13. Edda
Chapter thirteen
Edda
The article loads on my phone while I am elbow-deep in a Raleigh’s bottom bracket. I read the headline once, then again, then a third time before it stops shifting into anything less catastrophic.
LOCAL SHOP OWNER’S HERITAGE VICTORY BUILT ON FAbrICATED ROMANCE: INSIDE THE THORNHILL ARRANGEMENT.
My name sits in the subheading. My face is pulled from the gala photo, cropped too close, the borrowed dress catching light I do not remember noticing.
The byline belongs to a business journal I have never heard of, but the quotes are unmistakably Diana Cassel’s, polished into something sharp enough to cut.
“Ms. Rowley’s endorsement was purchased, not earned,” a pull quote reads beside my image. “The heritage review approval was a transaction dressed as a love story.”
I set the phone face down on the workbench and go back to the bracket.
Not because I am done reading, but because my hands need something that does not shake.
The Raleigh’s owner is picking it up at noon.
The clock says 9:47. Two hours to figure out how to stand inside a version of my life that has been rewritten for an audience.
The bell above the shop door chimes.
Mrs. Petrova is already there with her grandson’s bike. Same one I tuned last month. She is holding her phone out before she even speaks, screen angled toward me like proof.
“Is this true?”
No greeting. No hesitation. Just that.
“No.”
“The article says you were paid to pretend.”
“It is wrong.” I wipe my hands on the rag at my belt and take the bike from her, rolling it toward the stand. “What’s going on with it? Chain slipping again?”
She does not move. Still staring at her phone, scrolling, her glasses catching fragments of the article. Three paragraphs. Four. Diana Cassel is calling the heritage designation “a bought credential.”
“I filed that designation myself,” I say, and my voice lands flatter than I want it to. “Before any of this. My lawyer handled the paperwork. It had nothing to do with Bennett Thornhill.”
“But you were engaged to him.”
“I was consulting on his project. The engagement was a public arrangement, yes, but the work was real. The fees were real. I can show you the invoices if you need them.”
The words feel increasingly procedural the longer I say them, as if I keep them precise enough, they will hold.
Mrs. Petrova's mouth presses into a line I recognize from seventeen years of watching her navigate neighborhood gossip. She's deciding whether to believe me or the screen in her hand, and I'm not sure which is winning.
"The chain is slipping," she says finally. "And the front brake feels soft."
"I'll have it ready by Thursday."
She leaves without saying goodbye.
The bell chimes behind her. Then there's only the hum of the overhead lights and the ache of silence settling back into the shop. The walls feel closer than they did ten minutes ago.
My phone buzzes on the workbench.
A text from Lina.
I'm coming over. Don't argue.
I don't.
The second customer of the morning is a grad student whose name I've forgotten. Before I've finished writing up her ticket, she glances at me and asks, "Are you that shop owner from the article?"
"Yes."
She shifts her weight. "So... was the engagement fake?"
The question lands harder than it should.
"The consulting contract was real," I say. "The work was documented. The heritage designation was filed independently."
"Right."
She nods slowly, like she's gathering material for a paper I never agreed to be part of.
By eleven-thirty, I'd fielded two more calls asking variations of the same question. I let the fourth go to voicemail and stood behind the register, hands braced on the counter, staring at the someday jar.
I thought about being twenty and sleeping behind this counter to keep the landlord from changing the locks. About everything it had taken to rebuild this place after that. About the word fabricated attached to my name in a publication that strangers were reading right now.
The bell over the door chimed.
Bennett wasn't wearing a suit.
Dark trousers. A button-down with the sleeves rolled to his forearms. The kind of effortless adjustment that should have made him look less intimidating and somehow did the opposite.
He carried a folder that looked a lot like the one I'd slid across his desk three months ago, except thicker.
His expression was unreadable, but there was a familiar set to his shoulders. The look of a man who'd already made a decision and was prepared to defend it.
"I saw the article," he said.
"I noticed."
"I've filed a defamation response. Full disclosure of the consulting contract terms, the independent heritage designation, and a documented timeline proving your work predated the public announcement."
He set the folder on the counter between us without opening it.
"Vera is handling the press statement. Legal has supporting documentation prepared for any follow-up inquiries. The journal's legal team has already been contacted regarding the inaccuracies."
