23. Edda
Chapter twenty-three
Edda
The call comes at six in the morning while I’m behind the shop counter, forcing down a handful of crackers like they might settle the nausea. My phone lights up with Bennett’s name.
I answer because we’re past the point where I don’t.
“My father died.”
Three words. Flat. Controlled. The kind of delivery he usually saves for structural failures and budget overruns, except this time, there’s something stripped out underneath it. Not composure. Absence.
“When?” I ask.
“Four hours ago. Hospice called at two.” A pause, like he’s checking whether the facts still hold. “I didn’t know who else to call.”
I’m already reaching for my jacket.
“Where are you?”
“The penthouse.” Another pause, longer this time. “You don’t have to come.”
“Bennett.”
A quiet inhale. Not a response, not really.
“I’m handling it. Marcus is coordinating with the funeral home. Henderson is reviewing the estate documents. Vera is drafting a statement for the board.” His voice stays even, carefully arranged. “Everything is under control.”
I hang up without saying goodbye. There’s nothing in that sentence that needs my permission.
The cab ride takes twenty minutes. I spend most of it piecing together what I somehow never asked. Bennett’s mother died eleven years ago in hospice. He still carries her St. Christopher medal like it’s part of him.
His father never came up. Not once. Not in diner booths over fries and too much honesty. Not in the Catskills when he let me see the medal and didn’t explain why it mattered. Not in any of those moments where we traded pieces of ourselves like it was just a conversation.
His father was alive. And Bennett never said a word.
The penthouse is too quiet when the elevator doors open. Not peaceful. Engineered. Thick glass and thick walls keep the city at a distance that feels intentional.
I find him in the kitchen.
Still in yesterday’s clothes, standing at the counter with his phone in one hand. Three coffee cups were lined up beside him. All untouched. All cold.
“You came,” he says without looking up.
“You called.”
“I said you didn’t have to.”
“I know what you said.”
I cross the kitchen and take the phone from his hand. He doesn’t resist.
“When did you last sleep?”
“That’s not relevant.”
“Bennett.”
“I have seventeen calls to return. The board needs a statement by noon. The hospice paperwork requires signatures, and there’s a question about whether the funeral should be private or whether the foundation donors expect representation.”
His eyes stay on the phone in my hand, tracking it the way he tracks anything that can be solved, managed, or contained.
“I’ve handled harder logistics.”
“This isn’t logistics.”
“Everything is logistics.” He reaches for the phone.
I step back.
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t follow. “Edda.”
“When did you last see him?”
The question lands. Not loud, not sharp. Just final.
His hand drops.
For a moment, something shifts behind his eyes. Not enough to hold onto. Not enough to name. Then it’s gone, sealed back behind that composed surface he wore in the conference room when I signed a contract that changed both our lives.
“Seven years ago,” he says. “His seventieth birthday. I paid for the party and left before the cake.”
I set his phone on the counter, face down.
“And before that?”
“My mother’s funeral.” Still no eye contact. “He sat in the front row and checked his watch twice during the eulogy. I delivered it.”
The kitchen feels too still, too arranged, like even silence has been organized here.
The coffee cups are lined up near the sink like failed attempts at normal.
I pick up the nearest one and dump it out. Then the second. Then the third.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Making you actual coffee.”
I find the machine, the beans, and start it up.
“The kind you’re going to drink.”
“I don’t need coffee.”
“You need something.” I glance at him. “And since I can’t make you sleep or eat or feel any of this, coffee is what I’ve got.”
The machine hums to life.
“Sit down.”
He doesn’t move. Just watches me like I’m a problem he can’t categorize fast enough, recalculating in real time. That’s what he does. That’s what he’s always done. Every loss becomes something to manage. Every feeling becomes something to outwork.
His mother died, and he built an empire out of the aftermath. His father dies, and he makes seventeen phone calls before dawn.
“He wasn’t a good man,” Bennett says quietly. “In case you were wondering why I never mentioned him.”
