She did not talk to him like he was hired; he wasn’t yet.

They talked like two people who had each been left, finding, in the small hours, the unfamiliar experience of not being left.

It was the beginning of everything, though neither of them knew it.

It only felt, that night, like the mercy of not being alone.

He stayed until the window went gray, and then pale gold.

Ifeoma made it through the night.