My ex-wife came by to visit our son. She ended up staying overnight. I let her sleep on the couch. Sometime after midnight, I overheard something I was never meant to hear.
By sunrise, the emotional wall I’d spent two years carefully building suddenly had a crack I couldn’t ignore.
My name is Emeka Okafor. I’m thirty-eight years old, and I live in a three-bedroom house tucked away at the end of a quiet street in Surulere, Lagos, about twenty minutes west of the Island.
The house is much too large for just me and a seven-year-old boy, but I bought it back when my marriage still existed and we both believed in the future we were building together.
Selling it has never really felt possible. Some days I convince myself it’s for practical reasons — the school district is excellent and the backyard is perfect for a trampoline. Other days I admit the truth is more complicated.
My son’s name is Ekenem. We call him Eke. He’s seven years old, missing a couple of front teeth, completely obsessed with dinosaurs and the Super Eagles, and without question the best thing that has ever happened to me.
He inherited his mother’s laugh — the kind that starts softly before bursting out and filling an entire room — and every single time I hear it drifting from the backyard or living room, something shifts inside my chest in a way I still can’t properly describe.
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