24. Lucy
LUCY
NOW
Ihad Naomi in one ear, Charlotte Anderson in three open email threads, and a half-eaten container of lo mein cooling beside my keyboard like evidence of every poor decision I had made since six o’clock.
“I know you’re still at the arena,” Naomi said through my earbud.
I clicked into the access audit spreadsheet and highlighted Charlotte’s old credential number for the second time, because apparently exhaustion had turned my brain into a decorative object. “You don’t know that.”
Across the office, Dottie slept on her bed, curled in a shape that suggested she had no moral objections to abandoning me during a crisis. One ear had flipped inside out. Her front paws twitched once, probably because she was dreaming about emotionally betraying me in a field somewhere.
“I do.” Naomi’s voice softened without losing the dry edge.
In the background, I heard the muffled clink of dishes and the low hum of the espresso machine at Paper Lantern.
She must have been closing late after one of the winter reading events she pretended exhausted her and secretly loved. “But I am glad you called.”
“I called because you texted me a photo of a man shelving poetry under business leadership.”
“He said Rilke had management energy.”
“That is a cry for help.”
“It was also three hours ago.” A door creaked on her end, followed by the familiar jangle of the shop’s front bell as Naomi locked the door. “And yet, in all that time, you have not complained about Buzz once.”
I picked up my water bottle and took a drink. It had gone room temperature, but at least it had not become another coffee I could forget until it developed a personality. “He is not here.”
“That has never stopped you before.”
“He played in Denver tonight.”
“I know,” Naomi said.
I frowned at the second monitor, where the postgame travel confirmation sat in my inbox beneath a message from legal and two follow-ups from team services. “Why do you know that?”
“Because Northbend has one hockey team and seven forms of local news, all of which appear on my phone whether I ask for them or not. Also, Mrs. Delaney came into the store today and announced that Buzz had two assists.”
I clicked into Charlotte’s latest email instead of answering. It had arrived at 9:43 p.m., because apparently spite kept the same hours I did.
The subject line read:
Formal Notice Regarding Hostile Work Environment.
The body was longer than it needed to be and less effective than Charlotte probably thought it was.
She had named my father. Sarah. Me. The organization.
She had used phrases like targeted professional exclusion and retaliatory restructuring and ongoing pattern of intimidation, all of which sounded very impressive until lined up beside the documentation she had personally created by forwarding confidential communications to her private account, withholding event materials, and misrepresenting sponsor access.
It would go to legal in the morning.
It was not catastrophic.
It was not even particularly surprising.
Charlotte had always understood the power of making a mess in the doorway while leaving a room.
Still, my name sat there in her email like something touched with a dirty hand.
“Luce,” Naomi’s voice came into my ear.
I blinked, realizing I had stopped moving.
“I’m fine.” I exhaled through my nose and adjusted the edge of the legal pad until it lined up with my keyboard.
Then I nudged the takeout container half an inch to the left because it was too close to the printed travel manifest. “Charlotte is threatening hostile workplace claims.”
Naomi went quiet for one beat. Not long enough to become dramatic. Just long enough to become careful. “Is that serious?”
“It is a problem,” I allowed. “But not an unmanageable one. We have documentation. HR has documentation. Legal has documentation. Charlotte also chose to put several claims in writing that are, at best, creatively related to reality.”
“At best,” Naomi repeated.
“She is angry. She wants the organization to spend time responding to her anger.”
“And you are volunteering as tribute?”
“I am organizing the record.”
“At midnight.”
“The timestamp does not change the nature of the task.”
“The timestamp absolutely changes the nature of the task. During business hours, it’s your job. At midnight, it’s called avoidance wearing a blazer.”
Dottie’s ear twitched from her bed.
A laugh moved through me strangely. Yesterday morning, I had been sitting in a rooftop igloo with Bea, Freya, and Lo while snow softened Northbend around us and chocolate cake appeared like a blessing.
I had said yes to being a bridesmaid. I had let myself be pulled into a hug that had smelled like tea, sugar, perfume, and the kind of family that chose you out loud.
For one dangerous blink in time, my life had felt full in a way I did not know where to put.
