Here is Chapter 27: Fire and Flour, where Bonitah is called back to where it all began—and must decide whether facing the past means reliving it, or finally reclaiming it.
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Chapter 27: Fire and Flour
The email came on a Tuesday morning, just after the ovens were lit.
It was from a women's conference committee in Harare, Zimbabwe—the city Bonitah hadn't seen since she was eighteen and broken.
> "We are curating a panel on women who have rebuilt after displacement, betrayal, and hardship.
Your story was nominated anonymously.
We would be honored to have you speak.
Travel and accommodation will be arranged."
Bonitah stared at the message.
Her hands, dusted with flour, trembled slightly as she read it again.
Harare.
The place of her beginnings.
The place of her undoing.
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She didn't answer right away.
Instead, she went to the Seed Library.
There, she found Benaiah sitting on the floor, sketching blueprints for a rainwater collection system.
She watched him for a moment—his calm, his steadiness.
He looked up and smiled.
"Mama, why are you staring at me like I'm homework?"
She laughed quietly, then asked, "Would you go back if it's where your storm started?"
Benaiah thought for a moment.
"Is the storm still there?"
Bonitah exhaled slowly. "No. But the echoes are."
He nodded.
"Then go remind the place who you've become."
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A month later, she stepped off the plane in Harare.
The air was hot. Familiar.
She felt like she was walking through a dream—one where every street corner carried a memory. Every face, a maybe.
The conference was hosted in a modest but elegant hall. Women from across Africa gathered—activists, educators, farmers, survivors.
The morning she was scheduled to speak, she barely touched her breakfast.
She wore a long dress made by Chido, with sunflowers embroidered across the hem.
And in her hand, she carried a single loaf of bread, still warm from the Centre