Phone. The version of him that existed before 7am and belonged entirely to the world of business and structure and things that made complete logical sense.

He looked up when she walked in.

"Morning," he said.

"Morning," she said.

She got her tea. Sat down. Served herself bread.

Everything the same.

Except she was very aware of where his hands were on the table. The same hands that had reached out in the piano room last night and tucked her hair back with that careful deliberate gentleness.

She looked at her tea.

He looked at his phone.

Mrs Fashola hummed something in the background.

Everything the same.

At work she could not concentrate.

This was new. She was a woman who had always been able to concentrate. Focus was her superpower. The ability to compartmentalize. To put one thing in a box and work on another thing entirely.

The box was not working today.

She sat at her desk in Surulere and stared at the proposal she was supposed to be reviewing and instead thought about piano rooms and single lamps and the exact warmth of fingers against the side of her face.

Her colleague Ngozi knocked on her open office door at noon.

"Lunch," Ngozi said. "You have been staring at that document since 9am."

"I am working."

"You have not turned a page since 9am."

Adaeze looked down. The proposal was on page four. She had been on page four when she arrived.

She went to lunch.

Ngozi was twenty eight and curious about everything and had been following the i********: posts about Adaeze and Emeka with what she described as academic interest.

"He looked at you like that in the photo," she said over rice and stew at the canteen around the corner. "The one where you are by the flame tree."

"People are reading too much into photos," Adaeze said.

"I am a communications professional," Ngozi said with dignity. "Reading body language is literally my job. That man is not performing in that photo."

Adaeze ate her rice.

"He tucked my hair back last night," she said.

She had not planned to say it.

Ngozi put down her fork.

"Tell me everything," she said.

"There is nothing to tell. It was one moment. Then he said goodnight and I went upstairs."

"And then."

"And then nothing. This morning was completely normal."

Ngozi looked at her with the eyes of someone processing significant information.

"Ada," she said carefully. "You know this arrangement has a time limit."

"I know."

"Twelve months. Then it ends."

"I know Ngozi."

"So whatever is happening in that piano room."

"Nothing is happening in the piano room."

Ngozi looked at her.

She looked back at Ngozi.

"Nothing significant," she amended.

"Ada."

"I am aware of the time limit," she said quietly. "I am aware of everything. I am not a person who forgets important facts about her own life."

Ngozi picked up her fork again. Ate quietly for a moment.

"Just be careful," she said. Not unkindly. With the gentleness of someone who genuinely meant it.

"I am always careful," Adaeze said.

She finished her lunch.

She was careful. She was practical. She was a woman who had signed a contract with full knowledge of its terms and had never once lost sight of what this was.

She was also a woman who had not slept properly because she could still feel the warmth of his fingers against her face.

Both things were true.

She went back to work and turned the pages of the proposal.

She came home to find Emeka already there.

This was unusual. He was never home before seven. She came in at half past six and found his car in the driveway and the house carrying a different energy than its usual late afternoon quiet.

She found him in the garden.

He was sitting on the bench under the flame tree. Jacket off. Sleeves rolled up. Not his phone for once. Just sitting there looking at nothing in particular.

He looked up when he heard her.

"You are home early," she said.

"Cancelled my last two meetings," he said.

She sat down on the other end of the bench.

Not close the way the piano bench required. The garden bench was wider. There was space between them.

She was very aware of the space.

"Are you alright," she said.

He looked at the garden for a moment.

"Today is my grandfather's birthday," he said.

Oh.

She sat with that.

"How old would he have been," she said softly.

"Eighty two."

"Did you used to celebrate it. When he was alive."

"Every year. He did not like fuss. Just family dinner. The same songs. The same stories." He paused. "He died three years ago. I still cannot get through this day without."

He stopped.

She waited.

"Without feeling it," he finished quietly.

She looked at this man sitting on a garden bench with his sleeves rolled up looking at orange flowers on the ground and missing someone.

Just a man missing someone.

She moved along the bench.

Closed the space between them.

Not touching. Just closer. Close enough that he could feel she was there.

He did not move away.

They sat under the flame tree together in the late afternoon light and said nothing and it was enough.

After a long time he said quietly.

"He would have liked you."

She felt that land somewhere deep.

"I think I would have liked him very much," she said.

The flame tree dropped a flower onto the ground between their feet.

Neither of them moved.

The evening came slowly over the garden the way evenings did in Lagos when you were paying attention.

Warm and gold and unhurried.