Chapter 7

Derek stood alone in the middle of the corridor, his suit jacket askew, his polished watch gleaming under the fluorescent light, a man who had just watched the two women in his life walk away from him in the span of five minutes. He looked at Mara. He looked at Dr. Okafor. He looked at the strangers still watching him, and something in his face shifted — the fear flickered, then guttered, and what was left was something smaller, older, a man who had lost a game he didn't know he was playing.

"You planned this," he said to Mara. "You planned this. You knew I'd be here. You knew about the file. You set me up."

Mara shook her head slowly. "I didn't set you up, Derek. I knew you'd be here because I know you. I knew you brought Priya here on Tuesdays for the baby's checkup. I knew you'd be in the maternity wing at four o'clock. I knew you'd take the opportunity to humiliate me if you saw me. I've known you long enough to know exactly where your cruelty lives."

She paused. "But I didn't plan for you to do it today. I planned to be here for the same reason you were — to see the records, to speak to Dr. Okafor, to start putting the pieces of my life back together. You're the one who made the choice to open your mouth and humiliate me in front of a hallway full of strangers. You're the one who handed me the moment. I just had the truth ready when you did."

Derek's jaw worked. He looked around the corridor, at the people who had watched him fall, and for a moment he looked like he might be about to say something.

"What do you want?" he asked. His voice was hoarse. "What do you actually want?"

Mara considered the question. She thought about the year she'd spent in the one-room apartment above the bakery, staring at medical reports in the dim light of a single lamp. She thought about the day she'd found the letter from Mrs. Hargrove, the one that had come with the bank statements and the records and the testimony — all of it delivered in a manila envelope with no return address, as if the universe had decided she deserved to know.

She thought about the foundation, the one she'd built from a folding table, the one that fed three hundred families a month — and the corporation that had bought it for a profit and quietly dissolved it six months later.