Epilogue
Edda
Three months since Bennett had signed the building deed into my name on the permanent lease. Two months since I stopped waking up sick every morning. Six weeks since my body had started to show enough that Mrs. Petrova had clutched her chest and demanded to know why I had not told her sooner.
I had not told her because I had been too busy living it to announce it.
The expansion unit is now finished. The wall between the two spaces had been opened into a wide archway that let light spill cleanly from one end of the shop to the other.
New shelving lined the walls, solid and practical.
I had mounted my father’s old tools on a display board near the register where customers could see them.
Not for sale. Never for sale. Just there, the way they had always been, holding the shape of where I came from.
The bell above the door chimed.
I did not turn around. I already knew who it was.
Tuesday morning, seven forty-five. He had been showing up at this exact time for six weeks, ever since the building sale closed and he stopped pretending he had anywhere else to be.
“You’re early,” I said.
“You’re always here earlier.”
Bennett’s voice came closer, then his hand settled on my hip, warm through the fabric of my flannel shirt. “The Peugeot looks good.”
“It should. I have been working on it for three weeks.”
He did not comment on the time or suggest a faster way to do it. Six months ago, he would have. Six months ago, he would have offered to hire someone, source parts wholesale, or solve a problem that was not actually a problem.
Now he just looked at the bike the way he looked at anything I built, with that quiet attention that still tightened something in my chest when I let it register.
“Lina called,” he said. “She wants to know if we are still coming to dinner Saturday.”
“Did you tell her yes?”
“I told her I would check with you.”
I turned then.
He was closer than I expected, in a charcoal sweater without a jacket or tie. The Bennett Thornhill who showed up in my shop on Tuesday mornings did not look like the man who had once sat behind an oversized desk and given me five minutes to make my case.
This version had coffee on his breath and a faint smudge of croissant glaze on his thumb. His hair was doing that thing it did when he had run his hands through it too many times.
“Yes,” I said. “We are still coming.”
“Good.” His hand stayed where it was, steady at my hip. “She also wants to know if we have picked names yet.”
“Tell her to mind her own business.”
“I did. She said you would say that.”
A laugh slipped out before I could stop it. It surprised me, still did sometimes, how easily it came here. In this space. With him. Like my life had quietly shifted into something I did not have to brace against all the time.
Six months ago, I had been standing in the lobby of his building, crying hard enough to shake, convinced I would never speak to him again.
The someday jar sat on the counter by the register, still labeled in my father’s handwriting.
Bennett had dropped a coin into it three days ago when he thought I was not looking.
I had caught him, as usual. He had not looked embarrassed.
Not defensive either. Just… seen. Like being noticed cost him something, but he was choosing it anyway.
I reached for my coffee and took a sip. Cold, but I drank it regardless.
“The heritage committee sent the final paperwork yesterday,” I said.
“I know. Marcus forwarded it.”
“The designation is permanent. Filed independently. My lawyer, not yours.”
“I know that too.” His thumb made a slow, absent circle at my hip. Familiar now, almost thoughtless. “You told me three times last week.”
“I am telling you again.”
“Edda.” He waited until I looked at him. “I know. It is yours. It was always yours. I am not going anywhere, and neither is the paperwork.”
That was the thing about Bennett Thornhill.
I had not understood it at first, not until I had watched him sleep on my shoulder in his penthouse the night his father died.
When he said something, he meant it cleanly.
No hedging. No escape routes. If he said the shop was mine, it was because he had already made sure the world would agree with him.
The difference now was that he asked first.
“Mrs. Petrova’s grandson is coming in at nine,” I said. “His bike needs new brake pads.”
“You want help, or do you want me to listen?”
I smiled slightly. He had started asking that a few weeks ago, after I snapped at him for suggesting I outsource inventory to someone with more time.
He had been right, technically. I do have more time now.
The expansion was done. The loan payments were structured so I was not lying awake at three in the morning doing mental math just to feel safe.
But that was not the point.
“Listen,” I said. “I will handle the brakes. You can sort the new parts shipment if you want something to do.”
“I want something to do.”
