The photograph on the invitation was small, but Dunja immediately recognized the angled balcony. She had drawn it one Sunday while her husband, Faruk, made lunch. The house project for a young couple had supposedly failed the first round. Now it appeared on the poster for his company's exhibition, under someone else's name. Dunja enlarged the picture on her phone until the lettering blurred. The signature was his.
She worked independently, mostly on small renovations. Faruk had offered to show the large design to his colleagues, then brought back only a verbal response that it didn't fit their plans. Dunja believed him. She paid for her software and spent the next two months drawing other people's bathrooms. She didn't mind taking smaller jobs. What troubled her now was that she couldn't find a single point when her husband had told her the whole truth.
She attended the opening without warning. Faruk saw her beside the model and stopped with a glass in his hand. His manager approached, delighted to meet the woman who, according to him, provided "support at home." Dunja explained that she had created the original design and offered dated files. She didn't raise her voice. The manager took them both into an empty office, where a fan made an indecently cheerful sound.
Faruk admitted submitting the drawing under his name, believing he would include Dunja later. Colleagues developed the structural work, the client signed, and he received a promotion. "I didn't want it to look like a favor to my wife," he said. Dunja asked who exactly would have been receiving the favor. For the first time that evening, he had no prepared sentence. His manager suspended publication until authorship could be established.
The correction included Dunja's name and a fee, with the rest of the team's work clearly credited. Faruk lost his promotion. At home, he said that she could have called him first. Dunja replied that he had had three months to make the first call himself. She went to a friend's home with her laptop and several dresses, without dramatically emptying the wardrobe. She postponed discussions about their future until the business arrangements were complete.
At the repeated presentation, she stood beside the colleague who had solved the balcony's structural problems. They discussed what each had changed without competing. Faruk sat in the audience, without a speech and without the right to surprise her with reconciliation. Afterwards, he handed her a folder containing every earlier version. Dunja took it and said thank you. It acknowledged receipt, nothing more, but for the first time he didn't have to guess what her words meant.