EPISODE 3

Amara did not know any of this was happening. That was the particular cruelty of being the other person in a situation like this. You were the subject of a kitchen conversation you would never hear, part of a reckoning you had not been invited to.

She was at her desk at eight-thirty Wednesday morning when Dami walked past the bullpen. He did not look at her. He walked to his office and closed the door and his PA Bola, who noticed everything, glanced in Amara’s direction for half a second before looking away.

Something was wrong. Amara felt it the way you feel weather changing.

She texted him at lunch: Is everything okay.

He read it. Did not reply.

By three o’clock Tola appeared beside her desk with two cups of canteen tea and the expression of someone carrying news they had not asked to carry.

“What,” Amara said.

“Shade is in the building.”

Amara went still.

“She arrived at eleven. She has been in Dami’s office for over an hour. Bola cleared his entire afternoon.” Tola sat down, set a cup in front of Amara. “I do not know what is happening. But I thought you should know before you found out some other way.”

Amara wrapped both hands around the warm cup. She thought about the text she had sent him three weeks ago, the one she had agonized over for two days before sending. I cannot stop. She had meant it as honesty. She had not thought about what his phone looked like lying on a counter somewhere.

“I made a mistake,” Amara said quietly.

“Which part.”

“Sending that text.”

Tola did not argue with her. She just sat there, which was the most Tola thing she could have done.

Dami’s office door opened at four. Shade came out first. Amara was not looking directly at the corridor but she saw enough. Shade was tall and composed and beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with effort and everything to do with years. She walked to the elevator without looking at the bullpen.

A few minutes later Dami appeared in the bullpen doorway. He looked at Amara for the first time that day.

“Can you come to my office,” he said. “Five minutes.”

Tola squeezed Amara’s wrist under the desk.

Amara stood up, smoothed her dress, and walked toward whatever was coming.

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