Chapter 16

# Chapter 16

Three days passed before Dele tried again.

Three days during which the house reorganized itself around its new population the way a body reorganizes around a foreign object—not rejecting it, not quite absorbing it, but developing a series of accommodations so intricate that eventually the strangeness stops registering and what remains is simply the way things are. Nneka slept in the guest room. Tobias slept on the floor beside Kola's bed, a choice no one had asked him to make, a decision he had arrived at silently and executed without announcement, unrolling his sleeping bag with the grim efficiency of a boy who has decided to be useful without being seen deciding. In the mornings Chidinma appeared in Nneka's doorway before anyone else was awake, and the two of them came down to breakfast together, and the togetherness had acquired a routine so quickly that it already looked old.