“I’m sorry, Mama,” Alifoe said. “I didn’t know that.”

“Tell us about it, Auntie Osewa,” Dawson said. Now was as good a time as any.

“It was before noontime,” she began. “She wanted to get home a little early, so she didn’t want to wait until the afternoon to start out for Accra. Do you remember that, Kweku?”

He nodded in agreement.

“So anyway,” Auntie Osewa continued, “we walked to the bus stop talking and laughing. She seemed so happy. Even when she talked about Cairo she was cheerful. Both of us were happy together, and we agreed I should visit Accra and bring Alifoe when he got a little older. When we got to the stop, I wanted to be certain she got a tro-tro that was safe, so I let the first one go on because it was a broken-down old boneshaker, but the second one was all right. I made sure she got a good seat at the front near the driver, and then we kissed good-bye.”

“And that was the last you saw of her?” Alifoe asked.

“Yes,” Auntie Osewa said sadly.

Dawson had stopped eating. He felt sick.

“Darko?” Auntie Osewa said. “Are you okay?”

He looked at her without seeing all her face. Had he heard her right?

“You said Mama sat at the front of the tro-tro?” he asked. His voice sounded distant and small.

Auntie Osewa looked quizzically at him, hesitating. “Yes, that’s right. Why are you asking me that?”

Dawson’s blood turned chilly. What his aunt had just said could not have been. She must have had a false memory of what had happened.

Or she was lying.

Mama had always been scared to death of sitting in the front section of a tro-tro. She wouldn’t do it. What did she always say? If there’s an accident, I don’t want you flying through the windscreen. Nor me.

They went to bed late. Dawson lay on his back in Alifoe’s room with one arm crooked under his head as he stared up in the darkness and his thoughts roamed. Nothing felt right to him. What Auntie had said was twisting in his mind like a fish on a hook. A good seat at the front of the tro-tro… at the front… at the front. That phrase over and over. Memories of his boyhood visit to Ketanu flooded back. Something had been wrong back then too.

Sitting at that table in Auntie Osewa’s house and eating her delicious meal while the grownups chatted about things that bored Darko and his brother stiff… and then suddenly, Mr. Kutu’s fleeting look at Mama. Dawson remembered it clearly. Mama’s eyes had met Kutu’s in a snatched instant so brief that no one would have expected it to bear a message. But it did, and Auntie Osewa had read it and understood. In turn, Darko had seen everything. One, two, three stolen glances whose meaning disturbed him without his quite knowing why.

What about later that evening, as they played oware? Auntie Osewa had disappeared for a while. To set the rabbit traps, she had said, and the quality of her voice had felt so strange to Dawson that he had looked at her in surprise.

“Cousin Darko?”

Dawson lifted his head in surprise. He had thought Alifoe was asleep.

“Yes?”

“You’re not sleepy?”

“I never sleep well.”

“Oh.”

“Something wrong?”

“No, nothing.”

Dawson waited. He knew there was more.

“Cousin Darko, have you ever kept something inside you that you wished you could tell someone but you didn’t know whom to trust?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“And when you find someone you trust, you feel like telling him?”

“Whom do you trust?”

“You.”

“Thank you.”

“What would you do… I mean, how would you feel if you knew your mother and father didn’t love each other?”

“Mine didn’t.”

“Really?” Alifoe sat up in the dark. “It’s the same with Mama and Papa. I want to see them love each other, but it never happens.”

“And you can’t make it happen either. That’s what you mustn’t forget. If they fell out of love at one time, only they can get themselves back in.”

“Do you think I shouldn’t care so much about it?”

“You can care as much as you want, but don’t let it stop your life.”

Alifoe lay down again.

“Do you feel any better?” Dawson said.

“Yes, I do. Thank you, Darko.”

As soon as the first cock crowed in the morning, Dawson’s eyes popped open. He had been dreaming he was forcing his mother into the front seat of a tro-tro and she was screaming at him to let her go.

He looked at his watch. Five forty-five. Alifoe was still fast asleep.

Dawson got dressed and went out to the courtyard to find Auntie Osewa starting a fire for breakfast.

“Morning, Auntie.”

“Morning, Darko. Did you sleep well?”

“I did, thank you,” he lied.

“Good. Would you like to take some breakfast?”

“I would love to. Can I wash first?”

“Yes, I filled two buckets for you, and there is soap there too.”

First he went to the pit latrine-a necessary evil-and then he took a refreshing bucket bath.

As he ate breakfast, Auntie Osewa was chatty and Dawson did his best to respond in kind, but he felt as though a two-way mirror had gone up between them. Auntie was on one side seeing her reflection and talking through it to Dawson, who was on the other side looking at her.

“So,” she said, “what will you be doing today?”

“To start, I have to go and meet with Efia,” he said.

“That’s the one who found the body? One of Adzima’s wives?”

“Yes.”

“It must have been terrible for her when she found it,” she reflected.

“It was. It’s affected her deeply, probably for life.”

He finished breakfast quickly and stood up. “Thank you, Auntie. It was delicious. I’d best be going now.”

Dawson walked the footpath between Ketanu and Bedome, and as he came to the farm plots, he spotted Efia and Ama hoeing the soil along with a few other farmers. Efia waved at him as he came up to them.

“Morning, Efia. Morning, Ama.”

“Morning, morning, Mr. Dawson.” They spoke and smiled simultaneously, just like twins. Both were sweating, Efia a little more.

“How goes it, Efia?” Dawson asked.

“Fine,” she said. “I’m so happy to see you. They told me you were going to leave Ketanu, and I was feeling so sad.”

“Who told you?”

“That man from Accra-Mr. Chikata?”

“Oh, yes. He’s my workmate. They told him to take over the case from me.”

“Why?”

“Because… Well, it doesn’t matter. Can you help me a little bit?”

“But of course.”

“I hope you don’t mind, but could you show me the way you left the forest after you found Gladys dead, and also exactly where you saw Mr. Kutu? Do you have time?”

“Yes, I can come.”

She handed Ama her hoe. “I’ll be back soon,” she told her daughter.

Dawson and Efia walked back toward the footpath.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about Togbe Adzima,” Dawson said.

“Yes?”

“Did one of his wives die last year?”

“Yes. Her name was Comfort.”

“She died of AIDS?”

“I don’t know. They said she was cursed.”

“Efia, if it was AIDS, then it was Togbe Adzima who gave it to her.”

She frowned as they turned onto the Bedome-Ketanu path, her head down as she thought about the implications.

Dawson’s heart was in his mouth as he prepared to ask the next question.

“Efia, did Gladys do a blood test on you? For AIDS?”

“Yes, and she said it was okay.”

Dawson breathed again. “I know it would be very difficult for you, but if there’s any way you can avoid Togbe Adzima being with you, any way at all. You and all of the wives-especially the new one.”

Efia was troubled. “I don’t know what to do. The only thing that works sometimes is when he drinks too much.”

“I’ll buy him a gallon of schnapps then,” Dawson said, “and you can feed it to him every day.”

They looked at each other and laughed.

She slowed her pace.

“Mr. Kutu was somewhere here when I saw him,” she said, making a circular motion with her hand.