Downstairs, Marcus had made tea neither of them would drink. He sat at the kitchen island with his hands wrapped around a mug. Nia took the stool across from him. Between them lay the folder, the pier photograph, and the thin gold bracelet she had taken off and set down like evidence.
"I need to tell you what the last seven months were for me," she said. "Not as a counterargument. As context."
He nodded.
"I was lonely in a way that felt professional," she said. "The cohort was brilliant and competitive and mostly white and mostly male. I learned to translate myself in rooms where my competence had to arrive five minutes before my body did. I called you every night and used your face as proof that I still belonged somewhere that didn't require translation. When Amara showed me drawings, I taped them to the wall of my corporate apartment. When you said everything was fine, I believed you because I needed one true thing that wasn't a slide deck."
Marcus's eyes shone. He did not interrupt.
"I also became someone," Nia continued. "I can feel it in my spine. The program worked. The director offer is real. I got the email this morning at the airport. That's why I came early. I wanted to walk into this house and put the letter on the table and watch you cry happy tears. Instead I walked into moving day."