Part 2:The missing granddaughter

Years after the last lavender light, Ezinne was still waiting. She wasn't looking for a reunion anymore; she was waiting for a full stop. The village, having whispered itself hoarse, had learned to wait with her.

It was a Tuesday, the market day, when the silence finally cracked. A farmer named Emeka, clearing new land far past the last cassava patch, came back with a silence heavier than any Ezinne had ever carried.

They did not bring her back in a coffin. They brought her in a single, rough blanket, carried by four men who walked with the stunned, heavy pace of pallbearers who wished the bundle was lighter.

Ezinne did not scream. She stood on the red dirt, her hands dropping the small pile of groundnuts she was shelling. The sound of the rolling nuts was the loudest noise in the universe. Chiamaka had come home.

They laid the blanket down inside the house. The years had not been kind to what was left. But Ezinne did not need eyes to know. She knew the curve of that forehead, the bone structure of that small, broken jaw.

More important than the body was the hollow space beside her. The baby. The secret that had chased Chiamaka into the night had also been taken by it. The unkept promise was now a final, tragic mystery.

The village elders came. The police came. They asked the same questions that had dried up years ago: Who? Why? Ezinne could only give them the same, unhelpful silence that Chiamaka had left behind.

They buried Chiamaka beside the biggest, oldest mango tree. Her plot was neat, quiet, and finally, permanent. The whispering of the leaves above her was a softer sound than the endless waiting.

Ezinne knew the police investigation would stall, lost in the tangle of Obodo’s unwritten rules and old secrets. But she could not let go. She began to trace the road Chiamaka had walked, starting from the empty tin cup.

The lavender light still comes every evening. Ezinne still sits on her stool, but she is listening....