The first consequence did not arrive as resistance, and that was what made it difficult to name. It arrived as delay, quiet enough to pass for coincidence if Willow had not learned, through experience rather than theory, how often coincidence was simply hesitation dressed up as process.
She noticed it three days after the meeting, when an email she had been expecting did not arrive. She checked her calendar first, then the notes she had taken immediately afterward, then her sent folder to make sure she had not misread the follow-up timeline. Everything aligned. The language had been careful but clear. Forty-eight hours, perhaps seventy-two at most, framed as procedure rather than promise. It had now been seventy-two.
