Nobody noticed that my wedding ring was cutting into a finger swollen with pregnancy because I would not, could not, take it off.

Nobody noticed the plain steel bracelet on my other wrist, the one I never removed, the one with a name and a date and a set of coordinates engraved on the inside where no one would ever read them.

The bracelet had belonged to a man named Amaya who had died beside Niko two years before Niko died, and Niko had worn it every day after, and when they gave me Niko’s effects it had been on his wrist, and now it was on mine, and it would be on mine until I died, and my family thought it was costume jewelry.

That is the thing about a cover life that nobody warns you about: it is not just the mission you hide.

You hide your grief too.

You hide your pride.