Cheryl, 47.

Six a.m. The kitchen is already warm because the bread proofer ran overnight. She ties her apron, ties her hair back, and reads the news on her phone for exactly two minutes before she puts the phone face down on the counter.

Her largest contract this year is with Indigenous Services Canada, catering a series of community consultations. That contract is federal. As of this morning, she does not know whether it is paused, cancelled, transferred, or simply forgotten.

Her Métis Nation of Alberta citizenship card is in her wallet. It is, in her hand, exactly the same card it was yesterday. Whether the rights it represents — federally administered, treaty-adjacent, in some cases constitutional — survive intact in a separated Alberta is a question that, as of this morning, has no answer.

Her cousin Roland calls from Sturgeon Lake. The Nation has filed an emergency injunction in the Federal Court. He says the lawyers are working through the night. He says, twice, "don't make any big decisions today."

At nine, the morning's first delivery: thirty boxed lunches for a meeting downtown. She loads the van. The van runs on diesel. Diesel is up fourteen cents overnight. She does not adjust her invoice. She'll eat the difference this week.

At eleven, a community meeting at the Métis Nation regional office. Forty people, folding chairs, the smell of coffee in the lobby. A lawyer from Edmonton stands at the front and says, plainly, "I want to be honest with you. We don't have answers. We have questions and we are working on them." The room is, somehow, grateful for the honesty.

After the meeting an elder she has known since childhood takes her hand and says nothing for a long time. Then he says: "We have been here before. We will figure it out. We always do." She does not entirely believe him. She is glad he said it anyway.

Back in the kitchen at three. She starts the dough for tomorrow's bannock. Her hands know what to do without her having to think about it. This is, she realizes, the most useful sentence she has thought all day.