I hated the idea of needing a stranger's guest room. I hated even more that Nadia's advice made sense. Malachi did not use the situation to make me stay. When I told him I might need another 2 days, he said I could have them, then opened his laptop and showed me three small hotels outside the city center in case I preferred to move. That gesture decided it.
I stayed because I had options, not because he had removed them. The first two days were uncomfortable in ways no boardroom had ever been. I did not know where anything belonged in the kitchen. I kept reaching for a phone that no longer contained the applications I used to run my life. I opened my calendar and saw empty space where meetings had once stacked from morning to night.
I told myself I should use the time to think strategically, but sometimes I simply stood in the kitchen listening to the refrigerator hum because no one was asking me for a decision. On the third morning, I tried to make scrambled eggs. I turned the burner too high and attacked the pan with the same intensity I used in product reviews. Immani came in wearing pajamas, watched for less than a minute, and said, "You're going to ruin them. I told her I knew how to cook eggs."
She shook her head. "You know how to fight eggs?" I looked at her. "Is there a meaningful difference?" She pointed at the stove.
"Lower heat and stop rushing." I lowered the heat. That should have been a trivial moment. Instead, it followed me through the day. I had spent years believing speed was evidence of competence.
If I could answer before anyone else decide before anyone else, and carry more than anyone else, I could keep Ourelis safe. Now, I was living in a house where no one cared how quickly I moved, and I had no idea what to do with the part of myself built entirely around urgency. Malachi made that adjustment easier because he never tried to turn my crisis into intimacy. He drove Immani to school. He worked from a home office with the door half closed.
He cooked dinner when it was his turn and let me cook when I insisted. He spoke about his late wife Aaliyah only when I asked why one cabinet still held a ceramic mug no one seemed to use. He told me she had died 4 years earlier. He did not give me a speech about grief. He only said she had made him promise to be present for Immani and he had reorganized his work around keeping that promise.
I understood the sentence more than I wanted to. I had organized everything around Aurelis. If someone had asked what remained after the company was removed, I would have struggled to answer. Imani noticed before I did. One evening, I told Malachi I was fine after Nadia called with another delay in obtaining documents.
Immani was doing homework at the table. Without looking up, she asked, "Do adults say I'm fine when they want people to stop asking questions." Malachi gave her a look. She shrugged. "Sometimes," I admitted.
"Dad does it, too." Malachi leaned back. "Thank you for the analysis." "You're welcome." Their ease with each other made something in me ache.