Two

AFTER

Lily

People think it was suicide but I know it was murder. Suicide was not Luc's way. 

She had once attempted suicide. It landed her in the hospital and she pinky swore that she would never do it again. 

Besides, Luc could not have drowned herself because her body was found on the shore, but nobody else thought that, nobody seemed to notice how odd her death was. Everyone accepted the fact that she had died, no questions asked. 

Her death changed everything; Mum cut her hair, Dad became distant, Krystal stopped being the vibrant chatterbox he once was and I avoided everyone. 

I became withdrawn and stopped talking to people, even severed the small connections I had. Everyone wanted to know how. They would ask me for details I did not want to give. People that did not know Luc would cry as if she was their best friend. Neighbours came over to offer their condolences and wept like they knew her. It was sad that someone would die so young. I got hundreds of emails, but deleted most of them without reading.  People who could not reach me because I lost my phone would call my Mum. Some psychos even called Luc's phone.

Whenever I left the house, I would get weird looks from people so I stopped leaving the house and when I did, I pulled my hoodie up with my head down.

When Mum got the call from Nikky telling her that Luc had drowned, she screamed and pulled at her hair then she drove herself to the barber's and got her long corkscrew locks shaved off. The first person to know of Luc's death was me, I told everyone else and James asked his Mum to call my Mum and tell her the bad news. 

I regret the day Luc chose to celebrate my birthday at the beach rather than at home.

Dad had just arrived from Kano where he was at for a sabbatical when Luc died. He did not say much when he learnt the bad news but he cried at her funeral. That was the first time I saw Dad cry. He cried more often after that and during the many quarrels he had with my Mum before he moved out and rented his own apartment. 

After a gravestone was erected for Luc at our home back in the village (Dad said a cemetary was too impersonal), Mum and Dad began drifting apart. They barely spoke a word to each other. 

I hated it and prayed they would go back to quarrelling again, it was better than them completely ignoring each other. 

A month later, Dad rented a two-bedroom apartment very far from our house. He told me it was temporary and they were still a couple. He would ask me to visit him during the weekend. I declined. I was not ready yet. Going to visit him in his apartment would make me feel like I had accepted their separation. What if they never lived under the same roof again?

I skip down the steps and walk-run to the yellow Mercedes Benz. Its coat gleams under the sunlight, an evidence of its good condition though it is a very old model. 

The sunlight is too bright for ten o'clock. 

The six feet two male leans against the gleaming car with his hands tucked into his pockets and sunglasses riding his hairline. His narrow eyes don't leave my face as I approach him.

"Hello." The corner of his lips lift forming a slight curve and his hazel eyes crinkle. He stands straighter, removes the sunglasses from his head and hangs it from the breast pocket of his long sleeve buttoned shirt. He shuffles his feet and runs his eyes from the top of my head to the slides at my feet.

"You used your brother's phone to call me," I say. I don't sound as angry as I should; Jacob still has an effect on me. I feel relieved to see him again. I had missed him during the three months I spent ignoring him even though I was expecting to see James.

"It's been ages, Lily." His hazel gaze meets mine. I avert my eyes. 

I am sure he can hear the thump of my heart in my ribcage. His pink tongue peeks out to lick his lower lip then he opens his mouth to say something, I cut him off.

"It's been three months." I bite my lip. Three months of refusing to answer the door whenever he or his twin brother came visiting. Three months of ignoring his calls and letting the phone ring over and over again, sometimes even singing along to the ringtone. Three months of leaving his text messages unread and deleting his emails. 

He nods then says, "Nikky has missed you." He takes a step towards me, then another and another. He is so close that if I stick out my tongue and tilt my head up, it would touch the edge of his chin. 

A whiff of cocoa butter hits my nostrils. I inhale delightfully.

"Uhm-hmm." I look back to Mum's bedroom window; I am expecting to see her standing there staring at me then I remember that she is almost always in bed these days. If she were her old self, she would march downstairs and command me inside for fear that I might get pregnant by talking to a boy. Like pregnancy is something that is air-borne.

He chuckles. I realise how much I have missed the sound. "We have all missed you," he says. "Even Bobo." He wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me to him. I sigh involuntarily and wrap my arms around his neck.

"I have missed you so much, Lily. It felt like three years." His voice is husky, his breaths tickles my neck.

I know he wants me to follow him to his house. I want to go. I have missed the twins – Erin and Edwin – Nikky, James and Bobo; I have missed talking to Jacob and poking jibs at James; I have missed watching cartoons with the twins and running with Bobo. 

"Let me ask my Mum first," I say. He raises his brows then nods.

Luc would have gotten into the car without asking for permission. I jog into my Mum's room and find her hidden under the duvet with Krystal cuddled up next to her, asleep.

"Mum, I'm going out. I won't be long." I whisper. 

She hums, I imagine it's her way of saying all right, have fun. Don't be too long!

"This is a lovely Saturday, isn't it?" Jacob glances at me as he talks. His voice is unusually high-pitched like he is forcing himself to talk, commenting on how lovely the Saturday feels is not something he would normally say.

The Mercedes zooms down the road passing other cars, while the music from the stereo pulsates in my ears. 

"I guess," I reply in a whisper, not sure he hears me. 

He leans in to tone up the volume of the radio. I don't tell him the volume is already too loud; instead, I lean back and close my eyes not really listening to the voices from the car stereo. He does not ask how I have been coping, how the family is, how Luc's was buried and I am thankful he doesn't.

