He thought of Keisha's funeral. He had told Aisha he had a vendor meeting in Dayton. He had worn a dark suit. He had stood in the back because he did not know where a half-present father belonged in the choreography of grief. Layla had seen him and walked into his arms with a force that nearly knocked him back a step. Aunt Tasha had watched with a face that said: finally, and also: too late.
After the burial, in the church parking lot, Layla had said, "When do I meet your wife?"
"Soon," he had lied.
"You always say soon."
"I know."
"If you don't tell her, I'm going to call the house."
He had bought the second phone the next day, as if a device could contain a threat that was really a need.
Now the need had arrived in his kitchen wearing a gold robe and saying ten years like a eulogy.
---
Twenty minutes became thirty-five. Aisha climbed the stairs with the black phone in her hand and found him exactly where she had sent him. She stood in the doorway.
"You're going to tell me the whole timeline," she said. "No edits for my feelings. No speeches about how you were protecting me. Timeline. Then we decide whether this marriage is a thing that still exists or a thing we are dismantling with paperwork."
He nodded.
She sat in the armchair by the window, not on the bed. Distance was a tool. She set the phone on her knee.
Darius began.
He told her about Keisha — the eleven months, the pregnancy, the refused proposal, the child support, the P.O. box, the missed tenth birthday, the cowardice that calcified. He told her about meeting Aisha and drafting the confession and swallowing it. He told her about every almost: the night before the wedding when he stood in the hotel bathroom and practiced saying daughter and then came out and kissed Aisha instead; the afternoon after the miscarriage when guilt nearly forced the truth out and fear forced it back in; the day they bought this house and he signed papers as a man with one household while paying for sneakers in another.
He told her about Keisha's death. The call from Aunt Tasha. The vendor-meeting lie. The funeral. Layla's arms. The second phone. The midnight texts because Layla's grief lived in the hours when the house was quiet and Aunt Tasha's patience was thin.
When he finished, the bedroom felt smaller.
Aisha was quiet for a long time. Then she said, "Did you love her? Keisha."