21. Edda
Chapter twenty-one
Edda
The journal sits on my counter, open to page forty-seven, Diana Cassel’s name embedded in the third paragraph like something sharp. I keep pressing my thumb against it even though it hurts every time.
I’ve already read the article twice before I called Lina.
Now it’s a third pass while the coffee I made goes cold beside the register, and Mrs. Petrova’s grandson’s repaired Schwinn waits by the door for pickup.
Nothing shifts. The same words, rearranged into something that looks like certainty.
Paid actor. Fabricated romance. PR scheme.
My name, my shop, my work, all flattened into someone else’s version of profit and performance.
The phone buzzes again.
Bennett.
I don’t answer. I watch it ring out. Silence settles. Then it starts again.
Three calls in twelve minutes.
The old Bennett would already be here. Would have walked through my door with a plan, a team, a solution already in motion before I even had a chance to decide I needed one.
The Bennett from two weeks ago wouldn’t have asked.
He would have fixed it because fixing things is what he does when he wants control of the outcome.
This Bennett keeps calling.
Not coming.
Just waiting on the other end like he’s trying to decide whether I’m something he can still step into.
I’m not sure what to do with that.
The article pulls Cassel’s quotes into sharp relief. She calls the heritage review approval a transaction dressed up as a love story. She frames my consulting work as cover for a manufactured endorsement. She says Bennett Thornhill bought himself a spokesperson and called it romance.
She's wrong about the romance. She's wrong about what happened between us in that hotel suite, in the back hallway of this shop, in his Catskills kitchen, where he held a ladder and didn't offer, kept his opinions to himself.
She's wrong about the way he said "you, "You built it back," like it was a fact, something he'd carry forever, never forget.
But she's not wrong that they're right about some things.
There was a contract. She's not wrong that money
Money changed hands. She's not wrong that the
The arrangement was designed to serve his interests, which started because it benefited him.
The door opens.
Not Bennett.
Lina walks in carrying a paper bag and wearing the expression of someone who drove across town during fought rush -hour traffic because she saw spotted my name in a business journal and immediately assumed the worst.
"I brought bagels," she says. "And the number of a lawyer who handles defamation cases. And also these."
She sets drops three different newspapers on my onto the counter, all folded open to the same story.
"It's spreading."
"I noticed."
"Have you eaten anything today?"
"I had crackers at six."
“That was four hours ago, and you’re growing a human.” She pushes the bag toward me again. “Eat. Then we’re going to figure out what you want to do about this.”
What I want. Not what Bennett will do. Not what his team will manage before lunch. What I actually want.
I pull a bagel from the bag and take a bite. It turns into nothing halfway through. The nausea from this morning has settled into something flatter now, a low, steady hum in my stomach that might be pregnancy or might be the particular satisfaction of watching my reputation get dismantled in print.
“Have you talked to him?” Lina asks.
“He called. I didn’t answer.”
“Why not?”
Because I don’t know what I want him to say.
Because the last time we talked, he was sitting in my shop watching me work, and for three hours, he didn’t try to fix a single thing.
No solutions. No quiet takeover. Just… presence.
And somehow that felt more destabilizing than the previous six weeks combined.
Because I’m still not sure which version of him is real. The one who treats problems like contracts to be renegotiated, or the one who sits in silence like he’s trying to learn the shape of my life before he touches it.
“Because I needed to think first,” I say instead.
Lina drags a stool from behind the counter and sits across from me. “And what are you thinking?”
“That Cassel miscalculated.”
“How so?”
I set the bagel down and turn the journal toward her, tapping the paragraph where my consulting fees are listed like evidence of corruption.
“She thinks the money proves I was bought. But I earned it. I did real work. I filed that heritage designation independently, with my own lawyer, before anyone even knew my name would end up attached to his project.”
Lina scans the page, then looks back up at me. “So you have documentation.”
“I have documentation proving I wasn’t a prop.” My fingers hover over the page, then still. “The question is what I do with it.”
And underneath that, unspoken, is the part I don’t say out loud.
What I do when Bennett Thornhill finds out someone has decided I belong in his narrative without asking either of us first.
My phone buzzes again. Not a call. A text.
