9. Edda
Chapter nine
Edda
The Schwinn’s rear derailleur was bent by someone who didn’t know what they were doing, and I was halfway through straightening it when my phone rang.
I didn’t recognize the number. Local area code, nothing saved.
I wiped my hands on the rag tucked into my back pocket and answered. “Rowley Repairs.”
“Ms. Rowley.” The voice was smooth, practiced, the kind that knew exactly how to sound warm while delivering something anything but. “This is Diana Cassel. I hope I’m not interrupting.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
City council. The same woman who had been turning my shop into a backdrop for her campaign.
The same one whose deputy had snapped that photo of Bennett and me on the scaffold.
The same woman Bennett had stared down across the reception hall last night while introducing me to board members as if I was someone worth noticing.
“Councilwoman.” I kept my voice even. “What can I do for you?”
“I’ll be direct with you, Edda. May I call you Edda?”
“You just did.”
A brief pause, then a short laugh, like she hadn’t expected pushback.
“Fair enough. I’ve been following your situation with interest. The heritage review, the preservation work you’ve done.
Your credentials are impressive. The Brennan Building restoration plan you drafted was, frankly, better than anything Thornhill’s team produced internally. ”
I said nothing. Let her fill the silence.
Politicians never call just to compliment you. Compliments were currency. They were always buying something with them, whether you agreed to the price or not.
“I have a proposal,” she continued. “A relocation opportunity for your shop. New unit, better foot traffic, everything already set up for you. The space is on Merchant Street, near the waterfront development. Triple the square footage of your current location.”
I set down the derailleur tool. “And the strings?”
“No strings,” she said, but her voice softened just slightly.
“I know how this sounds coming from me. I’ve watched what Thornhill Development does to small businesses.
I’ve watched him consume entire neighborhoods and call it progress.
Your shop represents something worth protecting, and I’d like to help you do that on your own terms.”
Morning light poured through the front window, catching dust motes drifting between the bicycle frames. My father’s tools still hung in their outlines on the wall behind me. Eleven years of oil stains worked into this floor. Eleven years of customers who knew exactly where to find me.
It was the cleanest offer anyone had made me in six years. And somehow, that was the part that made it feel dangerous.
“I appreciate the call,” I said. “But no.”
Silence stretched down the line. Three seconds. Five.
“You haven’t even heard the full terms.”
“I don’t need to.” I picked up the derailleur tool again, letting its familiar weight settle into my palm.
“This shop isn’t relocatable. Not because of the building.
Because of what it is. My father built something here that matters to people.
Move it to a waterfront unit with triple the square footage, and it stops being the same place.
And I’m not interested in turning it into something else. ”
“Edda.” Her voice cooled, the practiced warmth thinning.
“Bennett Thornhill is using you. Whatever arrangement you think you have with him, whatever he’s promised, he’ll discard you the moment you stop being useful.
I’ve seen it happen. More times than I can count.
You’re not special to him. You’re a variable in his equation. ”
My grip tightened slightly on the tool.
I thought about last night.
Bennett’s coat settled over my shoulders. His voice was low in my ear as they moved through the reception. You handled Hendricks better than I did.
The way his hand had gone still against the leather seat when I told him I’d known about the leak. Not performative stillness. Something else. Something held back.
"Maybe," I said. "But that's my problem, not yours."
I ended the call before she could respond.
The shop fell quiet again, the kind of quiet that always came with its own weight.
Outside, a delivery truck rolled past, the windows rattling in their frames the same way they always had, long before I knew how to tune it out.
I stayed where I was, phone still in hand, the Schwinn waiting on the stand, and something uneasy tightening in my chest.
Cassel's money felt a lot like Bennett's money used to feel.
Used to.
I set the phone down and stared at it as it had turned on me.
Two months ago, Bennett Thornhill had been the enemy.
The billionaire who wanted to tear my building down.
The man in the expensive suit who thought everything had a price tag, including me.
I had walked into his office with grease still on my jacket and told him he was wrong. I had meant every word.
Now I was turning down a clean offer from his political rival because her money felt dangerous, and his didn’t.
