Two mornings after Daniel stopped sleeping properly, Amara woke before the house.
The rain had passed. Sunlight filtered gently through the curtains, pale and unhurried. For a moment, she lay still, listening—to the distant crow of a rooster, the hum of early traffic, the soft rhythm of her own breathing. There was no urgency in her chest, no tight coil of anticipation. She did not reach for her phone immediately.
That alone felt like progress.
She sat up slowly and checked the time. Just after six. She could hear her mother downstairs, moving with the quiet certainty of routine. The smell of boiling water and ginger drifted up the stairs.
Amara dressed and stepped out of her room, pausing in the hallway. The house felt steady. Rooted. It asked nothing from her except presence.
Downstairs, Mama Nwoye looked up and smiled. "You're awake early."
"I slept well," Amara said, surprised to hear how true it sounded.
They prepared breakfast together—simple things, familiar motions. Amara washed dishes while her mother stirred. No one rushed. No one filled the space with unnecessary talk.
After they ate, Amara stepped outside into the morning air. The sun had dried the veranda. She sat on the step with her mug and let her thoughts come, one by one, without chasing them away.
She thought about Daniel.
Not with the ache she expected, but with clarity.
She could see now how much she had softened herself over time—how often she chose silence not because it felt right, but because it felt easier than pushing against resistance. She remembered the moment she first learned to pause before speaking, testing whether a thought would be received or dismissed. That pause had become habit. Then identity.
I taught myself not to need, she realized.
The thought was sobering, but it didn't crush her.
Her phone buzzed in her hand, startling her slightly. A message from Daniel—sent late the previous night, after she'd gone to bed.
I don't know how to do this without you talking to me.
She read it once. Then again.
There was a time when that sentence would have sent her into immediate reassurance, into explanation and apology for needing space at all. This morning, she let it sit.
She typed, then erased. Typed again.
I'm still thinking, she wrote finally. I need time to be honest with myself.
She hesitated, then added: Please don't rush me.
She sent it.
The response didn't come right away. Amara felt the familiar itch to fill the gap—to anticipate his discomfort, to manage it before it hardened into frustration.
She resisted.
She spent the rest of the morning doing ordinary things. She helped her mother organize a cupboard that hadn't been touched in years. She laughed with Ifunanya over a ridiculous memory. She took a walk around the neighborhood, letting familiar sights anchor her in something older than this relationship.
By afternoon, her phone buzzed again.
Okay, Daniel wrote. I'll wait.
The words surprised her. Not because they were perfect, but because they were different.
Amara leaned against the wall and closed her eyes briefly.
Waiting is new for him, she thought.
And for the first time since she'd left, she felt a flicker of something she hadn't allowed herself to feel yet.
Hope—but cautious, conditional, honest.
That evening, she sat alone in her room, journaling. She wrote without editing herself, without worrying how her words would land. Pages filled with things she had never said aloud: resentment, longing, tenderness, anger, fear.
When she finished, her hand ached. Her chest felt lighter.
She read over one line twice before underlining it.
I don't want to be loved for how little I ask.
The truth of it settled deeply.
Later, as night fell, Amara lay in bed staring at the ceiling she'd stared at so many times before—but this time, she felt present in her own body. She didn't feel like she was waiting for permission to exist.
Her phone buzzed once more.
A longer message from Daniel.
I'm realizing I don't actually know what you've been carrying. I thought quiet meant okay. I'm starting to see that it didn't. I don't want to guess anymore.
Amara read it slowly.
She didn't reply immediately.
She placed the phone down beside her and let the words breathe. Let them exist without response. Let herself feel both the weight and the possibility in them.
She wasn't ready yet to talk fully. Not yet to open everything she'd protected herself by closing.
But she could see the shape of what might come next.
Conversation—not rushed.
Listening—not defensive.
Silence—not erasing.
Amara turned onto her side and closed her eyes.
The quiet around her no longer felt like retreat.
It felt like ground being prepared.
And for the first time in a long while, she trusted herself to decide what would be planted there.