27. Karissa
Chapter twenty-seven
Karissa
Icall Diego back the same night my mother tries to use him against me.
He picks up on the second ring, wary. He has reason to be.
"Karissa. Look, I didn't agree to anything—"
"I know. That's not why I'm calling." I've got the phone pinned against my shoulder, wiping down the prep counter as I talk. "My mother doesn't speak for this account. If she calls you again, you don't take it. You don't quote her a number. You don't hear her out. She isn't on it."
"Half by Friday, balance by the thirtieth. That's still us?"
"That's still us. Nothing about the terms changes. She doesn't get to move them and neither does anybody else."
"Okay." He exhales. "For what it's worth, she wasn't real convincing."
"No. She never is."
Ninety seconds, and it's done. My supplier, my mess, my line to hold, and no name on it but mine.
***
Three days later, my mother calls at 9:00 a.m., which is never good.
"Sweetheart." Her voice has a lightness I haven't heard in years. "You will not believe what happened."
I'm elbow deep in a mixing bowl. I switch the phone to my other ear and keep working.
"The man," she says. "The one I owed. He called me last night. Told me the balance is cleared. Paid in full."
My hands stop.
"Cleared how?"
"I don't know. Someone bought it out. Some lawyer called him, made an offer, and that was it. Gone." She laughs, disbelieving. "I thought it was a scam. I called back twice to check."
I set the bowl down.
"What lawyer."
"He didn't give a name. Just said it was handled. Karissa, do you understand what this means? I don't owe that man anything anymore."
I do understand. That's the problem.
"Did he say anything else? Any name at all?"
"Something about a firm. Voss mentioned it when I called to confirm it was real. Pierson something. I wasn't really listening. I was too busy being relieved."
Pierson. Michael Pierson. Noah's lawyer.
I don't remember hanging up. I remember standing in my kitchen with flour on my hands and my mother's voice still going somewhere in my ear, and I remember the exact second the floor tilts.
Marcus notices before I say anything. He always does.
"You good?"
"Fine." I'm not looking at him. I'm looking at my phone, at the last text Noah sent me two nights ago, something easy about dinner, something that made me smile like an idiot standing at the register.
I text him now. Did you pay off my mother's debt?
The three dots appear immediately. Then they stop. Then they start again.
Can we talk in person?
That's not a no.
***
I don't call ahead. I don't text back. I take the train to his building with flour still under my fingernails and I don't care.
Sylvia sees my face and doesn't try to stop me.
Noah is at his desk when I walk in. He stands. He doesn't reach for me, which tells me he already knows exactly why I'm here.
"Say it," I say. "Don't manage it. Just say it."
"I had Michael buy the debt from Reggie Voss." His voice is flat. Careful. "In cash. Off the books."
The room goes quiet.
"When."
"Three days ago."
"Three days." I laugh, and it comes out wrong. "You've known for three days, and you let me sit across from you at dinner and talk about Theo's science fair like nothing happened."
"I was going to tell you."
"When?"
He doesn't answer that.
"When Noah?"
"I don't know." At least he doesn't lie about that part. "I kept drafting it. I kept deciding it wasn't the right time."
"There's no right time to tell someone you went behind their back." My voice is steadier than I expect it to be, which is worse than if it were shaking. "You knew. You knew what this would do, and you did it anyway, and then you decided when I got to find out."
"I was protecting you."
"You were protecting yourself." The words come out clean, like I've been carrying them for longer than I realized. "You couldn't stand not being in control of it. That's not the same thing as love, Noah. I don't care how much it feels like it from the inside."
Something moves across his face. I don't let myself read it.
Here's the part that surprises me. My mother barely registers.
I should be furious at her. She called Voss, she poked at my life again, she is exactly who she has always been. But my anger doesn't even bend in her direction. It's not hers. It never was. She's a fixed variable. I stopped expecting different from her a long time ago.
Noah was supposed to be different.
That's what breaks. Not the debt. Not the money. The fact that I let myself believe, for a handful of weeks, that this man had learned the difference between loving someone and owning their problems.
"You told me you understood," I say. "The oven. The cooler. You said you understood why that wasn't yours to fix."
"I do understand."
"You don't. If you understood, this wouldn't have a file number.
" I gesture at nothing, at the whole shape of his office, the whole shape of him.
"You made a decision about my life, and you didn't tell me because some part of you knew I'd say no.
That's not protection. That's just doing it anyway and hoping I never find out. "
"I can undo it."
"You can't." I almost laugh again. "That's the whole point, Noah. You can't undo knowing. You can't buy your way back to before I found out. There's no invoice for that."
He's quiet. He's good at it, I've noticed, right up until the moment quiet stops being useful to him.
"I need to know something," I say. "And I need you to answer it instead of explaining it to me."
"Okay."
"If I hadn't found out. If my mother hadn't called and mentioned Pierson by accident. Would you have told me? Ever?"
He doesn't answer right away, and that's the answer.
"I don't know," he finally says.
"That's worse than a no."
I stand there a moment longer, not because I expect anything to change, but because some part of me is still waiting for him to say the one thing that would make this survivable. He doesn't say it. I don't think he has it.
"I need you to hear this clearly," I say.
"Not as a negotiation. Not as a clause you can counter.
I built my whole life on not needing anyone to rescue me, because every single time someone tried, it cost me something I couldn't get back.
My mother's rescues cost me my credit. Yours just cost me you. "
His jaw tightens. He doesn't argue.
"I'm done," I say. "Not the contract. I'll finish what I signed. I'm done with this. With whatever this was becoming."
"Karissa—"
"Don't." I hold up a hand before he can finish it. "Don't make this smaller than it is."
I turn and walk out. Sylvia doesn't look up as I pass her desk, which is its own kind of kindness. I make it to the elevator before my hands start shaking, and I hold them still until the doors close.
***
Theo is at the counter when I get back, doing homework in a booth that should be occupied by paying customers. He takes one look at me and closes the textbook.
"What happened."
"He paid off Mom's debt. Behind my back. Three days ago, and he didn't tell me."
Theo doesn't say I told you so, which I appreciate, because he'd have every right to.
"Are you okay?"
"No," I say, and it's the first honest thing I've said all day. "I don't think I am."
My phone buzzes on the counter. I don't look at it. I know exactly whose name is on the screen, and I'm not ready to see it lit up like nothing's changed, like an apology is a thing you can send in a text message and have it land the way sorry is supposed to land.
It buzzes again.
I turn it face down and go back to the ovens, because the ovens don't lie to me, and right now that's the only thing in my life I can say that about.