Angela and Daryl found their way back to each other in late summer the way rivers find old beds after a dry season — not with a dramatic reunion, but with coffee downtown and a conversation that lasted four hours and ended with Angela calling Jamal before she drove home.
"We're going to try," she said. "Slow. Public. No hallway secrets. I need you to hear it from me first."
Jamal was in the grocery store holding a carton of eggs. He set them in the cart carefully. "I hear you."
"Are you all right?"
"I'm in the dairy aisle processing my mother's romantic itinerary. I'll live." He paused. "Slow is good. Public is required. If I find out about another secret timeline, Mom, we will have a different conversation."
"There won't be one."
"I'll hold you to that."
The cookout at Rhea's the following month included Daryl again — not as a man at a gate waiting for permission, but as a name on the text chain about who was bringing ice. Jamal arrived early to help set up tables. When Daryl's car pulled up, Jamal felt the old flare and breathed through it the way Dr. Okonkwo had taught him: four counts in, name the feeling, four counts out, choose the next action instead of letting the feeling choose it for him.
The next action was handing Daryl a bag of charcoal and saying, "Grill's on you today. I did it last time."