“Then sort the parts shipment.”
He leaned down and pressed a brief, warm kiss to my forehead before heading toward the back room where I’d stacked yesterday’s delivery.
I watched him go. Billionaire in a cashmere sweater, sleeves pushed up like sorting bicycle parts in a place that smelled of rubber, chain oil, and the ghost of my father’s last cup of coffee.
My phone buzzed on the counter. Lina again.
You didn’t answer my question about names.
I typed back: Mind your own business.
That IS my business. I’m the godmother.
We haven’t decided that either.
You’ve decided. You just haven’t told me yet. Saturday. I’m making lasagna. Bring wine. The expensive kind. Bennett can afford it.
I set the phone down and rested a hand over my stomach, still not used to the quiet rise beneath my shirt.
The nausea had faded weeks ago, replaced by something stranger.
A constant awareness of my own body, as if it had started keeping secrets from me, changing without permission, building something I could not stop even if I tried.
I’d told Bennett I was keeping it because I couldn’t not. That had been true.
What I hadn’t said, what I hadn’t been able to name until much later, was that I was keeping it because I wanted to.
Not out of responsibility. Not practicality. Not logic that could be mapped onto a spreadsheet.
Because I wanted this.
Because I’d spent so long refusing to want anything, when something this big finally broke through, it had knocked the breath clean out of me.
The bell chimed again, and Mrs. Petrova’s grandson came through the door, his bike squeaking with every push of the wheel. He was fourteen now, tall and all angles, and he had been bringing this same bike to me since he was eight.
“Brakes are shot,” he said by way of greeting.
“I heard you coming from the corner.” I reached for my tools. “Leave it here. I’ll have it done by noon.”
He nodded, already pulling out his phone, already halfway gone. Fourteen did that. I remembered it well, that sense of the world moving too slowly for everything you wanted from it. I had not known then how hard you had to fight just to stay steady inside your own life.
I started on the brakes, my hands falling into the rhythm they always did when there was work in front of me.
Grease and rubber in the air. Tools that used to belong to my father, now worn smooth in my grip.
From the back room came the soft shuffle of parts being sorted, each one placed with more care than necessary, like precision was its own kind of discipline.
“The Shimano derailleurs go on the third shelf,” I called back.
“I know where the derailleurs go.”
“You put them on the second shelf last week.”
“That was one time.”
“Twice. I moved them both times.”
His laugh drifted out of the back room, low and caught off guard.
It was the same one he had given me in the diner the first time we ate together, when I told him about sleeping behind the counter, and he did not offer sympathy.
He had just said, " You built it back. Three words.
No softness. Just recognition of what it had cost and what I had done anyway.
I tightened the brake cable and moved on, my fingers working on instinct while the rest of me stayed half elsewhere.
Three months since the defamation response went public.
Three months since Diana Cassel went quiet, her fourth move collapsing under its own weight until even the journal printed a retraction.
The consulting contract I had earned at a fair market rate, every invoice clean, every hour accounted for.
Not charity. Not an arrangement. Work I did because I was good at it, paid properly because Bennett had finally learned not to turn everything into something I might refuse.
He had learned a lot in three months.
So had I.
The door to the back room opened, and Bennett stepped out with a parts catalog in one hand and his phone in the other.
"Marcus says the board meeting has been moved to Thursday."
"Okay."
"He also says Vera wants a response ready about the building sale press statement."
"No."
"I told him that." He set the catalog on the counter and looked at me, expression caught between amusement and something softer he rarely let show outright. "He said you'd say that."
"Everyone keeps saying I'm predictable."
"You're not predictable. You're consistent. There's a difference."
I wiped my hands on a rag and turned toward him. Really turned. I had started doing that without thinking three months ago, after I picked up the St. Christopher medal and placed it back into his palm and watched something in his face shift like a locked door finally giving way.
He still wore it. I had seen him reach for it yesterday during a call with his lawyer about his father's estate paperwork. He did not rub it anymore. Just held it when he needed to, like it had become a point of quiet anchoring instead of a habit he could not admit to.
"The baby's due in four months," I said.
"I know."