Chapter 16 #2
"On paper, your store is non-compliant and an unsafe structure, which gives them leverage to trigger insurance denial, force emergency remediation at your cost, or push a distressed sale through county pressure."
I hear Callum go very still beside me. I look at him and watch the instant he understands that the fire was never the point. It was the distraction.
Shane was supposed to come in behind it, pull the originals, and leave the altered versions in their place before anyone thought to verify. The arson and the paperwork swap were one operation, running on the same night, and the only reason it didn't work is that Shane was arrested.
"The entry code," Callum says. His voice is even. "The after-hours entry last night."
"Logged and timestamped. It's one of the direct links tying Stein's team to the harassment campaign. Not just the arson." She looks at me again. "Marvin Stein was taken into custody this morning."
I stand with that for a second, then another thought catches up hard enough to stop everything else. Shane was arrested when I got out of the back room last night. If he was already in custody, then he couldn’t have been the one who came back into the store after-hours.
I look at Pham. "So who actually used the code?"
"That," she says, "is the part of the case that’s still under investigation."
I feel Callum go still beside me again. Thirty days of city inspectors and acquisition offers, Maureen Pike, a cable tie behind a panel housing, the gala, a Star column.
It all narrows to a timestamp on an access log and an attempt to eliminate the documents that failed because my extinguisher was closer than they expected.
Pham steps back into the front room to take a call while the officer moves through the back again, quieter this time. Callum checks something on his phone. I take the folders and slip them into my messenger bag. I’m getting these home and into the safe as soon as possible.
By the time I finally pull my phone out, it’s 9:45.
I call Cordelia. She arrives at ten with a paper bag that smells like the good bakery two blocks over, her phone already in her hand, podcast queued.
"Okay," she says, setting the bag on the counter and showing me the screen. So You Met a Guy Who Grows Beets. "You have two options. We can listen to this, or I can badger you with questions about how you're doing. Your call."
I look at the screen. "Is that a real podcast?"
"Obviously it's a real podcast, there are forty-seven episodes."
"How are there forty-seven episodes about beet farming, and why do you have it queued?"
"I have three episodes queued. You know I’m not a completionist." She pulls a croissant out of the bag and hands it to me. "Do you want to talk or not."
"Did you meet a beet farmer?"
She points at me. "That was not one of the two options I offered."
"Cordelia."
"His name is Patrick. He has very nice hands and he grows rutabagas, which tragically don't have a dedicated podcast. Anyway, we went to a farm-to-table dinner and he knew the chef. I ate things that quite honestly have changed my sex life."
"Wait. Do you mean—"
"No, I did not have sex with a rutabaga. You dirty girl." She takes a bite of her croissant like that settles it. "But whatever Patrick does in his day-to-day life that translates into what he does in bed, I would like to subscribe. Permanently."
She brushes her hands together. "But we’re not talking about that right now. We’re talking about you. That’s why I’m here."
"You’re here because I called you."
"That and also because Patrick texted me this morning and I needed somewhere to be that wasn't my apartment where I'd just sit and read it forty times." She pulls a second croissant out of the bag for herself and surveys the store. "Where do you want to start."
"Front room’s basically ready," I say, glancing over the displays. "But everything that was in the back is gone. I need to figure out what inventory I actually had and start reordering."
Cordelia nods, already shifting a stack into alignment. "Okay."
"And I have to call insurance," I add, because that part feels like swallowing gravel.
She points at me with her croissant. "Assign me a job."
"Inventory or insurance," I say.
"Insurance," she says immediately. "I’m in the mood to be professionally irritating."
She's quiet for a moment, which with Cordelia means she's deciding how to say the next thing rather than whether to say it. "How are you actually."
I think about the last twenty-four hours, the fire, Shane, the hospital, the shower, and the pages I wrote before sunrise that I'll never use.
"I'm mad," I say. "I thought Shane was my friend."
"He was paying attention," Cordelia says. "Just to different things than you thought."
For three years Shane had been part of the bookstore's routine. Deliveries. Coffee runs. Closing shifts. The sort of dependable presence you stop noticing because you assume it'll still be there tomorrow.
