The problem with plans made under pressure was that life rarely gave them time to settle before testing whether they could hold.
Ronda realized that the very next day.
She woke with the strange aftertaste of steadiness still inside her; not happiness, not certainty, but the kind of quiet that came when two people had finally stopped letting fear do all the speaking for them. It was fragile. Useful. Hard-earned.
And by nine-thirty that morning, the firm had already begun pressing against it.
The city had been its usual difficult self on the way there; traffic dragging, conductors yelling, somebody’s elbow in her side for half the bus ride. None of it touched her the way work tension did now. She could survive Lagos chaos. She had practice. It was polished discomfort that exhausted her;