When had that changed?
I picked up the derailleur tool and forced myself back into the work, but my hands didn’t quite cooperate. The Schwinn’s chain needed tension adjustment. The rear wheel had a slight wobble I hadn’t noticed earlier. Normal problems. Fixable problems. The kind of problems I understood best.
Not the kind that came with realizing you had started trusting someone without ever choosing to.
The bell over the door chimed at eleven.
Mrs. Petrova from the dry cleaner’s came in, dropping off her grandson’s bike for a tune-up.
At noon, a college kid rolled in with a flat tire he could have fixed himself if he had bothered to watch a single tutorial.
At one, a regular stopped by just to talk about the weather, the city council elections, and whether the waterfront development would push rent higher again.
I smiled, nodded, charged fair prices, and didn’t mention I’d ignored a call from a city council member three hours ago.
At two, I closed for lunch. Not because I was hungry. I just needed quiet, and I couldn’t think with the bell chiming every twenty minutes, pulling me back into someone else’s urgency.
The back room smelled like chain oil and worn rubber. I sat on the stool my father used to claim, the one with the uneven legs that tilted if you shifted wrong, and pulled out my phone. I scrolled through notifications I’d been dodging all morning.
A text from Lina lit the screen.
Dinner tomorrow? I want details.
A voicemail from Marcus sat beneath it.
“Mr. Thornhill wanted me to confirm your schedule is clear on Thursday evening. There’s a heritage committee meeting he’d like you to attend.”
Nothing from Bennett.
That should have meant nothing.
It didn’t.
I stared at the screen until it went dark, then at my reflection in the black glass. The woman looking back at me had dark circles under her eyes and a crease between her brows that hadn’t been there two months ago.
Two months ago, I knew exactly who I was. Edda Rowley. Shop owner. Pragmatist. The kind of woman who didn’t need anything from anyone.
Now I was sitting in my back room, wondering why I had turned down Diana Cassel’s offer. And the answer wasn’t the one I wanted to admit to myself.
It wasn’t a bad deal. That wasn’t the reason.
I had turned it down because accepting it would have felt like a betrayal.
Of what. Of whom.
My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.
“I know you said no. I respect that. But if you change your mind, the offer stands. I meant what I said about protecting what matters. Sometimes the people who claim to be helping us are the ones doing the most damage. Think about it.”
Diana Cassel. Still pushing. Still convinced she knew better.
Edda deleted the message without replying and slid the phone into her pocket, like that could keep the words from sticking.
She went back to work.
The afternoon blurred into the familiar rhythm of the shop, brake adjustments, wheel truing, the steady bite of tools against metal. It was easier that way. Hands busy. Mind quieter.
At five, she flipped the CLOSED sign and lingered in the doorway, looking out at the street.
The two franchise storefronts on either side of her glowed under harsh fluorescent light. A smoothie chain on one side, a phone repair shop on the other. Both new. Both polished. Both were owned by corporations with names that meant nothing to this street.
Her shop had been here for thirty-seven years.
Her father had opened it the year she was born. She could still see him in flashes like they were happening again. He crouched beside a small bike that was too big for her then, one steady hand on her shoulder as she wobbled forward, insisting she keep her eyes up. Not the ground. Always forward.
“You’ll feel it when it clicks,” he had said. Patient. Certain. Like balance was something you could teach if you stayed long enough.
And he had stayed.
He’d gambled away our home’s equity, too, then left me sleeping behind this counter at twenty, fighting to keep the locks from being changed.
People were complicated. Even the ones you loved. Especially the ones you loved.
I locked up and climbed the narrow stairs to my apartment. Small, barely six hundred square feet, but mine. I’d painted the walls myself, hung the curtains, built the bookshelf in the corner from scrap wood I’d pulled from behind the hardware store.
The someday jar sat on the kitchen counter, half full of coins and crumpled bills. Quarters from tips. Dollars from good weeks. A single twenty from a customer who’d overpaid and refused the change.
I dropped two quarters into it from today’s register and watched them settle.
Someday.
