In the car, Osita jerked back from the window and looked at his right hand. It was swollen. As he stared at it, dull pain filtering up his arm, he remembered rising up from the bed with a roar, his left hand wrapping around the Lebanese man’s throat, then watching the sneering power drain out of his eyes, replaced by a sickly fear. The man had thought Osita was too drunk to resist, but Osita was much taller than him, much bigger, and powered by senseless grief that was ready to evolve into rage. He’d held the man by the throat and punched his face with his free hand in a flurry of short sharp blows that split the man’s eyebrow and washed blood down his cheek. The darkness came back, and the next memory was of the man stumbling out of the door holding his clothes against his chest, swearing loudly.

Osita had collapsed onto the bed and Kavita had woken him up. It was, now that he thought about it, a very good thing that she’d come to get him when she did. He had a feeling the Lebanese man would have returned—people don’t react well to their power being beaten out of them. He cradled his hand, wondering why he hadn’t noticed it while showering. Then, the pain had been diffuse—everything, inside him and out, had hurt—but now it was concentrated and loud. Kavita reached out and gently examined the injured hand, ignoring his wincing. She rummaged in her bag and handed him some Panadol and a bottle of water. “Take,” she said. Osita swallowed the tablets obediently. The chasm in his chest was riddled with pain, as his mind compared memories of Vivek’s touch with that of the stranger in the hotel room. There had been a party, he recalled now, and all the people had bled away until only the man was left, his greedy hands “helping” Osita to bed. The whole time in Port Harcourt, Osita had fucked only women—it had been like that since Vivek died. It felt safer, as if he wasn’t giving any important parts of himself away: not his soul or heart, just his body, which didn’t matter anyway. The stranger’s assault felt especially violent because of that, and Osita was glad he’d beaten him up.

Fucking foreigner, thinking he could take whatever he wanted. No man had touched him since Vivek died, and the way Osita felt now, perhaps no man ever would again.

He rested his head on Kavita’s shoulder. She patted his cheek. “Try and sleep,” she said, “there’s go-slow.” Osita closed his eyes, and they made the rest of the drive back to Ngwa in silence.

* * *

—

The charm Kavita was looking for had been a gift she’d received from Dr. Khatri when Vivek was still a baby. It was made of silver, in the image of Ganesh, and it hung from a thin silver chain. “Give it to your son,” he’d said. “Never let him take it off.” Kavita could still remember the warmth of her uncle’s hands as he pressed it into hers, the octagon of the pendant cutting slightly into her palm. “Promise me, beti.”

Even though Kavita had converted to Catholicism, even though the charm was an idol, she had agreed. She kept it for several years, afraid that Vivek would swallow the pendant as a toddler and choke. On the day she finally gave it to him, when he was six, Vivek looked at her with his serious dark eyes and insisted on putting it on himself. His hands moved like a ritual as he lifted the chain over his head and let it drop. From that day on, Ganesh rested just below the hollow of Vivek’s collarbone, but it was missing when his body turned up by their front door. After the burial, Chika decided that it must have been stolen, of course it had been stolen—it was silver, real silver, after all, not that plated nonsense. But Kavita didn’t want to hear it. It couldn’t have been stolen, couldn’t have been lost. He must have removed it and put it somewhere.

“He never took it off, woman.” Chika hadn’t bothered to rise from the bed as he said it, his eyes following her as she rummaged through her dressing table. “Why would it be there? You’re being ridiculous.”

“Shut up!” she shouted. “You don’t know. You don’t know what happened. You don’t know where he put it! If you don’t want to help me, then leave me alone.” Chika shook his head and turned over, backing her, leaving her to her madness. Futility had pressed him flat.

Kavita didn’t have time to talk to her husband. His friends had been calling the house to see how he was doing; even Eloise called a few times to check on him. All Kavita could think about was finding that necklace. She kept hoping Osita would know where it was.

“You can stay as long as you like,” she said when they reached the house. “Help me search his room for the pendant. You know which one I’m talking about? The silver one?”

Osita nodded. “The one with the elephant-head god on it.”