“I wasn’t wondering.”
“He gambled too. Like your father. But he had enough money that no one ever called it a problem. They called it high stakes. Risk tolerance. Aggressive investment strategy.”
His voice stays even, carefully controlled, like he’s reading from a report that was never meant to be emotional.
“My mother covered his debts for thirty years. When she died, I cut him off. Financially. Every other way that mattered.”
A pause.
“He remarried twice. I didn’t attend either wedding.”
The coffee finishes brewing. I pour a cup and set it in front of him.
He looks at it like it might finally explain something that hasn’t made sense for years.
"He called me last month," he says. "I didn't pick up."
"Bennett."
"He left a voicemail. I deleted it before I heard it."
His hand drifts toward his jacket pocket, toward the medal, then stops mid-motion as he catches himself before the habit can finish. "I should feel something."
"You do feel something."
"I feel inconvenienced." He picks up the coffee, then sets it down again without drinking.
"I feel irritated that he chose this week, when the defamation filing is still pending, and you're still deciding whether to let me into anything that matters to you.
I feel relieved, which makes me a worse person than he ever was.
And I feel nothing that looks like grief. "
"That sounds like grief, Bennett."
He looks at me then. Really looks. Bloodshot eyes, collar slightly off, jaw locked so tight it looks painful. The kind of composure that can only be held by force. The kind that only slips when there is nowhere left to push the pressure.
"My mother loved him," he says. "Even when he made it impossible. Even when he gambled away the money she saved for my college tuition, she had to refinance the house to cover it. Even when he missed her diagnosis appointment because he was in Atlantic City."
His voice tightens, then fractures just enough to matter.
"She still loved him. And she asked me to look after him when she was gone. So I did. I wrote hospice checks from a trust fund because I couldn't look at him without seeing every way he failed her."
Silence settles between us.
I stay where I am. I don't reach for him. I don't try to fix it. Not because I don't want to, but because this isn't something that gets repaired by someone else stepping in and smoothing the edges.
"I'm not going to tell you how to feel," I say. "And I'm not going anywhere."
"Why?"
"Because you called me."
"That was a mistake."
“Probably.”
I lean against the counter, arms crossed, watching him the way he studies problems he cannot solve quickly.
“But you made it. And now I am here. You can spend the next six hours coordinating funeral logistics and avoiding whatever this actually is, or you can drink the damn coffee and give yourself five minutes to fall apart.”
“I don’t fall apart.”
“Everyone falls apart, Bennett. The question is whether you do it alone or whether you let someone hold the ladder.”
The reference lands. I see it hit before he reacts, a subtle shift in his focus, his jaw tightening as his hand finally moves to his pocket.
He pulls out the St. Christopher medal and turns it over in his palm. Not rubbing it like he usually does. Just holding it. Looking at it like it has weight, he is finally willing to feel.
“She gave me this the day before she died,” he says quietly. “I’ve never told anyone what she said when she gave it to me.”
I stay still.
“She said, ‘You cannot control everything, Bennett. Stop trying before it costs you the things that matter.’” His fingers close around the medal. “I thought she meant the business.”
“She did not.”
A short exhale. “No.” His gaze lifts to mine, and something in him shifts, the composure finally slipping enough to show what is underneath.
“She meant this. Me standing in a kitchen with someone I barely knew because I did not know who else to call. And not knowing how to let someone see me like this.”
His voice breaks on the last word, and this time he does not try to fix it.
I cross the kitchen and take the medal from his hand. He lets me. No hesitation, no resistance. His fingers stay open for a beat longer than necessary, like they forget what to do without something to hold.
I set the medal on the counter beside the coffee, face up, exactly where it can be seen. The same way he left it in my shop doorway when he came to grovel.
Then I wait.
“I do not know how to do this,” he says.
“I know.”
“I mean it. I do not know how to be someone who does not have answers. I have spent forty five years making sure I always have them, because the alternative is being my father. Sitting in a casino while my wife is dying and pretending luck will fix what is already gone.”
