It was time.
Maybe for the first time, really. She sat on the edge of her bed, staring ahead blankly. Then slowly, her mind drifted to something she hadn’t thought about in months. Her software.
That thing she once believed in. That thing she told Adair about on their third date, eyes glowing, full of ideas and plans.
“I want to build my own analytical software,” she had said. “It’s early, but I’ve been sketching out designs, mapping out algorithms. I think I could really make it work.”
He’d said, “That’s dope as fuck.” And she’d believed he meant it.
But the truth was, she let herself get buried. In him. In marriage. In motherhood. In grief.
Sabine leaned back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, eyes still wet but no longer spilling.
“I think I want to remember who I was,” she whispered into the dark. Then after a beat: “And I think I want to meet who I still could be.”
THE NEXT MORNING
Sabine sat at her desk, staring at the cluster of dashboards open on her monitor. The soft hum of the office and faint click-clacks of nearby keystrokes wrapped around her like a thin layer of noise—just enough to keep her tethered to the present. Her nails tapped against a notepad, absentmindedly. She’d been analyzing the monthly operations report, double-checking KPIs for one of their healthcare clients, but her mind kept drifting back to something else. Something older.
Hers.
Her software.
The idea had started years ago as a scribbled mess in a spiral-bound notebook. An analytical platform that could automate decision models for small-to-mid-sized companies. Not just dashboards and projections—but predictive insights. Something lean, accessible, and Black-woman-built. She used to talk to Adair about it all the time, back when he’d sit on the couch at night reading depositions while she researched open-source modeling tools on her laptop.
He’d always said, “that’s dope as fuck,” in that easy way of his. And then he’d return to work. Sabine sighed and leaned back in her chair. Her eyes swept outside her office across the workspace. Everyone looked focused, consumed by their screens and spreadsheets. No one was looking at her. She could have cried, and no one would’ve noticed. Or maybe they would’ve. Maybe she just didn’t care.
“You good?” a voice asked Sabine looked back up to see Malik leaning on the open-door frame, holding a coffee cup and watching her like he already knew the answer. He workedanalytics a few offices down and had a way of showing up whenever she needed someone to interrupt her spirals.
“I’m fine,” she lied.
Malik raised an eyebrow. “You sure? You look like you were about to fight your screen.”
She cracked the barest smile. “Just thinking.”
“You do that a lot.”
“Old habit.”
He leaned in a little, dropping his voice. “Thinking about quitting?”
“No,” she said quickly. “Thinking about building something.”
That caught his attention.
Sabine gestured toward her notepad. “I had this idea back in school. A real-time decision software built around predictive analysis and weighted scenario models. Something that could give small businesses smart, tailored recommendations without needing a full analytics team.”
“Wait…youbuilt that?”
“Built the concept. Never finished the framework.” Her voice lowered. “It was supposed to be my thing. My something. But life…” she trailed off.
Malik was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded. “That’s actually fire, Sabine.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. You talking scalable SaaS with optimization logic and forecasting? That could be huge. Especially for Black-owned orgs that can’t afford consultants every quarter.”
Sabine blinked. The words caught in her chest. It had beenyearssince someone looked her in the face and said her dream could be real.