I glance at her as stealthily as I can manage, and the fact that she’s sitting there takes my breath away.
“Kwame, I don’t know if I told you that Arsinoé used to live in New York,” my hostess says, and I whip my head in her direction to see if she saw me staring at her daughter.
Her conspiratorial smile tells me she did.
“You mentioned that, yes.” I resist the urge to shift in my seat and put my fork down gently. I look at Mae and pretend to be confused. “Are you Arsinoé?”
“No, she is,” Mrs. Sackey points at Sin.
“Oh, sorry. Promise I won’t forget again.” I smile and look at Sin with feigned contemplation. “Let me see, you’re a journalist, just relocated from New York, and you have an almost fiancé?” I recite the list of facts her mother shared about her oldest daughter almost as soon as Igot here.
Her eyes dart to my face and then away again. “We broke up,” Sin says quickly and then takes a big gulp of water.
“Stop saying that,” her mother snaps. “You’ll make it true.”
“Ma, it’s already true.” She speaks with the weariness of someone who’s tired of repeating themselves.
“For now. You were together a long time.”
“Too long,” she mutters.
Her mother casts her an irritated glance before she smiles at me again. “Kwame, you’re single, right? So is Mae.” She looks at her other daughter who has been preoccupied with her phone all evening.
“Ma,” Mae cries, finally looking up from her phone with horror in her eyes. “Ignore her,” she says to me, before she glares at her mother.
“Why should he ignore me?”
“I’m not interested,” Mae says. “No offense. You’re very, very handsome,” she says with a bright smile. “And how do you even know he’s single, Ma?”
“Well?” Mrs. Sackey turns her head to me. “Are you?”
“Is this a swap meet or Sunday dinner?” Sin snaps.
“It’s complicated.”
I take some satisfaction from the way Sin’s mouth puckers like she sucked a lemon. But it doesn’t last long. She’s the complication and this unexpected connection makes it even more so. Her mother introduced me as Kwame Dixon, and I didn’t correct her because it was my mother’s maiden name and the legal name on all the documents related to the house. Also, I avoided telling people who my father was if I didn’t have to.
“Why are you not married? You’re almost forty, right?” Her mother’s beseeching tone would be funny if she wasn’t so serious.
I finish chewing my last bite of chicken and try to think of an answer that’s honest without saying too much. “It hasn’t been a priority. My career has been my focus the last twenty years.”
“Those careers aren’t going to love you when life is hard, oh!” She wags a finger at her daughter.
“My friends will, and my siblings will do that,” Sin says with a straight face.
Her mother claps her hands together like she’s trapping a mosquito. “They are all going to be married with families and won’t have time to spend going out or whatever it is you do with your time.”
“They aren’t all married,” Sin says. “In fact, all of the siblings aresingle.”
“They’re young. They have time.” Her eyes convey a silent “unlike you.” “Your best friend has two children already.”
“You had Adonis when you were forty,” Sin says.
“And look at how I’m paying for it now,” she shoots back.
“Thanks,” her brother frowns.
“I’ve decided to have a baby.” Her sister’s announcement is like someone pressing mute on the conversations in the room. They all stop instantly, and all eyes go to Mae.