Somewhere between the fire and the hospital, I'd stopped expecting Shane to be the person who showed up when things fell apart.
"That's not comforting."
She gives me the look that means she knows about the other thing and is waiting for me to get there on my own, which is one of the more irritating qualities of a life-long friendship with someone who knows exactly how to read me.
"What else?"
"Callum told me he loves me."
"Did you say it back?"
"Not in words."
She considers this. "But in the available alternative methods. Is his love language sex?"
"Cordelia."
"I'm just establishing the data set." She shifts a book on a shelf that doesn't need arranging. "Do you love him?"
I think about the note still sitting on my nightstand and my name on the outside. "Yes," I say, and it comes out steadier than I expect.
Cordelia nods like I've confirmed something she already put in writing weeks ago and files it away. "Okay," she says. "Then we're fine." She pauses. "Patrick actually grows three varieties of rutabagas. There's an episode about beet types."
"How long is the episode?"
"Forty-one minutes committed to a root vegetable." She glances at me. "Now imagine that level of attention applied to rutabagas."
She takes another bite of her croissant, entirely unbothered. "Let’s just say it’s likely why Patrick’s very thorough."
I laugh for the first time today, my throat protesting.
By mid-afternoon the store has the quality of earned quiet that I didn't know I'd been missing.
Cordelia made quick work of the insurance call and is now stretched out on the couch like she’s earned a medal for it. Pancake is tucked into her usual spot on the rug beside her as if the room were designed around that decision.
Callum has been on his phone most of the morning, moving between the back room and the sidewalk, and the restoration crew he called in is already methodically clearing what’s left of the shelving and books.
When I step into the back around four, they’ve settled into a rhythm that makes the damage feel manageable, at least for now.
"The back room's going to be a few days," he says.
"I know."
"The inventory is a loss. The shelving is warped and will need to be replaced along with the sidewalls."
"I see." I look at him. "Thank you for the crew."
He doesn’t say you’re welcome, which is one of the things I’ve learned about him.
Gratitude makes him uncomfortable in a way that isn’t about ego but about something older.
He nods, and we stand there with the harbor smell drifting in and the low sound of Cordelia talking to Pancake about root vegetables like this is just another day.
"You still haven’t told me what you did when you left in the middle of the night."
"You say that like I disappeared to join a motorcycle gang," he says.
I fold my arms tighter across my chest before I realize I’m doing it.
He’s quiet for a moment. "There are parts of Pham’s case that are still developing, and I can’t tell you right now."
"Is it about me?"
"It’s about the investigation."
"Those aren’t mutually exclusive."
He looks at me, and what I see on his face isn’t evasion. It’s the specific restraint of someone who’s holding something because he thinks he’s protecting me and hasn’t finished deciding if he’s right. I’ve seen it before. I know what it costs him, and I know what it costs me.
"Pham has it," he says finally. "The case is hers now."
"Good," I say. "And when you finally decide I'm emotionally stable enough for information, let me know."
"That is not what's happening," Callum says immediately.
"Feels a little like what's happening."
"I promise I will."
Cordelia pushes herself up from the couch, stretching like she’s done something far more strenuous than arguing with an insurance adjuster. "So," she says, brushing crumbs off her hands, "you’re opening on Monday."
"That’s the plan."
"You’re reopening," Callum says.
"That’s generally how stores work," I tell him.
His mouth shifts like he’s trying not to smile. "You almost burned down and you’re still sarcastic. That’s probably a good sign."
I look around the front room The shelves are set and the displays are clean. Pancake is asleep like none of this ever happened and it feels possible.
"And Jonah’s coming on Tuesday?" she adds, stacking normalcy in manageable pieces. "Good timing."
Callum doesn’t say anything. He’s watching me the way he does when he’s measuring something he hasn’t decided how to handle yet.
I nod as if that settles it and say, "Okay," because it feels like the kind of word you use when things are about to get better. It also feels like the kind you say when you’re about to find out how wrong that is.