The dinner table was a long, glittering thing — glass polished to gleam, candles flickering like false promises.
Serene sat at one end. Roman at the other.
Between them: laughter that didn't belong to her, voices that cut without raising volume.
Gloria sat beside Roman.
She hadn't stopped smiling since she arrived.
---
"You haven't changed at all," Gloria said, placing her hand lightly on Roman's forearm. "Still so perfectly stiff. Still so cruel."
Roman chuckled, low and deep. "You used to like that about me."
The grandparents laughed — genuinely.
Roman's mother sipped her wine. "Now this is what a dinner should feel like. Real family. Familiarity. Not… awkward silences and sulking little birds."
Her gaze cut to Serene without hiding it.
Serene didn't flinch.
She smiled — politely, faintly — and looked down at her plate.
---
Gloria leaned closer to Roman, brushing something invisible from his shoulder.
"Do you still play piano?" she asked, voice soft. "You used to play for me when I couldn't sleep."
Roman met her eyes. "You still have trouble sleeping?"
"Only when I'm alone."
The room shimmered with suggestion.
Roman's father clapped his hands once. "Now that sounds like a woman who knows what she wants. Not like some little orphan trying to play house."
---
Serene felt it all — the stares, the smirks, the barbs.
But she pretended not to.
She reached for her glass, calm and slow.
This might be it, she thought.
Maybe Gloria had come to reclaim what was hers.
Maybe she'd take Roman.
Maybe she'd take Lelo.
Maybe Serene could disappear.
She let herself imagine it — walking out the front door, papers signed, silence behind her.
The fantasy felt too bright to touch.
---
Lelo hadn't said a word all night.
She sat beside Serene like a stone doll, her fingers twitching under the tablecloth.
No one noticed the way she kept glancing at Gloria.
No one but Serene.
And Roman.
---
Dessert came and went.
Gloria laughed a little too loud.
Roman didn't stop her.
He even let her feed him a strawberry — slowly, smugly — while his parents beamed.
"Look at them," Roman's mother whispered across the table. "Back where they belong. And this… Ugandan project can finally end."
Serene didn't speak.
She simply nodded.
---
When Roman walked her to her room later that night, she whispered a quiet, "Thank you. For everything."
Roman stopped outside her door.
He tilted his head.
"Thank you… for what?"
"For… letting me go," she said, her voice unsure. "It's okay. I understand. You don't have to explain."
Roman didn't smile.
He touched her cheek once, gently.
And said,
> "You always thank me too early."
Then he walked away.
---