The heat inside the bus terminal was a living, breathing thing. It smelled of stale sweat, diesel fumes, and the oily scent of deep-fried mandazi that made my stomach churn. I sat on the cracked plastic chair, clutching Sasha so tight his small ribs felt like they might snap under my fingers. He was warm. He was breathing. He was real.
But across from me, leaning against a pillar of peeling blue paint, stood the other Esther.
She was a ghost from a chapter I thought I’d closed. She wore the blood-stained nurse’s jacket, her eyes sunken and rimmed with the red of a thousand sleepless nights. She held the kitchen knife, its blade trembling as she pointed it at the boy in my lap.
"He’s mine," the Other Esther whispered. Her voice was a dry, hollow echo of my own. "I went through the hospit
