Chapter 7 - The Boy Who Would Not Take the Money
Emmanuel pushed the storeroom door closed and braced it with a heavy workbench. Felix's footsteps sounded outside, accompanied by two men. Solomon moved toward the door, but Miriam caught his wrist. “You can confront him after we get the evidence out,” she whispered. “Not with five people trapped in a windowless room.”
Samuel showed them a service hatch leading into an unused loading bay. He had worked there long enough to know which locks the company had never replaced. Emmanuel went first, then Lydia carrying the biscuit tin. Abena helped Solomon climb the low sill. By the time Felix forced the door open, the storeroom was empty except for the workbench and a flashlight on the floor.
They reached the vehicles through the rain. Felix caught sight of them from the far gate and called after Solomon, “Ask your lawyer what happens when you accuse your own officers without proof!”
“I intend to,” Solomon replied. “And this time, I'll read every page.”
They drove straight to Lydia's office, where she made secure copies of the files and logged who had handled each item. Samuel wrote an account of what he had witnessed. He did not claim to have seen a face he hadn't seen, and Miriam appreciated the restraint. A badly exaggerated story would give Felix one easy lie to attack; a careful story might survive him.
At the house, Kojo had woken from a nightmare. Mrs. Dapaah found him crouched in the laundry room, trying to fold towels into neat piles. “If I help, can Mama stay?” he asked. The housekeeper sat on the floor beside him. “Your mother isn't staying because of your work. She's staying because this is where you are.”
When Abena returned at dawn, Kojo was asleep on the sitting-room sofa with a towel held against his chest. She knelt beside him and made a promise she knew she could finally keep: “You never have to earn a place with me.” Solomon, standing behind her, understood that his wealth had made it too easy for him to confuse providing for people with seeing what they actually needed.
Felix moved before breakfast. A complaint reached the city authorities accusing Abena of diverting welfare payments, and two officials arrived to ask her to come in for questioning. Felix had attached a photograph of the false bank account and a statement from Quaye. Kojo watched from the stairs as his mother put on her sandals.
“Is she being taken away?” he cried.
“She's going to answer questions, and Miriam is going with her,” Abena said. “I will tell you where I am. Nobody is going to make you guess.”
Miriam kept that promise. She called from the waiting room, explained that Abena was not being held overnight, and returned with her before supper. Lydia had brought records showing that the supposedly incriminating account was opened with an address and identity photograph that did not match Abena. The officials were reviewing the complaint rather than treating Felix's accusation as established fact. Abena was free to leave, but the village would hear only the word investigation until someone told the fuller story.
Meanwhile a glossy envelope arrived for Kojo. Inside was a bank draft for a large sum and a note written in Felix's neat hand: For your education. Tell your grandfather you would prefer a quiet life elsewhere. Solomon took the note to Miriam before the boy could read it alone. “He wants to make it look as though we're paying him to leave,” Miriam said.
Kojo heard enough to understand. He carried the envelope to the dining table and pushed it toward Solomon. “Does that man think I'm for sale?”
“No,” Solomon said. “He thinks money can make people forget what he did. He is wrong.”
“I want Mama's house back. And Auntie Esi's well. Can money do that?”
“Some money can repair a roof. It can't give someone permission to steal the roof in the first place.”
Kojo thought about this. “Then give the money to the people who lost their houses. But make Felix say why.”
Miriam put a hand on his shoulder. “We won't use his draft. We'll seek repayment from the people responsible. That's grown-up work. Your job is to be eight.”
That night Solomon invited Kojo to help choose a book from Kwame's old shelves. The boy found a notebook full of drawings of birds and houses. On one page Kwame had sketched an ordinary home with a ramp, wide doors, and a shaded bench. Beneath it he had written: A good building leaves room for somebody who arrives later. Solomon remembered mocking that design because it would have cost more. Now he wanted to build it exactly as his son had drawn it.
Abena came to the doorway. “Samuel says Kwame thought we died in a fire,” she said. Kojo turned to her, confusion filling his face.
“Daddy thinks I'm dead?”
“He was told something terrible that wasn't true. We don't know everything yet.”
“Then we have to tell him.”
“We will try.”
Kojo closed the notebook carefully. “Please don't tell him I was good at the depot. I don't want him to think I liked being there.”
May you like
Solomon's throat tightened. “If your father is the man I remember, he'll want to know who made you go. Not whether you did the work well.”
At midnight Lydia sent an urgent message. She had traced the false account's opening instructions to a law office, not to Felix's company address. Attached was a scanned authorization bearing Bernard Adu's signature. And the recipient of the newest transfer, made just that afternoon, was someone Solomon knew by another name: Samuel Nyarko.
