Chapter 3 - What the Floorboards Remembered
Abena reached the house before Solomon's driver could stop her. Fire licked one corner of the roof, and men from the square were throwing buckets of rainwater against it. Emmanuel caught Abena by the arm as she tried to enter. “The beams could fall.”
“My husband's papers are inside!”
“Then tell me where.”
Esi came with an iron cooking hook and pointed to the back wall. “There's a loose board beside the sleeping mat. We can reach it through the window.” Emmanuel broke the small window's rotten frame and pulled a rolled oilcloth packet from beneath the board. Seconds later, a charred section of roofing collapsed into the empty room. Nobody was inside. Abena dropped to her knees in the mud and held the packet against her chest.
Quaye tried to slip away through the crowd. Two villagers stopped him long enough for Solomon to demand that Emmanuel photograph the fire and call the local authorities. Quaye said an overturned cooking fire caused everything. Esi pointed to the wet hearth outside. “Her fire was out. We all saw it.” Still, Solomon knew that a witness's courage would mean little unless somebody protected her after the convoy left.
He walked to Esi's house and asked the village elders to meet that night. Until the matter was investigated, his company would pay for temporary lodging, food, and access to the well without requiring anyone to sign away a right. Miriam, speaking over his phone, insisted that each expense be recorded. “If we fix this with cash and no records, Felix will call it bribery,” she said. “We need daylight, Papa, not favors in the dark.”
Inside the oilcloth lay a thin blue ledger, a photograph, and a sealed envelope. The photograph showed Kwame in a checked shirt holding a laughing infant wrapped in yellow cloth. Solomon touched his son's face with one finger. “He held him,” he said. “Kwame held his baby, and I never knew.”
“Kojo was four months old when Kwame vanished,” Abena said. “He had just learned to smile at the sound of a key turning in the door.”
“Why didn't you call me?”
“I did.” Her voice sharpened. “Three times. Your secretary said you were traveling. The fourth time, Felix answered. He knew my address before I gave it. That night somebody pushed a message under the door: KEEP THE CHILD OUT OF THE FAMILY BUSINESS.”
Solomon remembered the months after the disappearance: canceled meetings, pills for sleep, his nephew handling correspondence because Solomon couldn't bear to see his son's name. He had called it loyalty. The thought tasted bitter now.
Abena opened the ledger. Each page listed a family plot, a promised payment, and a second column marked RECEIVED. The amounts in the second column were larger. Next to several names were thumbprints that looked suspiciously alike. At the bottom of one page Kwame had written, The money leaves the company. It never reaches the families.
“Your company approved a repair shed,” Abena explained. “Felix bought the rights to the whole valley through a company nobody here had heard of. When Kwame found out, he wanted to tell you. Felix said he would meet him at the bridge.”
“Who owns the other company?” Solomon asked.
“Turn the page.”
The ownership column named Sable Property Limited. Below it was a director's signature: Solomon Agyeman. Solomon stared at it until the letters blurred. The stroke was his, or an almost perfect copy. He remembered signing a thick folder before a hospital visit for his late wife, Evelyn. Felix had marked three pages with yellow tabs and said they were routine extensions. He had signed without reading.
“I gave them the tool,” Solomon said.
Abena did not rush to comfort him. “A man with your name on every gate doesn't get to call it a small mistake.”
“You're right.” Solomon looked at the photograph again. “But we can find out who used it.”
They waited until Kojo woke before moving him to the guest room at the village clinic. A nurse cleaned the abrasion on his shoulder where a cement sack had rubbed his skin. Kojo asked whether she would charge his mother. The nurse answered that his care was covered, then made Solomon promise the boy would not be sent back to the depot. Solomon gave the promise with Kojo looking straight into his eyes.
Later, alone beneath the clinic veranda, Solomon opened the envelope. It contained a letter addressed to him in Kwame's handwriting. Father, if you are reading this, I failed to get home. I followed the missing payments because I thought the company was stealing from people who had nowhere else to go. Someone used your signature, but someone else gave the order. I will tell you everything when I know which man can be trusted. Protect Abena and our son. Do not let Felix take them to the city.
At the bottom was a date from eight years earlier. Beneath it, in a different pen and an unsteady hand, someone had added four newer words: THE BLUE BOOK IS INCOMPLETE.
Solomon held the page up to the light. The fresh ink had stained the fibers, and the handwriting wasn't Kwame's. Abena came to the doorway and saw his expression. “What is it?”
“Someone found this packet after you hid it,” he said. “Someone who knows we're still missing something.”
Abena checked the knot in the oilcloth. Her husband had taught her to tie it with a double loop. The knot Solomon had untied was a single one. A person had opened the hiding place, read the evidence, and carefully put it back.
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From the dark yard came Esi's voice. “Abena? There is a woman here from the city. She says she's your husband's sister.”
Miriam stepped into the porch light carrying a small suitcase and a sealed hospital file. “Before anybody tells me what to believe,” she said, “I need to know why my brother's death certificate has two different dates.”
