Writers 
Teni went pale when I told her. "Two weeks? Tari, I need months, not days—"
"I know."
"You have to tell him. Tonight, before this thing grows wings."
"And say what?" I sat down hard on her bed. "'Good evening sir, I'm actually your fiancée's twin, surprise, also I think I'm falling for you'? He won't even let security open the gate for me again."
She wasn't wrong, sha. I just wasn't ready to hear it from the same person who'd started this whole wahala in the first place.
The real trouble met us on Saturday, at the engagement luncheon, in the shape of Daniel's grandmother — small woman, sharp eyes, the type that greets you with a smile and still sees straight through your spirit. She held my chin in both hands like she was checking for fever.
"You used to bite your lip," she said slowly, "only on the left side, as a small girl. Your mother would hiss and scold you for it, every single family dinner, long before any of this merger nonsense started."
I had never bitten my lip like that in my life. Because I wasn't the child she was remembering.
"Mama has memory like NEPA meter," Daniel said, laughing, rescuing me without knowing he was doing it. "She remembers things about me I myself have forgotten."
"I remember what I remember," the old woman said, releasing my chin but not her stare. "Come, walk with me. Just us two."
Every part of me wanted to invent an emergency — stomach upset, phone call, anything. Across the room, Teni's eyes were wide with the exact same panic.
I followed her anyway, because refusing would have been its own kind of confession.
She led me past the canopy tents to the quiet end of the garden, away from the small chops and the gele-wearing aunties sizing up everybody's waistline, and faced me with the calm of a woman who already knew the answer before she asked the question.
"I will ask you one thing," she said, "and I want only the truth. I am too old now to be lied to with sweet mouth."
My chest was doing something terrible.
"Which one are you," she said, folding her hands in front of her like a judge about to deliver sentence. "The one my grandson is falling in love with — or the one he is supposed to marry?"
I opened my mouth. Nothing honest came out, only a small, foolish laugh, the kind you give when you're buying one more second to think.
"Grandmother, I don't understand the question—"
"You understand it well well." She didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to. "I have buried one husband and trained three sons who all thought they were smarter than their mother. I know exactly how a woman sounds when she is deciding whether to lie to me." She tilted her head, patient, immovable, like she had all evening and every evening after it. "So. I am listening. And this time, use your real voice."
