It was Winnie never worrying about money a single day of her life, and her children after her.

It was the end of every fear that had ridden him since Adanna died — the fear of a bad month, an injury that stopped him working, a future in which something happened to him and Winnie was left with nothing.

Obadiah had not offered him a bribe so much as offered him the exact shape of his deepest parental terror, solved, in a folded piece of paper on a workbench.

And all he had to do was sign an affidavit that was, in its narrowest technical sense, not even entirely false — Ifeoma had hired him, money had changed hands, there had been a contract.

He could tell himself he was only confirming a fact.

He sat with it.