21. Edda #2
"I should go," she says. "Call me when you decide what you want to do."
She squeezes my shoulder on her way out. The door shuts behind her, and suddenly it’s just me and Bennett and a folder full of documentation, plus the pressure of a decision I didn’t ask for but still own.
"Cassel miscalculated," I say.
"How so?"
"She assumed I’d let you handle it. That I’d be too proud to fight back, or too overwhelmed to organize a response. Or too attached to my reputation to go public with how this started."
I close the folder and slide it toward him. "She was wrong on all counts."
"What are you going to do?"
I pull out my phone, scrolling to the business journal’s tip line, the one that lit this fire in the first place.
"I’m going to give them a statement. On the record. With documentation attached."
"You don’t need me for that."
"No," I say. I hold his gaze. "But I want you to hear it anyway."
He doesn’t interrupt. Just waits.
I draft it in my head first, the way I draft repair estimates. Clean. Measured. No wasted motion. Then I speak it out loud, watching his face as I do.
"The engagement was part of a public arrangement.
The consulting work was real. The heritage designation was filed independently, through my own attorney, before my name was ever attached to Bennett Thornhill publicly.
I earned every dollar at an auditable market rate for legitimate preservation consulting.
I am not a prop. I never was. And the business journal should verify its claims before publishing accusations about a woman who has spent eleven years building a business with her own two hands. "
Bennett’s expression stays controlled, but something in him shifts. Not visible so much as released, like tension, he didn’t realize he was holding, and finally finds somewhere to go.
"That’s not defensive," he says quietly. "That’s offensive."
"I learned from watching you."
I pull up the tip line and paste the statement into the form field.
"Cassel wanted to make me the story. Fine. I'll be the story. But I'll be the version of the story I choose, not the version she invented."
I hit send before I can second-guess myself.
The confirmation appears on the screen.
Statement received. A representative will contact you within twenty-four hours.
Twenty-four hours. By this time tomorrow, the narrative will shift. The documentation will be public. Cassel's fourth move will have cost her more than she gained.
And I will have done it myself, with the information Bennett provided, but didn't use to steer me.
"Thank you," I say. "For the folder. For asking before you came over. For not trying to fix it."
"I wanted to fix it," he says, voice rougher than before. "I was in my office at six this morning drafting a response with my name on it, before I realized that wasn't what you needed."
The admission lands more heavily than it should.
"What changed your mind?"
"You told me I am not very good at having answers." A pause. "I'm trying to get better at asking questions instead."
I look at him then.
Standing in my shop, surrounded by bicycle frames and the smell of chain oil and eleven years of my father's memory, he feels out of place and yet too present to ignore.
Not the man who sent a thirty-day notice to vacate.
Not the man who treated my pregnancy like a clause in a contract.
Something in between those versions, still forming, still unstable enough that I do not trust it to stay the same.
"You are different," I say.
"I'm trying to be."
"Don't try," I say quietly. "Just be."
He nods once. Reaches into his pocket and pulls out the medal. Turns it in his palm, not performing anything with it, just holding it like a thought he has not decided to speak aloud. Then he puts it away.
"The defamation response is ready when you want it," he says. "Henderson can file within the hour if you give the word. Or we wait and see how your statement lands. Or we do nothing. Your call."
My call.
My decision.
My fight.
I pick up the folder again and flip to the last page, where the timeline lays out every interaction since that first meeting in his office. Dates, locations, amounts. The bare structure of what we built, stripped of anything that made it feel human.
But the human part is the point.
It is the way he steadied that ladder without being asked. The old record player was humming faintly in the back hallway, as it belonged there. The way he said you built it back, like it was simply true, like there had never been another outcome.
"File it," I say. Then I look up. "But add my name. I want it on record that I am part of this. Not protected by you. Standing with you."
He holds my gaze for a long moment. Something shifts behind his eyes, subtle enough that most people would miss it.
"Standing with me," he repeats.
"That is what I said."
"I am not used to that phrasing."
"Then adjust."
A pause. Not tense, but loaded in a quieter way, like the air before a decision gets made.
He pulls out his phone and sends a message. Henderson, probably. Legal. The machine that will turn this into something official, something undeniable. Both names. A joint statement. A line drawn in ink instead of intention.
When he looks back at me, something in him has eased, just slightly. Less guarded. More here.
"I will bring dinner tonight," he says. "From the diner. If that works for you."
"It works."
"Eight."
"Do not be late."
A flicker of something almost like amusement passes over his face, brief and unguarded. He turns toward the door, then stops.
Looks back at me over his shoulder.
"You are going to win this," he says. "Cassel does not understand what she is dealing with."
"Neither did you, once."
"No." The corner of his mouth twitches. "I really didn't."
He leaves, and the shop settles back into quiet.
Just me, the folder on the counter, the newspapers spread out like evidence, and the fight I never asked for but am finally ready to finish.
I pick up my phone and text Lina.
Statement sent. Defamation filing going out this afternoon. Dinner with Bennett at eight.
Her reply comes almost instantly.
That is a lot of progress for one morning.
I glance at the folder again, at the documentation that proves I was never anyone's prop, at the timeline that lays out exactly how things unraveled.
Progress, I think. Or maybe just what happens when you stop waiting for someone else to step in.
The shop door opens.
Mrs. Petrova, here for her grandson's Schwinn.
I close the folder, slide it back under the counter, and reset my face into work.
"Hi, Mrs. Petrova," I say, already moving toward the counter.
And just like that, the rest of the morning takes over.