I’d started the jar at twenty-three, a year after I finally caught up on the back rent my father had left behind. I told myself it was for the future. For expansion. For the day, I could buy the unit next door and turn this place into something bigger than survival.
Six years later, the unit beside mine was still empty, the jar still half full, and I was still here.
The shop was safe now. Bennett’s lawyers had handled the heritage designation independently, just like I’d insisted. The trust was irrevocable. The back taxes were gone, covered through consulting fees I’d earned myself. Work I actually did.
I didn’t owe him anything.
So why did it still feel like I did?
I made dinner without really deciding to. Pasta, something simple from the cabinet. A glass of water because wine was too expensive for a night alone, and I didn’t want the company it brought anyway.
I ate standing at the counter, eyes drifting to the window. Outside, the city lights blinked on one by one, soft and indifferent, as the last of the daylight slipped behind the buildings.
Bennett was somewhere out there. In his penthouse, maybe.
Or still at his office, buried in contracts and decisions that shaped thousands of lives.
Pouring himself a drink from the bar cart I had noticed in the corner of his living room, the one with crystal decanters that probably cost more than my monthly rent.
The image stuck longer than it should have.
I wondered if he was thinking about me.
Then I hated that I was the kind of person who would even ask herself that.
My phone buzzed again. Same number.
Site visit on Thursday confirmed. The Heritage committee will be present. I’ll pick you up at 5.
Bennett. Short. Precise. No softness around the edges, no wasted words. Not even a question, just a decision already made on my behalf.
Two months ago, that would have made me furious.
Now it just made something quieter settle in my chest, something I did not want to name.
Now it just made me tired.
“I’ll meet you there,” I typed back.
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Came back again.
“The committee chair has questions about the foundation work you identified. It will be easier if we arrive together.”
I stared at the message.
The committee chair has questions. Easier if we arrive together. All perfectly reasonable. All perfectly professional.
Except I could hear his voice in it anyway. The slight pause before is easier. The way he would look at me when I got in the car, like he was still trying to place something he could not quite name yet, like I was already a variable he had not accounted for.
I typed: “Fine.”
No response. I hadn’t expected one.
I finished my pasta, washed the bowl, and dried my hands on the towel hanging from the oven door.
The apartment stayed quiet, the kind of quiet that settled in layers.
The building was the same. Even the street outside had gone still in that in-between stretch after the shops closed and before the bars came alive.
I stood at the window and looked down at the shop below.
My father’s sign hung there, paint faded but still readable, his brushwork stubborn against time. The window display changed every month, and right now it held a restored 1970s Peugeot I had spent three weeks bringing back from near collapse.
Diana Cassel wanted to move me to Merchant Street. Triple the square footage. Better foot traffic. All setup costs covered.
Objectively, it was a better deal than what I had here.
But accepting it would mean admitting something I had been circling for days without naming. That Bennett’s money had stopped feeling like a threat somewhere in the last two weeks.
That I was protecting something that had nothing to do with heritage designations, consulting contracts, or the politics of urban development.
Something that scared me more than losing the shop ever had.
I turned away from the window and got ready for bed. Tomorrow I’ll text Lina back. Confirm the Thursday site visit. Slide back into the version of myself that didn’t lean on anyone for anything.
But tonight, in the dark, with the city’s low hum pressing through the walls, the someday jar on my counter catching faint light, and the memory of Bennett’s coat still lingering like a trace of heat on my skin, I stopped avoiding what I’d been circling all day.
This wasn’t just trust anymore. It was a choice.
I was choosing him over Diana Cassel’s polished offer, over the comfort of distance, over every rule I’d built around keeping people from getting too close since I was twenty.
And that realization landed hard enough to make everything inside me go still.
I’d made it anyway, without even realizing I was making it, and that was the most dangerous part.
I closed my eyes and waited for sleep that didn’t come easily. By morning, I would go back to being Edda Rowley, the woman who fixed things and expected people to keep up or get out of her way.
But something had shifted. Something I couldn’t undo, no matter how hard I tried to pretend I hadn’t felt it.
And I still didn’t know what it was going to cost me.