The brunch was Teni's idea. It was something she wanted on record. This is what Teni told Dayo about the brunch on Sunday evening after it happened. Dayo stood in the kitchen making tea that he was not going to drink.
It was lovely, she said. The women are nice. Nkechi brought flowers.
Here is what happened at the brunch. Everything Teni said and everything she did not say.
Teni read Nkechi's message three times. She had not asked a question at the estate meeting about the generator schedule. She had made a comment about response time. It was not a question. It was barely a statement. She had forgotten it before she sat back down.
But Nkechi had remembered it. She had surfaced it like a child who remembered their two times table and wanted you to know.
You are very good with structure.
Teni typed back immediately. She would think about how quickly she replied later, and the realization would arrive the way most realizations did — because it was already too late.
Blessing was in bed, phone face-up on her chest. She was unable to sleep for reasons she wasn't naming. She read the message twice, then agreed, then sent a like emoji and put her phone down.
Usually she would screenshot the exchange.
She did not, and this was the only exchange she did not screenshot.
Nkechi put her phone down. She opened the Admin note. Under Yeside's name she added three words.
Architecture background. Two years in Tobenna's firm before pregnancy. Considering return to work.
Husband: Seun. Very present. Night feeds. Describes marriage as fortunate.
Seun. Abuja. Tuesday.
She opened a different thread. It was not the Pinnacle Wives group or any other wife's DM.
Nkechi put her phone in her bag, picked up her tea, and looked out at the bougainvillea.
The good china was chosen. It had taken Teni an hour to decide. It was her first time hosting these women in her home and she wanted to make a good first impression. Her mother had always told her to use the good china whether she had guests or not. When she moved to her first apartment she bought expensive chinaware. She never stopped. When she was getting married she included four different types in her gift registry.
Blessing was the first to arrive. She wore an olive green jumpsuit and held the Prosecco in her right hand while she flashed a bright smile. She walked in like she had visited the house many times. Teni observed this about her and was glad that Blessing felt comfortable walking in.
Before Teni could say anything else, the doorbell rang again. Yeside walked in with Tupperware in both hands.
"Please accept the chin chin I made last night," Yeside said. "I made a lot of it because I could not sleep."
"You just had a baby," Teni replied.
"I had a baby, not a disease."
Teni laughed. Yeside was beautiful even postpartum — there was a glow she could not fully explain, but it was there.
Nkechi arrived last. A khaki-lined dress that looked expensive. She brought flowers. Who brings flowers to brunch? Teni thought.
Nkechi set them on the island and greeted Blessing and Yeside. "Your light in here is beautiful," she said.
Teni would think about this moment later. The ease of it. The way four women who barely knew each other rearranged themselves around Nkechi's arrival as though she was the main event.
They ate the small chops Teni had ordered and displayed on a gold platter. Meat pies, moneybags, puff puff, spring rolls. The chin chin Yeside brought was poured into small ramekins beside each woman. They drank Prosecco and Chapman in a glass jug set on the table. Blessing drank enthusiastically, Teni measuredly. Yeside and Nkechi stuck to the Chapman.
The conversation flowed. No agendas, no gaps. Their husbands, their children, their hobbies, some work. Lightweight.
And then Nkechi began asking questions.
The questions were asked like a smooth criminal, and Teni did not register any of them until she replayed the afternoon in bed at 2am. One question per woman. She asked Blessing about her logistics company. Blessing gave an eleven-minute explanation. After the explanation, Nkechi asked: Do you have a support system? Like actual support.
Blessing was not sure what to say. The smile on her face evaporated and then she laughed it off. It was a moment where the deer caught the headlights. She poured more Prosecco and said nothing, but something about the question made the room feel hollow for a second.
The next person was Yeside: What did you do before motherhood? And why did you give it up?
"I worked as an architect and in my husband's firm for two years before I got pregnant. I will go back eventually, but for now I am enjoying motherhood. I have a very supportive husband."
Nkechi nodded thoughtfully. Yeside looked uncomfortable. Before anyone could say anything, Teni became the next person on the hot seat.
"What do you find most difficult about being back in the country?"
The table went quiet.
Blessing opened her mouth. Closed it. Then: "That's real. Very real."
"It is what it is," Teni said, and smiled, and this was the smile that closed the door. She picked up her glass. "Lagos doesn't owe you a seat at the table just because you came back. You earn it the same way you'd earn it anywhere. I know this. I'm fine with it."
"Are you though?" Nkechi said.
Quietly. Just there. The question placed in the room where everyone could hear it.
Teni looked at her. Nkechi held her gaze with that warm, focused attention.
"Yes," Teni said. Clearly. Cleanly.
Nkechi nodded slowly. "That makes complete sense," she said, and reached for the Prosecco and refilled Blessing's glass and the conversation moved, and that was that.
At 2am, lying in the dark beside a sleeping Dayo, Teni replayed the questions. Why had Nkechi asked questions like that? She replayed the answers and the way Nkechi paused and said are you though.
The thing that kept Teni awake was not the question.
It was the fact that for one half-second — one fraction of a moment that she had sealed over immediately with yes and her clearest voice — she had almost said no.
She had almost said: No, I am not fine with it. I came back because Dayo asked me to and I told myself it was what I wanted, and I have spent fourteen months building a version of this life that looks like a choice, because looking like a choice is the only way I know how to survive something that wasn't entirely one.
She had almost said all of that to a woman she had known for six weeks, over good china and chin-chin.
She had not said it. She had said yes and closed the door and smiled and moved on.
But the almost. The almost was the thing.
Nkechi had seen it. Teni was certain of this the way she was certain of things she couldn't prove — the pattern recognizer's gut. Nkechi had seen the almost and had nodded and said that makes complete sense and filed it away in whatever she kept instead of a note.
When Blessing had asked Nkechi what she did for fun, Nkechi had smiled. I keep my home, she said. I find it genuinely fulfilling. She refilled everyone's glass. The conversation moved.
It was only later — in the car, on the road, in bed — that Teni replayed it and realized Nkechi had given an answer that contained no information at all. A perfect answer. She had said something without saying anything.
Teni lay in the dark and thought: she asked me one question, and in half a second she learned more about me than I have told anyone in fourteen months.
She thought: that is either the mark of an exceptional woman or a dangerous one.
She fell asleep before she could decide.
One emoji. Warm enough. Clean hands.
Teni saw it and smiled at her phone in the dark. She fell asleep before she could interrogate it.
Three doors down, Nkechi was not asleep. She was in her sixty minutes — the hour between eleven and midnight that was hers, the one she protected. She opened the Admin note. Under Teni's name, she read what she had written the night the group was formed. She looked at it for a moment.
Then she added one line underneath.
Returned from abroad fourteen months ago. Dayo's decision framed as joint. Has not resolved this.
High structure. Uses organization as control. Notices everything. Files it.
She is beginning to trust me. This would be a problem.
She put the phone down and finished her tea.
But the word problem sat there in the note and she did not delete it, which was the one honest thing she did that night.
She closed her eyes.
End of Episode Two.