The microphone squeals when Thabo takes it, and every head in the ballroom turns toward my husband. I am standing near the edge of the stage at the Sarova Stanley's grand ballroom in Nairobi, wearing a dress I saved for three months to buy, holding a glass of champagne for an event I planned — my event, my client, my name on every folded program on every table. Nneka Fashola Events. Seven years of work. I built it from a borrowed laptop and a one-room office in Westlands, and tonight was supposed to prove it. Thabo's voice fills the room. Smooth, practiced, the voice I fell in love with. "I need to be honest with you all," he says. "About my wife. About what's really been happening at her company." I don't move. "Nneka has been struggling. Emotionally. For some time now." He pauses to let that land. "She's been mismanaging the business for years, and tonight — I think we've all seen it. I'm asking you, as her husband, to be patient with her." The champagne glass is in my hand and I am looking at his face and I am thinking, very clearly: he rehearsed this. I think of something I saw twenty minutes ago. Rehema Odhiambo — a wealthy Nairobi socialite whose face appears at every important party, who always has a soft word and a softer smile — was leaning close to Thabo near the stage door, whispering. He nodded. I thought nothing of it then. I walk onto the stage. "Give me the microphone," I say. He smiles. That smile. The one that says he has already won and wants me to see it. "Nneka—" "Give it to me." He holds it just out of reach and the crowd watches. That is all he needs. My voice too sharp, my hands reaching, my face giving everything away. He lets me stand there and fall apart in front of two hundred people. I stop. I breathe. I look at the crowd — clients, competitors, people who used to call me when they needed the best event planner in Nairobi — and I understand that nothing I say now will undo what he has already put in their heads. So I walk off the stage. Down the side steps, through the heavy ballroom doors, out into the night air. No bag. No keys. No plan. My hands are shaking so hard I press them flat against my thighs, and I stand alone outside the hotel doors while the music starts again inside.