After ten minutes of noise, we approach the tall black gates that guard Jacob's home. All the houses and gates in his neighbourhood are identical. Jacob leans towards the car radio and reduces the volume. My ears ring in complaint of the abuse it suffered. 

"I dialled your number," Jacob says as we drive into the tall black gates. The stout gateman with a funny goatee waves at me and I nod in reply. "It was switched off. It has been switched off for three months. I don't know why but I tried Lucinda's." The tyres of the Mercedes scrape against the gravel on the ground and the gates squeak as the gateman locks it behind us. I noticed he called her Lucinda, not Luc. 

"I'm using her phone now, mine was in her pocket." I unfasten the seatbelt and step out not looking at him, I know he is staring at me. I take in the serene house surrounded by ixora and hibiscus bushes. A familiar dog bark is the only noise in the compound; it makes me smile.

"Oh." He is sitting in the car with his hands on the steering wheel and his eyes on me, then he opens his mouth then closes it as he throws me a look with his bushy brows furrowed. I watch him through my peripheral vision waiting for him to say something, anything.

Using my dead sister's phone is some kind of comfort to me. It is a piece of her. Sometimes, I lie awake at night looking through her photos and reading her text messages. I wonder if she minds that I am invading her privacy. 

Now that I will be seeing James and the rest of the family, I regret asking Krystal to tell them that I didn’t want to see them when they tried visiting. I can't shake off the sticky coat of shame clinging to my skin.

A giant German shepherd, Bobo, comes running out through the glass double doors of the lavender bungalow with its long pink tongue lolling and two small children following in its wake. The twins, Edwin and Erin hug me while squealing and tell me how much they missed me.

"You two should be thanking me for bringing her over," Jacob says smugly as he locks the car. 

The seven-year-olds look like their Dad who passed away when they were just three years old. They have honey coloured eyes, caramel skin and a shock of kinky flaxen hair. As I hug the twins, I feel my eyes grow wet.

The dog wags its bushy tail with so much excitement, then it licks my fingers with it warm, moist tongue. I scratch behind its ears and hug it. 

When Nikky steps onto the patio and sees me, she frowns and deep lines mar her smooth forehead. The coat of shame grows even thicker.

"Good afternoon, Nikky," I say as I take irregular steps towards her. 

Nikky is a willowy woman in her late thirties. She has flawless chocolate skin, doe eyes and plump pink lips. Her hair is pulled up in a pineapple and soft tendrils frame her face and touch her long slender neck. When she moves, the short flowery dress flutters around her thighs and her nipples press against the thin fabric. When I am less than a metre in front of her, she opens her arms and I walk into them. 

"You are so thin," Nikky says, she stares at me through narrowed slits. "Too thin." 

After Luc's death, I lost twenty pounds grieving. 

I laugh because I thought she was mad at me. "I am fine, Nikky."

"How is your mother?" She asks as she links her arm in mine and leads me inside. 

I had almost forgotten how cold their house is because their AC is always on blast and what their sitting room look like. I take in the whiteness of it. One of the walls is made out of glass and offers a view of the backyard. Through the glass, sunlight streams in bathing the sitting room in a faint yellow glow. Another wall is made of a towering mahogany shelf filled with all kinds of books and CDs. All their chairs are made of white leather and their tables and stools are strong glass with plastic flower vases on them. Their house is so orderly and neat.

"She is coping very well and she is getting better," I lie very fluidly. I don't want Nikky to get worried about Mum. The last time I told her that Mum would not get out of bed or eat food, Nikky came over and spent the day with her comforting her and force-feeding her. It is a good thing that Mum has tailors working for her at her shop or she would have lost her customers.

James is sitting on one of the pristine white chairs dressed in grey cotton tracksuit quietly looking me through hazel eyes that are so identical yet very different from his brother's. My heart does a summersault in my chest. I run my eyes over his long, lean body looking for changes that happened during the three months I did not see him. He has cut his shaggy hair and made it a small curly afro; he is still as lean as he was.

"James, Lily is here!" Edwin says. James does not seem to have heard his brother. His lips are in a hard line and his stare does not waver.

"He made spaghetti," Erin tells me with a grin. "And baked a cake."

"Chocolate cake," Edwin says.

"Lily is a sucker for cakes, aren't you?" Jacob says with a wink and a smile playing at his lips. He startled me by draping his arm on my shoulder. I did not hear him come in. I see Natalie sit on a chair and watch our conversation.

"Yes, very much." I'm still looking at James and he is staring back. I don't really know what started our staring game nor can I really remember when. My heart thumps so hard I fear it might break out of my chest, roll to the floor thumping frantically and soiling the white rug with blood.

"Lily will stay for lunch," Nikky announces without asking me. She gets up from the chair, taps Jacob on the shoulder and gestures for him to follow her into the kitchen. I feel Natalie is giving James and I some privacy. 

James walks to me and his scent is all I can comprehend. I inhale the sweet aroma of chocolate and icing sugar on his skin. "Are you okay, Lily?" He holds both of my hands. His hands are so warm they melt the coat of shame off.

I can't talk. 

The words refuse to roll off my tongue so I speak with actions instead. Not minding that his younger siblings are in the sitting room watching us, I wrap my arms around his neck and hug him. I feel his heart thump beneath his hard chest and he exhales like he has been holding his breath forever, then holds me tighter.