The next morning, Ronda woke feeling different.
Not lighter. Not happier. Not magically free of everything the firm had already wrapped around her life.
But different.
Like something inside her had stopped crouching.
She lay on her back for a while, staring at the fan above her bed as it turned with its usual tired sound. Outside, the neighborhood was already awake. A woman argued over water. Someone’s radio carried a morning sermon through thin walls. A child laughed too loudly, then started crying almost immediately after.
Ordinary life.
The kind that went on no matter what a woman had said the day before in a corridor with her heart shaking inside her chest.
Ronda closed her eyes briefly.
I’m willing to try.
Even now, remembering herself say it made her stomach tighten.
It had
