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Laughter bubbled up my throat. “Well, are you dating him?”

She huffed a little and swore under her breath, and I figured that was the end of that conversation.

“What about you, Nana?” Vitoria said, her accent still clinging to each word, made even more apparent in her nickname for me. “What’s going on? It’s late.”

“It’s my visa, it’s been revoked.”

She was silent for a long moment. “But you’ve been there foryears, I don’t get it.”

I sighed and rubbed my forehead in frustration. “I don’t get it either; apparently there was an issue at the embassy. I don’t know, honestly.”

“Did you only find out now?”

“Yeah, I was checking my mails and I saw the notice from Immigration,” I explained. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Maybe it’s a scam?” she offered hopefully, but I shook my head even though she couldn’t see me.

“It’s all legit,” I said gruffly, as much as I wished it was a scam. “They’re saying it’s a processing error and I need to go back to Brazil and start all over again.”

The thought alone made me want to rip my hair out. Getting to America had been its own beast, but the visa application…

It was something I’d hoped never to experience again.

“How much time do you have?” Vitoria asked, and in the background I heard the telltale click-clack of her keyboard.

“Days,” I told her. “Fuck, what am I going to tell Reid?”

“She’ll understand,” she said immediately. “Surely you could work remotely until this has all been sorted?”

I huffed an emotionless laugh in answer. “Reid and I work too closely for me to work remotely,” I explained. “With the variabilities of time zones, WiFi, meetings, and God knows what else, it’d never work.”

“But you can’t just quit,” she insisted, sounding almost as frustrated as I was. “You love your job.”

I did.

I loved it so much that I’d left my home and followed Reid back to America for it. And for six years, I’d spent almost every second working my ass off to get to where I was, to make sure my family back home was provided for and cared for.

And now, it would all be undone thanks to a processing error.

“There has to be something we can do, Nana,” she said. “I mean, they can’t just pull out a processing error after six years.”

“Technically, they can do whatever the hell they want.”

The next day was hell.

I walked into the office, my letter of resignation burning a hole in my purse, psyching myself up to tell Reid about my imminent deportation.

“There you are, thank God you’re early!” Clara shoved a stack of papers under my nose, her eyes bright with hysteria and her hair already mussed.

“What is this?” I asked, taking the stack from her and setting it on my desk. I shuffled through the first few pages while Clara spoke, her voice rising in pitch every other word.

“Rae is off sick today and these were supposed to be signed off last night but she had to rush to the hospital so I told her I’d get them signed but you were swamped yesterday and I didn’t wanna-”

“Woah, back up a little and take a breath,” I told her, flattening a hand atop the stack. She did as I instructed, even if her breath shuddered through her body. “Okay, these are the copyright contracts for the new RPG, right?”

Clara nodded frantically, and I half expected her to cry.

“That’s fine,” I said quietly, sitting down and grabbing a pen. “We have time to get them all signed.”