The next morning, Amara tried the lantern in the kitchen. It did nothing. She tried it in the garden. Nothing. She tried it in the bathroom with the door locked and both hands cupped around the glass — and still, nothing.
"It doesn't work on command," Grandma Tola said from outside the door, in the tone of someone who had been waiting to say this for years. "It works when you *need* to see the truth. When a lie is standing right in front of you, and you are ready to look at it."
Amara did not have to wait long.
At dinner, Uncle Femi announced proudly that he had been promoted at the bank and would be moving the family to Abuja. Everyone cheered. Everyone except Grandma, who kept her eyes on her plate. And everyone except the lantern, which — from its spot on the shelf — began to glow, faint and warm as a coal.
Amara's stomach dropped.
If the lantern was glowing now, then somewhere in Uncle Femi's cheerful announcement, a lie was sitting at the table with them.
— *to be continued* —