I stared at the folder.
Then at him.
"When did you file it?"
"This morning. Seven fifteen."
My chest tightened.
"When did you see the article?"
"Six forty-two."
"And you decided to file a defamation response, disclose the full contract terms, contact the journal's legal team, and issue a press statement. All before you called me."
His jaw flexes.
I watch the movement, the familiar tell I've been cataloging for weeks, and something cold settles low in my chest.
"I was protecting the project," he says. "And you."
"You were protecting yourself."
"Edda."
"No." I lift a hand, and he stops.
"You made decisions about my name, my reputation, my professional credibility without asking what I wanted. You disclosed contract terms I signed. You issued a statement in my defense. You contacted a legal team about an article that uses my photograph, my quotes, my history."
I take a breath, but it does nothing to cool the heat rising beneath my skin.
"And you did all of it before I finished my first cup of coffee."
"The article was already circulating. Time was a factor."
"Time is always a factor with you. That's not the point."
He goes quiet.
His hand drifts toward his jacket pocket, a familiar movement, then stops halfway. He catches himself.
I catch him catching himself.
We stand there in the shop I fought to rebuild, surrounded by bicycle frames and the scent of chain oil. The silence between us pulls tight.
"You didn't ask," I say. "You didn't call. You didn't text. You made the decision, acted on it, then showed up here with a folder full of paperwork like that somehow counted as a conversation."
"I was trying to get ahead of the damage."
"You were trying to control the outcome."
His jaw tightens, but he doesn't argue.
"That's what you do. That's what you've always done.
And I accepted it when it was about the project.
When it was about the arrangement. When it was about surviving six weeks of public appearances without losing my shop.
But this isn't the arrangement anymore. This is my name.
My reputation. My life. You don't get to manage it for me. "
This time, his hand makes it to his pocket.
I watch his fingers close around the shape of the medal, the St. Christopher that his mother gave him the day before she died.
I've seen him reach for it before.
In the car after the donor dinner.
In the diner booth.
In the back hallway of this shop, while the record spun, I slid his jacket from his shoulders.
"I didn't know how to ask," he says.
"That's not an excuse."
"I know."
The words come out rougher than usual.
Something shifts in him. Not the composure he wears like armor. Something stripped back. Exposed.
"I know it's not an excuse." His gaze stays on mine. "I know that deciding for someone isn't the same as helping them."
"Then why did you do it?"
His grip tightens around the medal.
"Because I couldn't not."
The answer lands between us.
He looks at me, and for a second, I see past the billionaire, the developer, the man who always has a plan. I see fear.
Not fear of the article.
Fear of what it could do to me.
"It named you," he says quietly. "I read it, and all I could think about was you reading it."
My chest tightens.
"I couldn't sit there and wait. I couldn't call and risk hearing you tell me to leave it alone. I had to do something."
"You had to fix it."
"Yes."
No hesitation.
No defense.
Just the truth.
"Because that's what you do. You fix things. You acquire things. You manage outcomes. And when something matters too much, you turn it into a transaction because that's the only language you know how to speak."
He doesn't deny it.
He stands in the middle of my shop, one hand in his pocket, the folder resting on my counter. He just takes the hit.
And somehow, that feels like the most honest thing he's ever given me.
"I'm not a problem you can solve," I say. "I'm not a variable you can account for. I'm not a clause in a contract you can revise without my written consent."
"I know."
"Then act like it."
The bell over the door chimes.
Lina steps inside, carrying a pharmacy bag from the store two blocks over, the same one where I bought the test. Her gaze flicks between us, taking in the tension hanging thick in the room.
"Am I interrupting?" she asks.
"No." I keep my eyes on Bennett. "He was just leaving."
His hand slips from his pocket, empty.
For a second, neither of us moves.
Then he reaches for the folder.
I watch him pick it up, and the weight of everything left unsaid settles beneath my ribs, tender as a bruise.
"I'll send you the documentation," he says. "You can decide what to do with it."
"I will."
His jaw shifts, like he's holding back words he doesn't trust himself to say.
Then he turns and walks toward the door.
He nods.
For a moment, he just looks at me. Not like a developer assessing a problem or a man preparing a statement. Like there's something else sitting behind his eyes, something he wants to say and can't quite force past whatever keeps him locked down.
I watch him swallow it.
