She admitted it to herself on a Sunday morning.
Not out loud. Not even in the way of a fully formed thought. It came to her the way honest things sometimes came, quietly and without announcement, while she was doing something ordinary. She was making coffee in the small kitchen of the flat and Zara was still asleep and the Sunday light was coming through the window at its particular pale winter angle, and the thought arrived.
She was in trouble.
Not the practical kind. The practical elements of her situation were actually the best they had been in a year. The job was real and growing, and she was good at it. She had money in her account for the first time since graduation. She had a place in a building that she had earned by being exactly what she was.
The trouble was the other kind.
