I picked up the cup. “Noted.”
For a moment, we sat in companionable silence.
Then she said, “My aunt saw your speech. She left her husband last week.”
I looked up.
Priya’s face was composed, but her voice softened. “Twenty-nine years. She said she kept thinking dignity is not negotiable.”
The tea warmed my hands.
I did not know what to say.
So I told the truth.
“I’m glad she’s safe.”
Priya nodded. “Me too.”
After she left, I sat alone in the office I had nearly been prevented from entering. The guidon stood in the corner. My mother’s recipe cards sat in the top drawer. My father’s watch rested beside my keyboard.
My life had not become easy.
But it had become mine again.
And I was beginning to understand that mine was enough.
PART 7 — The Name That Set Me Free
The annulment hearing lasted less than forty minutes.
