Not too close.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
That was exactly the greeting Nyla predicted.
Brooke looked nervous.
“I didn’t know you were here.”
“Conference.”
“Me too.”
Silence.
People moved around them.
Nobody recognized anything.
Brooke asked whether Nyla had five minutes.
Nyla almost said no.
Then agreed.
They sat in a lobby corner.
Brooke did not begin with an apology.
She had apparently learned something.
“I read your whole project.”
Nyla looked at her.
“When?”
“First year of college.”
“Why?”
“My mom made me.”
Nyla smiled slightly.
“That sounds like your mother.”
Brooke laughed.
Then became serious.
“I thought it was going to destroy him.”
“Yeah.”
“It didn’t.”
“No.”
“It made him more real.”
Nyla waited.
Brooke looked down.
“That made what I did worse.”
“How?”
“Because I wasn’t protecting him.”
Pause.
“I was protecting the version that made me comfortable.”
Nyla thought about Christine’s letter.
Same realization.
Different generation.
Brooke continued.
“I used your race to make your research easier to dismiss.”
Nyla looked at her.
Brooke’s eyes filled.
“I told myself you were obsessed with racism because that meant I didn’t have to ask whether the racism was actually in the records.”
There was the sentence Nyla had never needed but understood immediately.
Brooke apologized.
Not for “everything.”
Specifically.
The comments.
The rumors.
The binder.
The blocking.
The shove.
The swing.
The months of interpreting Nyla’s research through assumptions about Black grievance.
She did not ask for forgiveness.
Nyla appreciated that.
“Why now?”
Brooke looked around the hotel.
“Because I saw you.”
“Not because you came here planning?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Nyla smiled.
“That would be weird.”
Brooke laughed through tears.
They talked another ten minutes.
Then stood.
No hug.
No exchange of phone numbers.
Brooke said, “I’m glad the project survived.”
Nyla answered:
“It was backed up.”
Brooke laughed.
For the first time, the line belonged to both of them.
Then they walked in opposite directions.
Nyla did not feel healed.
She had healed long before.
She felt finished.
There was a difference.
On the flight home, she opened an old cloud folder.
WESTBRIDGE CAPSTONE — FINAL.
Still there.
Scans.
Interviews.
Slides.
A photograph of the coffee-soaked binder.
She clicked the image.
Brown liquid across pages.
Coffee running over the table.