“How long?” he whispered.
She wiped her face quickly as if tears would slow her down.
“Since the first year you married madam.”
He stared at her.
That was four years ago.
Four years of dinners.
Four years of shared bedrooms, shared prayers, public appearances, private routines, small daily tendernesses he had believed were real.
Four years.
His chest tightened so sharply he had to brace himself against a stack of cartons.
“What did she do?” he asked.
Bissy looked down, then forced herself to meet his eyes again.
“She has been meeting men,” she whispered. “Strangers. Sometimes late at night. When you travel, they come through the back gate. Sometimes through the kitchen. Sometimes through the side entrance.”
His stomach lurched.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried,” Bissy said quickly. “But she would warn me. She said if I talked, I would disappear.”
Disappear.
The word hung between them like smoke.
Chief Kletchi lowered his voice further. “Has anyone disappeared?”
Bissy said nothing.
She did not need to.
The silence itself answered.
His heart began hammering again.
“Bissy,” he pressed. “Tell me.”
Her lips trembled. “The former driver. Mr. Tunde.”
Chief Kletchi closed his eyes for a second.
Tunde.
Loyal, careful Tunde who had worked for him for years before his marriage. Tunde, who vanished suddenly one month into Amaka’s new routine of controlling household schedules. Tunde, whom everyone claimed had gone back to his village. Tunde, for whom Chief Kletchi had quietly sent money to search. Tunde, whom nobody ever found.
“You’re saying…” His throat tightened. “She did something to him?”
Bissy nodded once.
“I heard her on the phone,” she whispered. “She said he saw too much.”
The room seemed to tilt.
What kind of woman continues to laugh beside you at dinner after arranging a man’s disappearance?
What kind of man fails to see it?
Chief Kletchi’s thoughts crashed into each other. Shame. Horror. Rage. Self-disgust. He remembered every time he had dismissed discomfort because he was tired. Every time he had ignored a subtle tension in the house. Every time he had traveled and trusted the systems already in place. Every time he had told himself that a peaceful home proves a successful life.
Now he stood in a room that smelled of mops and disinfectant, learning that his peace had been staged.
Bissy wiped her hands on her uniform. “Tonight they are planning something with medicine and money and a doctor.”
“A doctor?”
She nodded. “The man in the living room. He called madam ‘chairman.’ Like she is the one in charge.”
Chairman Amaka.
His wife.
