Breakfast stretched the way family meals always had in the Njoroge house — unhurried, replenished in quiet cycles, conversation moving in overlapping currents rather than orderly turns.
Hailey had forgotten that rhythm.
Rosa rose twice to bring more tea no one had requested. David refolded his newspaper without reading it, attention anchored entirely on his daughter. Daniel leaned back in his chair with the loose ease of someone content simply to occupy the same space again.
"You must eat," Rosa said for the third time, nudging the honey closer to Hailey. "You are still too thin."
"I ate on the plane."
"That is not food."
"It was business class, Mama."
"Air food is still air food."
Daniel snorted into his tea. David hid a smile.
Hailey tore a piece of warm bread obediently and dipped it in honey. The sweetness bloomed across her tongue — achingly familiar.
She had missed this more than she had allowed herself to admit.
"So," Daniel said at last, stretching his arms behind his head, "we have established you have returned dramatically, frightened our mother half to death, and aged our father ten years in one morning."
David made a low protest. "I am aged by taxes, not daughters."
"Same thing," Daniel said.
Rosa waved this aside. Her gaze had settled on Hailey again — intent, searching, maternal assessment softened now by relief. "You said yesterday you are home. That means… what exactly?"
There it was.
Not pressure. Not demand.
Simply the question waiting beneath all reunions: How long? In what way?
Hailey set down her cup.
"I've accepted a position," she said. "Here. In Nerua."
Silence fell — brief but charged.
David straightened. "You have work already?"
"Yes."
"With which firm?" Daniel asked.
"A corporate group. Head office in West Nerua."
Daniel's brows lifted. "That is serious territory."
"What role?" David asked.
"Marketing Director."
Both men went still.
Rosa blinked once, processing scale rather than title. "Director means… you lead?"
"Yes, Mama."
Her mother's face softened into quiet pride that needed no embellishment. "I always said you would lead somewhere."
David's expression shifted more slowly — not disbelief, but recalibration. He looked at her as though measuring again the distance between the girl who had left and the woman now sitting at his table.
"Director," he repeated. "You return not only home, but… advanced."
Hailey smiled faintly. "I worked."
"I know you did," he said. "We all knew. But knowing is different from seeing."
Daniel leaned forward, interest sharpening. "Which group?"
Hailey hesitated a fraction — not secrecy, simply the awareness that speaking it aloud would make this new life fully real.
"Kairo Holdings."
Daniel's reaction was immediate. "You're joking."
"I'm not."
"That is one of the largest portfolios in the city."
"I know."
David let out a low breath. "That is… significant responsibility."
"It is."
Rosa reached across the table and touched Hailey's wrist. "You will be happy there?"
The question was simple and precise — not prestige, not salary, not status.
Happiness.
"I believe so," Hailey said.
Daniel tilted his head. "When do you start?"
"Tomorrow."
Rosa's hand tightened. "So soon?"
"I wanted to begin immediately."
David nodded slowly. "That is correct. Momentum should not cool."
Daniel grinned. "Also means we must celebrate tonight before you become Important Corporate Woman."
"I already am," Hailey said.
"Not officially until you survive the first Nerua boardroom," he replied. "Those rooms have eaten stronger people than you."
"Unlikely."
David's eyes warmed. "Confidence remains intact."
"Always," she said.
But beneath the ease of conversation, a quiet awareness stirred — the sense of stepping toward something that had already begun moving before she arrived.
New city phase. New work. New rhythm.
And somewhere in the unfolding hours of Nerua she had just re-entered, a memory lingered unexpectedly vivid:
A dark car idling in dawn light.
A stranger's steady gaze.
A meeting without names.
Hailey lifted her tea again.
Tomorrow she would begin her new life.
She did not yet know it had already intersected with someone waiting inside it.