Lahat ng Kabanata ng Rebirth; it’s too late, Dear ex: Kabanata 191 - Kabanata 200

Kara’s POV. “One thousand families,” I said. I was still on the third floor. Grace and Kofi were beside me. Emmanuel was standing in front of my mother’s entry. Adaeze was at the archway. I read Amara’s message again. One thousand names. While you were upstairs. I looked at the wall. The river timeline from Lena Jones in 1929. All the way to today. One thousand families who had built something real. One thousand builders the wall now named. “Tell me when it happened,” I said to Amara by phone. “The woman who came in an hour ago,” she said. “Her grandfather built a small electronics repair shop in Queens in 1974. She has been coming to the foundation for two years. She brought the documentation today and I processed the entry.” A pause. “When I put the card in the slot I realized we had crossed one thousand.” Another pause. “I looked at the wall and I counted and I was right.” She paused. “I sat down for a minute before I messaged you.” “Yes,” I said. “That deserves a min

Kara’s POV. “Tell me something,” Xavier said. It was a Friday morning. The specific kind. The kind that had no agenda. The kind that existed simply to be in. The kitchen. The coffee. The succulents in the window. The city outside doing what it always did. The foundation two miles away still running. “I have been thinking about the second life,” I said. “Not the beginning of it. The whole arc of it.” I paused. “I woke up in a hospital room with nothing and I decided to fight and I fought and everything that needed to be built got built.” I paused. “And now I am sitting in a kitchen that has been built for twenty years and the record is acknowledged and Grace is carrying it forward and the family is home.” I paused. “I am thinking about what free actually means.” “Tell me what it means,” he said. “It means the weight is in the right hands,” I said. “Not off me. Not gone. In the right hands.” I paused. “Grace has the weight. Kofi has weight. The attorneys who went through the tra

Kara’s POV. “The chain knows its own name,” Grace had written. “Keep building.” I read the photograph of her line three times. Then I put the phone down. Xavier was watching me. “She is already on her way somewhere,” I said. “She wrote it on the train.” “Of course she did,” he said. I sat at the kitchen table for a long time. Not working. Not planning. Just being in the room. The specific quality of a day that has given everything it has to give and is now simply asking to be received. At some point Xavier made dinner. We ate in the kitchen. The city outside. David and Lena in the window. Both of them so well established now that Grace had started joking they would outlive us. She was probably right. After dinner I opened the notebook. Twenty-three lines and Grace’s new line from the train. Twenty-four lines across five generations and ninety-five years. From my grandmother’s last written words. To Grace on a train at twenty-five. The chain in twenty-four lines.

Kara’s POV. “Keep it going,” Emmanuel Asante had written. “Emmanuel Asante, Ghana, 1998.” Grace held the letter. She read the last line again. Then she looked at Emmanuel. The living Emmanuel. Her grandmother’s brother. Standing in front of her in the second floor of the foundation his cousin’s documentation had helped build. “He knew you would come,” Grace said. Not to me. To Emmanuel. “Yes,” Emmanuel said. “He said: when you find them, give it to the one who carries the work. She will understand.” He paused. “He believed the family would find each other.” He paused. “He was right.” “He was always right,” Grace said. The same words. The same words that had been said about every person in the chain. She was always right. He was always right. Always right before the proof arrived. Because the proof was never the point. The building was the point. The belief was the point. Grace folded the letter. She looked at me. “This goes in the permanent collection,” she said.

Kara’s POV. “She was free,” Grace had said. I was still holding the phone. Still standing in the lobby. Still beside the words. Xavier was watching me. “She said it,” I said. “Yes,” he said. Not the notebook version. Not the written version. Grace standing beside me in the lobby of the building my mother had imagined and calling me to say two words. She was free. The same words I had written in the notebook. The same words that were now in the permanent record. But said out loud. In the right room. By the right person. I looked at Xavier. “Take me home,” I said. We walked. The city. The afternoon becoming evening. The specific quality of a city that has no idea it is walking beside someone who has just finished something enormous and is now learning what it feels like to simply walk. We walked slowly. Not because we needed to. Because the walking was right. At home the kitchen. David and Lena in the window. The last light on them. Xavier made tea. I sat at t