When my father died, my siblings fought over his properties.
Nobody wanted his old phone.
My elder brother picked up the phone, looked at it, and tossed it towards me.
"Here, take it. At least everybody will get something from Daddy's belongings."
My sister laughed.
"Give her the phone. She was always following Daddy around, so let her have something to remember him by."
They all laughed, but I collected it without arguing.
My elder brother took the house in Enugu. My sister took the land in our village. My younger brother collected our father's car.
I went home with a phone that barely charged.
For years, I had been the daughter nobody considered important.
I was the one they called when Daddy needed hospital attention. I was the one who stayed awake beside him. I was the one who bought his medication when everybody else had an excuse.
Yet, during the funeral arrangements, my siblings treated me like a stranger.
They even accused me of wanting to control our father's money because I had his ATM card while he was sick.
I didn't argue.
After the burial, I took the old phone to a technician.
He managed to switch it on.
There were hundreds of messages, most of them ordinary conversations. Then I found a draft message my father had written but never sent.
It contained just one sentence:
"If my children ever fight over what I leave behind, let them know that the most valuable thing I owned was never inside any of those properties."
I read it several times.
I searched the phone for more clues, but found nothing.
For weeks, I wondered what he meant.
Then, one afternoon, my father's lawyer called me.
He asked me to come to his office.
My siblings were already there when I arrived.
My brother looked irritated.
"Why did the lawyer call everybody because of you?"