I'm not going to fix this without asking what you want. But I have something you might need. Can I come to the shop?
I stare at it for a long moment.
This is different. Not a command dressed up as a choice. Not an assumption that I will fall in line. He is actually asking.
It still feels like an intrusion, just packaged more carefully.
"What does it say?" Lina asks.
"He wants to come over," I say. "Says he has something I might need."
"Do you want him to?"
The honest answer doesn't fit cleanly anywhere.
I want distance so I can think without his presence complicating everything.
I want him here anyway, because Cassel's article is already spreading, and every hour without a response makes it harder to control.
I want clarity. I want silence. I want to throw my phone across the room.
"I don't know," I say. "But I need to see what he has."
I type back.
One hour. No solutions. Just information.
His reply comes almost immediately.
Understood.
Lina watches me set the phone down as it might still move on its own.
"So you're letting him come."
"I'm letting him bring whatever this is," I say. "That's not the same as letting him fix anything."
She tilts her head slightly. "Is there a difference?"
There should be. I just need it to hold.
The hour crawls.
I eat the bagel because Lina is watching. I skim Mrs. Petrova’s grandson’s repair notes because staring at the articles won’t change what they say. Then I make a list of every document I have that proves my consulting work was legitimate.
The list grows longer than expected. Invoices. Emails. Heritage filing paperwork. The independent appraisal I commissioned before I ever signed Bennett’s contract.
I built my case the same way I build everything. Alone. Carefully. Without expecting help that isn’t already guaranteed.
At exactly one hour, the door opens.
Bennett stands in the doorway holding a folder. No suit today. Dark trousers, gray sweater, sleeves pushed to his forearms. He looks like he hasn’t slept, which matches the three calls and the near-immediate replies from earlier.
He looks like someone who has been preparing for this conversation the way he prepares for board meetings.
But he doesn’t come in right away. He just stands there, waiting.
“You can come in,” I say.
He steps inside and sets the folder on my counter beside the newspapers Lina brought. “Full disclosure of the arrangement’s terms. Every invoice you generated, every email I sent, and the heritage filing your lawyer submitted before the press announcement. Henderson pulled it together overnight.”
“Henderson?”
“My legal team.” A beat. “They’re drafting a defamation response, but I told them not to file anything until you’ve reviewed it.”
I open the folder.
It’s thorough. Too thorough. Everything I would have asked for, and several things I wouldn’t have thought to request. A timeline showing my consulting work began three weeks before his first public appearance.
A copy of the heritage designation filed with the city, stamped and dated, proving it went through my lawyer, separate from his team entirely.
“This is everything,” I say.
“It’s everything that proves you were never a prop.” His voice stays steady, but there’s something restrained underneath it, like he’s holding pressure behind his ribs. “Cassel’s article relies on the assumption that your involvement was manufactured. This shows it wasn’t.”
“And if I use it?”
“Then the narrative she’s building falls apart. The business journal will have to retract, or risk a defamation claim. The other outlets will follow.”
I flip through the pages, scanning dates, figures, and the language. My work. My invoices. My heritage filing. All of it is independent. All of it is legitimate. All of it proves exactly what I’ve been trying to say since the day I walked into his office with a folder of my own.
“What does this cost you?” I ask.
He’s quiet for a beat. “It costs me the story I’ve been selling the city council for eight months. The community goodwill angle. The idea that this project was always about preservation and partnership. If this goes public, everyone will see it started as a PR strategy.”
“So you lose the spin.”
“I lose the spin.” No hesitation. No flinch. “But you keep your reputation. And the truth matters more than my talking points.”
I look up from the folder.
He’s still. Hands resting at his sides, not reaching for the pocket where that medal usually sits. Watching me the way he did in the Catskills when I fixed that gutter, like I’m doing something he doesn’t know how to interrupt, but can’t look away from either.
"You’re not trying to manage this for me," I say.
"I’m trying to give you what you need to manage it yourself."
"That’s different."
"I’m learning."
Lina coughs quietly. I’d almost forgotten she was there, perched on the stool behind the register, watching this unfold like someone observing a repair she doesn’t have the tools to finish.