Now I was back beneath fluorescent office light after midnight, filing hostile-workplace threats from a woman who had once smiled at me over conference tables and taught me, accidentally, how quickly professional warmth could become a weapon.
On my second monitor, the team travel tracker had already updated from in transit to completed.
The charter had landed forty minutes ago.
The staff transportation log showed the last car service confirmed.
Most of the players would be home soon, or close to it, moving through the private terminal and back into their own lives with the strange efficiency of professional athletes who could cross time zones, win a game, and still complain about recovery schedules before bed.
The equipment staff would handle the bulk of the gear.
Bags, trunks, sticks, laundry, medical supplies.
Nothing about road travel was as casual as fans imagined.
There were manifests and timing windows and staff who knew exactly which items needed to be unloaded tonight and which could wait until morning.
The team did not simply spill back into Talon Arena like a high school bus trip with duffels and vending-machine trash.
Talon Arena after midnight was not empty. Buildings like this never were. They had too many systems, too many people whose work happened after the lights came down, too many invisible hands keeping the machine ready for morning.
The glass wall of my office reflected me back at myself in fragments.
Computer glow over glasses. Pale sweater.
One hand resting beside a legal folder. A water bottle.
The green edge of Dottie’s leash looped over the arm of the chair opposite my desk, where I had dropped it hours ago after her last walk.
Sarah had stopped in at eight-thirty, tablet hugged to her chest, expression flat in the way that meant concern had been through several layers of professional translation.
“Go home after this,” she had said.
“I will.”
“You are lying.”
“I am prioritizing.”
“You are overfunctioning.”
My father had called at nine fifteen.
“Still there?” he had asked.
“No.”
He had sighed so heavily I could hear Lo in the background say, “Ezra, sweetheart, she gets that from you.”
“I’ll leave soon,” I had told him. I had looked across the office at Dottie, asleep with her chin on the edge of her bed, and felt something in my chest press inward.
“Lock up properly,” he said finally.
“I always do.”
“I know.”
Both of them had gone home anyway because they trusted me to make a decision and because I was an adult woman with a job title, a key card, and apparently an unreasonable tolerance for late-night administrative punishment.
“Are you still there?” Naomi asked.
I clicked the attachment on Charlotte’s email and saved it into the restricted legal folder. “Yes.”
“Were you thinking about Charlotte or Buzz?”
“Work.”
“Fine. I’ll allow it because hostile-workplace threat beats emotionally constipated hockey player on the urgency chart. Barely.”
“He is not emotionally constipated.”
“You just defended Ty Burns from constipation allegations.”
“I am going to hang up now.”
“You called me.”
“I regret that.”
“No, you don’t.” Her voice softened again, and that was worse somehow. Naomi could insult me into emotional honesty, but tenderness made me want to reorganize hard drives. “You’re sitting in an arena alone because the paperwork feels easier than going home and having to be quiet with yourself.”
My fingers stilled over the mouse. Dottie sighed in her sleep, a long, content sound that made the room feel briefly warmer.
“I’m not alone,” I corrected.
“The dog cannot talk.”
“She is still company.”
“She is excellent company. She is also not going to tell you to stop using work as a buffer.”
I leaned back in my chair and looked toward the office door.
The corridor beyond it was dimmed for the night, only the lower security lights glowing along the baseboards.
During the day, this level moved constantly.
Staff, players, assistants, trainers, phones ringing, radios crackling, the occasional burst of laughter from someone who should have been somewhere else five minutes ago.
“I don’t know what else to do,” I admitted. The words came out before I could dress them properly.
Naomi did not rush into the space. That was one of the reasons I had called her, even when I pretended otherwise. She could be blunt enough to bruise and gentle enough not to touch a wound directly. “With Charlotte?” she asked.
“With any of it.”
My gaze drifted to the printed travel report beside my keyboard.
Player return confirmations. Morning recovery adjustments.
Notes for medical staff. A reminder to review an access list that could have waited.
Another reminder to confirm a meeting Sarah had already confirmed.
Proof that I was not behind if I just kept moving.
Northbend was not supposed to get inside me this easily.
It had already been there once.
I knew what it cost to belong to a place full of people who could leave.