He told himself he came only because the old woman needed help, but the song had followed him all week like smoke. Each Tuesday, he learned another piece of her sadness. The butterscotch was never opened because it had belonged to someone who never came back. The carved wooden weaverbirds in her big white house on the hill had all been made by the same young hand. Her late son, Damilare Balogun, had hated the textile business, hated the pride of the Balogun name, and left home at 20 to live simply in that abandoned bungalow near the factory land. Mama Adunni had fought with him there, cried there, and promised that if he ever returned hungry, food would be waiting. A fever took him before she could apologize. For 30 years, she had kept feeding the doorway because stopping felt like killing him again. But someone else was watching. Chief Wale Ajayi, her late husband’s nephew, had waited years to inherit the white house and the factory land. When he saw a homeless scrap picker walking beside his elderly aunt, he smelled danger. He went from shop to shop saying Nosa had charmed a confused widow for money. Soon, Madam Sade refused to sell to Nosa. Men at the beer parlour called him a thief. One morning, Chief Wale blocked him at the provisions shop and announced that people like him should not be allowed near respectable families. Nosa left without shouting, because poor men in Nigeria learned early that anger could be used as evidence against them. That same week, Chief Wale reported Mama Adunni to social welfare, saying she wandered to abandoned property and spoke to ghosts. A government officer was coming to decide whether she should be taken to a care home. Mama Adunni grew weaker, but she refused to stop. Nosa knew the next Tuesday might be her last chance, so he begged Bayo to come. Bayo hated strangers and hated old family stories even more, because every foster parent had returned him like damaged goods. Still, he came because Nosa had never begged him for anything before. At the bungalow, Mama Adunni placed the bread and peaches by the door. Bayo stood behind them, uncomfortable, massive shoulders tense, eyes on the weeds. Then, without knowing he was doing it, he began to hum. The same rise. The same fall. The same unanswered question. Mama Adunni stopped breathing. She turned slowly and stared at him as if a grave had opened and handed something back. Her voice broke as she asked where he learned that song. Bayo looked ashamed and said he did not know; he had known it for as long as he could remember. Mama Adunni clutched the railing and whispered that her son made that song at 9 while carving birds on that very veranda, and that no living soul knew it except her. Bayo’s face changed, not with belief, but with fear of hope. Then his shaking hand went under his shirt, and he pulled out the old wooden weaverbird he had carried since childhood. Mama Adunni took it, turned it over, saw the carved initials D.B., and screamed like 30 years had just torn open at once.
Part 3
The truth came out on that broken veranda in pieces, because a truth that heavy could not fall all at once. Damilare had not lived alone in the
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