"'Agnes was not always this way,' she says. 'Before she was like you and me. And then she became crossed.' She removes the stool from beneath her, brushes the seat and sets it down.
'Please.'
Kai sits.
She offers him some of the groundnuts and leaves the room with Ishmail. Kai prepares to wait.
How many hours he sat there he would not later recall. At some point the boy, sleepy and tired of waiting outside, crept in to be with him and Kai allowed him to stay, sheltered beneath the wing of his arm. People were sent for. A neighbour. A young woman without a smile. An older woman with a creased face and white hair. Kai waited and listened without interrupting or speaking except to greet each new arrival, watch while they took a seat and were told what was required of them. He didn't speak even when they faltered; he offered no solace but left it to others. Each person told a part of the same story. And in telling another's story, they told their own. Kai took what they had given him and placed it together with what he already knew and those things Adrian had told him.
This was Agnes's story, the story of Agnes and Naasu. In hushed voices, told behind a curtain in a quiet room and in the eye of the night, from the lips of many. By the time the last speaker had finished the moon was well past its zenith and Kai understood the storytellers' courage."
From The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna (2010)