The second map was dated eleven years before Adaeze was born, and it showed not a street but a single room — her father's old surveying office, every desk and shelf rendered with an obsessive, loving precision that surprised her.
In the corner of the room, drawn smaller than everything else, was a woman she did not recognize, labeled only with an initial: R.
Her mother's name began with an M. Adaeze sat with this fact the way you sit with a stone in your shoe — aware of it with every step, unable to ignore it, unwilling yet to stop and remove it.
She put the map aside and told herself she would ask her aunties about it later. She did not, that week, or the next.