The Compound
The family compound was full of people Chuck did not recognize claiming relationships he could not verify. Cousins had multiplied in his absence like a biological rebuke to his childlessness, and each one expected him to remember their names, their mothers, the specific occasion on which he had last held them as infants. He smiled and nodded and pressed naira notes into small hands, performing the role of the prodigal son with the competence of a man who had spent his career performing competence.
His father's body lay in the parlour in an open casket that smelled of formaldehyde and something floral that could not quite mask it. Chief Emmanuel Okafor looked smaller in death than he had in life — a diminishment that Chuck found obscene, because this was a man whose voice alone had once filled rooms, whose disapproval could cross oceans and arrive in a Baltimore apartment at three in the morning disguised as a phone call about the weather. Chuck stood before the casket and waited to feel something appropriate. What came instead was a memory: his father teaching him to ride a bicycle on this same compound, running alongside him with one hand on the seat, then letting go without warning.
"He asked for you," Obiora said from the doorway, and the three words carried the weight of an accusation, a eulogy, and a benediction all at once. Chuck did not turn around. He was looking at