Chapter Twenty-Two
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Taking Some of It Down
Jensen
Adaeze came a second time on a Tuesday afternoon, two weeks after the first visit. She had calculated it: a day she knew I would be at the office, at an hour she knew the cleaning service did not come. She had used a second key I had not known she had.
I was in a meeting with the Carmichael partners when the notification came through. I excused myself. I stood in the corridor and I watched it on my phone.
Aoife was on the couch, feet elevated, reading.
The knock at the living room door clearly surprised her because she looked up with an expression of open attentiveness that changed when she saw who it was.
She went very still, that specific stillness of hers, and she looked at Adaeze with a face that gave nothing away.
Adaeze sat down. She had decided on this approach, the sitting, the composed arrival.
She began by saying that she was not there to cause trouble.
What followed was the kind of cruelty that is more precise than rage because it is premeditated.
She told Aoife that Jensen had loved Nadia in a way that left no room for anyone else.
She said Aoife was not the first woman Jensen had sought comfort from in the years since the accident, an implication delivered so carefully that its malice was insulated from direct challenge.
She said the moment the babies were born Jensen's obligation to Aoife would be complete.
She said: "My daughter was the love of his life.
Whatever you are, you are not that, and you will never be that, and you deserve to know it before you build your hopes any higher. "
Aoife looked at her hands in her lap. The camera caught her face, and I could read it from twenty miles away. She had received the words exactly where they were aimed.
Adaeze left.
I pressed the elevator button for the lobby before I had decided to do so.
I drove to the Okafor house. Charles answered the door resigned. I sat down. I did not begin with preamble.
"What you said to her today cannot be undone," I said. "She is on bed rest. Stress is a direct medical risk factor. What you said to her today was designed to cause harm and it worked."
Adaeze looked at the table. She did not speak. Her hands were folded in front of her and her jaw was set and whatever she was feeling she was not going to give to me.
"She is not Nadia," I said. "I know that. I am not trying to replace Nadia. But this woman is carrying my children and she is alone in this city and she has done nothing to harm you or anyone else, and I am asking you, as someone who loves you, to stop."
Charles said, "Adaeze." Very quietly.
She did not respond. I waited for a moment and then I left.
I drove home and went into the house and stood in the hallway.
The house was quiet. I went to the living room.
Aoife was still on the couch. She had her grandmother's throw pulled up around her, and she was not reading, and she looked up when I came in.
Her face was composed and her eyes were careful, the look of a person who has received something and put it away and is managing.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
"Fine," she said, in the tone that means something different from fine.
I looked at her. I wanted to say the thing I was not yet ready to say. So I said, "I'm going to make dinner. Stay where you are."
She stayed where she was. I made dinner. We ate it at the counter, side by side, and I told her something Callum had said on the phone that afternoon, and she laughed, and the sound of it settled over the kitchen like something being released.
It was not enough. I knew it was not enough. But it was what I had that night, and I gave it without reservation, and she accepted it, and we ate until the plates were empty.