Then he walks past Lina and out the door.
The bell chimes once more, and the shop falls quiet.
Lina sets the paper bag on the counter.
Crackers. Ginger ale.
The same things she brought the day I told her about the test.
"How much did you hear?" I ask.
"Enough." She leans against the workbench and folds her arms. "Protection without permission is control. That was good."
"I meant it."
"I know."
Her gaze lingers on my face. I let her look. Lina is the only person who's seen me cry since my father's funeral. She's earned the right.
"How are you feeling?" she asks. "Actually."
"Tired."
I pull the rag from my belt loop and wipe down the counter. It doesn't need cleaning. My hands just need somewhere to put the energy buzzing under my skin.
"Angry. Scared. Pretty much all of it."
"Have you eaten?"
"No."
She opens the paper bag and hands me a sleeve of crackers.
"Eat."
I roll my eyes, but I take them.
The crackers taste like cardboard and salt. Lina keeps watching until I've eaten three.
"The article is bad," I say, setting the sleeve down. "But Cassel miscalculated."
"How so?"
"She framed me as a prop. A paid actor. Someone who could be bought."
My gaze lands on the someday jar on the counter, coins glinting in the afternoon light. I think about every invoice I fought to earn, every dollar I scraped together, every night I slept behind this counter so the landlord couldn't change the locks.
"I'm not a prop. I never was. The consulting fees were earned at a fair market rate.
The heritage designation was filed independently.
The work I did on that project is documented, timestamped, and real.
" I let out a slow breath. "If she wants to call it fabricated, she's going to have to explain how I drafted a restoration plan for a building her own people tried to tear down in 2019. "
Lina's mouth curves, almost a smile.
"So what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to let Bennett's legal team handle what they're handling. I'm going to review the documentation he sends me. Then I'm going to decide how I respond, on my own terms, in my own voice."
"And the baby?"
My hand settles over my stomach before I even think about it. The gesture has become instinctive. Familiar. I feel a faint flutter, not quite movement, not quite stillness.
"The baby isn't a terms issue," I say quietly. "The baby is mine."
The words settle between us.
"Whatever happens with Bennett. Whatever happens with the article. Whatever happens with the shop. The baby is mine."
Lina nods.
She doesn't argue. Doesn't offer advice. She simply stands there among bicycle frames and the scent of chain oil, waiting for me to find my footing.
The clock on the wall reads 12:04.
The Raleigh's owner will be here any minute.
I straighten, reaching for the work order on the counter.
I have work to do.
I pick up the rag and finish wiping down the counter.
The article. Bennett's folder. The word fabricated is attached to my name.
Something shifts inside me. Not fear. Not anger. Something steadier.
Resolve.
Cassel miscalculated the one thing I will never let slide: the suggestion that I was ever someone's prop.
That realization feels like the first solid ground I've found in weeks.
The bell chimes.
The Raleigh's owner walks in, and I set down the rag and pull up her ticket.
"All done," I say. "Chain's tightened, brakes adjusted. She's riding smoothly."
The woman pays in cash. She doesn't ask about the article. Maybe she hasn't seen it. Maybe she has and doesn't care.
Either way, I hand over the receipt and watch her wheel the bike out the door. The familiar scent of rubber, metal, and chain lubricant settles around me. For the first time all day, the shop feels like mine again.
My phone buzzes on the workbench.
A text from Bennett.
The documentation is in your email. Your call.
No pressure. No argument. Just facts.
I don't respond.
At six, I lock up and head upstairs to my apartment. I heat a can of soup and eat it standing at the counter while I work through every page Bennett sent.
The consulting contract.
The invoices.
The heritage designation filing was dated three weeks before our first gala appearance.
A complete timeline showing my involvement long before my name was ever linked to his in public.
By the end, one thing is impossible to ignore.
He documented everything.
Every meeting. Every filing. Every contribution.
Me.
I close the laptop and move to the window.
Outside, the franchises on either side of my shop glow beneath the streetlights. The same street I've walked for eleven years. The same storefront I've fought for, worried over, poured myself into.
Eleven years of showing up.
Eleven years of building something that belongs to me.
Something real.
Something that won't disappear because a man with a newspaper column says it should.
Tomorrow might be a test.
Not of what I've built.
Of whether I finally believe it's strong enough to survive.