Nadia's POV
Three weeks before Mumbai, I got cold feet.
Not about the work. The framework was solid, the presentation was ready, Priya had run me through three mock sessions, and had stopped finding things to correct after the second one. The work was fine.
I got cold feet about leaving Elise.
It started on a Tuesday when Vivian came for her afternoon, and I stood in the hallway after they left for the park, and the apartment was quiet in a way that felt wrong. Five minutes of quiet, and something in my chest tightened.
Five days of that.
I didn't tell Julian immediately. I sat with it for two days, trying to determine if it was a rational concern or just the particular anxiety of a mother who hadn't been separated from her child overnight yet.
It was both. That didn't make it easie
