And it would matter more than either of them could have guessed, months later, at a curb, when a ten-year-old asked him whether the woman she was learning to love was going to die, and a lie would have been so much kinder, and he had already promised he would not tell it.

And overnight, Emeka’s life turned inside out.

He went from wiring breaker boxes in the morning to sitting in oncology suites by noon and high-stakes corporate dinners by evening.

In public they presented a warm, united front.

In private they stayed two guarded strangers, quietly unsettled by how well they were starting to understand each other.

Chapter 10 — In Private