agreed upon by the adults. Nobody asked Korede to call him Dad. Nobody asked him to change his surname. The first time they met in a quiet garden, Korede looked at Tobi's hands and asked whether he could build model airplanes. Tobi said he could try. They spent the next hour fitting small pieces together while Temi watched from a nearby bench.
When Tobi returned home, he was holding a cardboard box containing the unfinished model. He placed it carefully on the table and sat down without speaking. Nkiru was reading a report from Meridian. She waited until he was ready. "He asked me to come back and finish it," Tobi said finally. She looked at the box. "That's good." His eyes filled. "He didn't seem frightened." "Then keep helping him feel safe. That's more important than anything he calls you."
Their own relationship was changing slowly, sometimes in ways that looked like nothing from the outside. Nkiru attended counseling with Tobi twice, then asked for separate appointments because she wanted to understand what she needed without feeling pressured to reconcile. She was angry about the secrecy, frightened by the possibility of inheriting a parenting role she had never chosen, and ashamed of herself for feeling jealous of a little boy who deserved only care. Her counselor told her that complicated emotions were not moral failures. What mattered was how she treated people while deciding what she could live with.
Tobi accepted the boundaries, though not without difficulty. One evening he asked whether she would accompany him to Korede's next school event. She said no. He looked hurt. "Is it because you don't want to be part of his life?" She considered the question. "It's because he barely knows you, and you barely know what kind of relationship he wants. He doesn't need to meet a second adult whose place in his future is still uncertain. Let him have his own pace. Let me have mine." Tobi nodded and apologized for rushing her.
Nkiru was beginning to recognize a pattern in herself, too. During the worst months of Tobi's dismissal, she had managed every practical problem because he seemed unable to function. She arranged payments, answered relatives, hid the worst bills, and worked extra shifts. When he failed to tell the truth, she compensated by collecting facts. When executives hesitated, she demanded decisions. Some of that strength had kept the household alive. Some had left her exhausted and afraid that if she stopped holding everything together, it would fall apart. She needed to learn that responsibility could be shared or refused, not endlessly absorbed.
At headquarters, the investigation into Kunle reached a decisive stage. The forensic team recovered a server backup showing the amount change under a session linked to a temporary credential issued from Kunle's workstation, then connected to Temi's privileged access. Correspondence showed he had requested that temporary access shortly before the alteration. Vendor ownership records tied the recipient entities to associates who had benefited from Kunle's private arrangements. Several witnesses described pressure to approve invoices without ordinary verification. The investigators recommended referring the findings to the appropriate authorities and pursuing recovery of the diverted funds.