“Yes, exactly. If he took it off, he would have put it somewhere safe. I’ve looked, but I know how you boys are. There must be somewhere special, somewhere I haven’t looked yet.” Her face was lit with a desperate hope.

It made Osita uncomfortable. He knew as well as Chika did that Vivek never took the pendant off, but he could tell it would be pointless to say that to Kavita. When they stepped into Vivek’s room, Osita paused at the doorway, his skin skittering. It was strange to be there, in that new emptiness. He looked at the wine-colored velvet curtains that blocked out the sun, and remembered the afternoons they’d spent there—building elaborate wars on the bedspread as children, listening to music, talking about their crushes. And then, years later, after Vivek came back from university, those sparse afternoons when they weren’t at Juju’s house or in the boys’ quarters, when they drew the velvet curtains closed and lay in the dark, whispering. Now the air in the room tasted dusty and alone.

Kavita looked back at Osita and he stepped in, scratching his head. “Erm, maybe here?” he said, walking over to the bookcase. “He used to hide things inside his books.”

“Just any of them?” Kavita stood by his shoulder, peering at the shelves.

“No.” Osita pulled down one book: Vivek’s copy of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah. “Usually just this one,” he said, opening it. A dry pressed flower fell out as he flipped through its pages, and Kavita caught it carefully. She turned it over in her hands as Osita slid some letters out of the book and into his pocket without her noticing. “It’s not here,” he said. Kavita looked up, disappointed, and set the flower on the shelf.

“Are you sure?” Osita handed her the book. She looked through it slowly, then shook it, as if the pendant would burst out from the pages. “Isn’t there somewhere else he could have kept it?”

Osita pretended to think, looking around the room again. The performance was depressing him, especially because he knew it would end badly for her. He walked over to the mattress and lifted it to check underneath.

“I already looked there,” Kavita said. “Only some condoms.”

Osita was glad she couldn’t see his face. He went through the desk drawers as Kavita trailed behind him, her face growing sadder and sadder. “It’s not here, is it?” she said finally.

Osita sighed. “I’m so sorry, Aunty Kavita. I don’t think it is.” Guilt filled him as she shook her head, dashing the edge of her hand against her eyes.

“It was like a part of him,” she said, “and now it’s gone and he’s gone.” She sniffled and looked up at her nephew, her face crumpling. “He’s gone, Osita. I can’t believe he’s gone.”

“I know, Aunty. I’m sorry.” He hugged her in the humming silence of Vivek’s empty room, holding her as she cried.

* * *

—

Down the corridor, Chika listened to his wife’s swelling sobs, his phone beside him, lit up with missed calls. He didn’t move from their bed.

Six

Vivek

I kept the book for the title, for how it was spelled. Beautyful. I had no idea why that spelling was chosen, but I liked it because it kept the beauty intact. It wasn’t swallowed, killed off with an i to make a whole new word. It was solid; it was still there, so much of it that it couldn’t fit into a new word, so much fullness. You got a better sense of exactly what was causing that fullness. Beauty.

Beauty.

I wanted to be as whole as that word.

Seven

Osita

I spent my last year of secondary school avoiding Vivek’s house, not wanting to see his eyes or deal with the shattering in his voice. I didn’t see Elizabeth either, but everything felt so spoiled with her; I couldn’t imagine fixing it. I avoided the sports club, convinced she’d be there if I came, swimming slow laps in the pool or heading to the squash courts, her legs moving apart from my own.

My mother was quietly delighted that I was spending so much time at home. The deadlines to apply for universities abroad came and passed. Aunty Kavita might have reminded her, but the reminders never made their way to me. I wondered if I should follow up, but after my fight with Vivek, it felt easier to just let it go. I told myself that it had always been more of Aunty Kavita’s dream, anyway. It was a strange thing for my mother and me to be accidentally united on—this idea of a foreign education dying like an unwatered plant in a dark corner. Instead I applied to universities in the country, those closer to home. Vivek’s family had been selling us dreams I was no longer buying; my father was right, they were not my home.

Vivek came to my graduation with his parents. He and I acted like everything was fine when we met, but we avoided each other for the rest of the day. Before they left, Aunty Kavita came up to me.