His voice catches hard on the word luck.
“I cannot be him. I have to be in control.”
“You are not him.”
“How do you know?”
"Because he never showed up at six in the morning for anyone."
Something shifts across his face. Not a crack in the composure, not even close.
More like the structure of it gives way.
His shoulders draw inward, his head dips, and his breath turns uneven, ragged at the edges.
Bennett Thornhill, the man who runs an empire on control alone, stands in his penthouse kitchen and breaks.
Not elegantly. Not quietly. The kind of breaking that sounds like it’s been held back for eleven years, or maybe longer. The kind that doesn’t care who is watching anymore.
I don’t touch him. I don’t try to fix it or pull him out of it. I stay where I am and let it happen in front of me, because something in me understands he needs to learn he can fall apart without being managed.
"I deleted the voicemail," he says, voice shredded around the words. "I didn’t even listen to it."
"I know."
"What if he apologized?"
"Would it have changed anything?"
He pauses at that. Really pauses, the way he would weigh a deal that could shift an entire portfolio. "No," he says at last. "No, I don’t think it would have."
"Then you didn’t need to hear it."
A broken sound leaves him, almost a laugh, but not quite. Wet and sharp around the edges. "That’s your conclusion?"
"I’m not here to give you answers, Bennett. I’m here to make sure you don’t sit in silence pretending you’re fine while your coffee goes cold."
His eyes flick to the mug on the counter. He picks it up, drinks half in one steady pull, then sets it down and drags his hand over his face like he’s trying to erase what just happened.
"The board meeting is at noon," he says.
"Cancel it."
"I can’t."
"You can. Henderson can handle the estate paperwork. Marcus can coordinate with the funeral home. Vera can hold the statement for a day." I press the medal into his palm. "And you can sit on that couch and watch something ridiculous with me until you remember how to breathe properly."
"That’s not productive."
"Neither is collapsing in front of your board because you refuse to deal with anything that feels human."
He holds my gaze. I hold his. This is what I’ve learned about Bennett Thornhill in the weeks since we stopped pretending this arrangement was simple: he will argue with logic. He will resist emotion. But he won’t push back against someone who refuses to move.
"Fine," he says. "One hour."
"Three."
"Two."
"Three," I say. "Or I leave, and we do this again tomorrow."
His jaw tightens. His fingers close more firmly around the medal. Then, slowly, he nods.
"Three hours," he says. "And I’m choosing what we watch."
"Obviously."
We end up on his couch, the kind of expensive furniture that looks like it was designed for display rather than living.
A home renovation show plays on the screen, people with too much money making choices that feel almost intentionally offensive.
Bennett doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t comment. He sits close enough that his shoulder nearly brushes mine, one hand still in his pocket around the medal.
And he breathes.
After an hour, his breathing evens out. After two, his head tips sideways until it rests against my shoulder. After three, he is asleep.
I don’t move. I don’t reach for my phone. I let myself sit with what it means to be the person someone calls when they have nowhere else to go, and I don’t turn away from it.
The renovation show keeps playing, voices too bright for the quiet in the room.
Outside the window, the city carries on like nothing has shifted, indifferent to the billionaire asleep on my shoulder, the baby neither of us has said out loud today, and the questions sitting between us like unopened doors.
My thoughts drift to my father, to the shop, to the someday jar tucked away like a promise I am not ready to break. To the summer I slept behind the counter and rebuilt everything I had lost, board by board, because disappearing was not an option.
What it means to need someone presses in on me then. Not their money. Not their answers. Just them. And how that kind of need changes the shape of a person.
Bennett’s hand stays in his pocket. His breathing is deep, steady. In sleep, the careful control is gone, leaving something quieter underneath it. He just looks exhausted.
I press my palm to my stomach, where everything is still forming, still becoming, still impossible to fully understand.
And I let myself stay.