Tag: Purple Lines Don’t Meet

7 Tessy walked away from the kitchen, picked up her handbag from the chair in the sitting room and headed for the door. Ronke is yelling abuses on her. She didn’t bother cleaning off the soup stain on her pants. She would take a shower at home, she thought. She slammed the front door...

6 The envelope sat between them on the dashboard, plain and clinical, its weight disproportionate to its size. Tessy stared at it as Chiedu drove, the city blurring past the windows. She hadn’t spoken since they left the lab. Halfway to her apartment, she turned to him. “Can you open it? Just tell me.”...

5 Back at her desk, Tessy opened her laptop and stared at the blinking cursor. The office buzzed around her, phones ringing, keyboards tapping, someone laughing too loudly near the kitchenette. She tried to focus. The proposal draft waited. A client email blinked unread. Her calendar nudged her about a meeting in forty minutes....

4 The shower steamed the room, softening the edges of the night. Tessy stood at the sink, towel wrapped around her, staring at her reflection. Her eyes looked older somehow, tired, but alert. The toothbrush lay hidden in her bag, tucked beneath a scarf. In the bedroom, Chiedu was already under the covers, scrolling...

3 Next morning, Tessy woke thirty-eight seconds before her alarm and determined she was not going to take even a slight peek into her phone. She went about her morning, getting ready for work as she would any other day, except from checking her phone for notifications. The office buzzed with its usual rhythm,...

2 Before it was time to finish from work, Tessy couldn’t take it anymore. She needed to talk to her father at least. He was the one who was capable of holding a clear conversation in the thick of his anger. She packed her phone and purse into her handbag and left her office....