Her name was Adaeze.
Not the name I'd carried for her in my head all these years — I'd just called her mother in my thoughts, when I allowed myself to think of her at all, which wasn't often because the thinking hurt in a specific way that didn't diminish with practice. But her name was Adaeze and she moved through the dim interior of the hillside safe house with the careful economy of someone who had spent years in small spaces, making herself fit without complaint.
She made tea.
I almost laughed at that. Almost. My mother — alive, fifteen years hidden, the reason half a pack was currently mobilizing across three territories — made tea on a small iron stove in the corner of a room carved into a hillside while I sat on a low wooden bench and tried to locate my equilibrium.
It had appar
