“You’re just saying because you don’t have to live with it,” I cut in. “You don’t have to wake up wondering who decided they know your story better than you do.”
Her mouth tightens. “That’s not fair.”
“Neither is this,” I say, tapping the letter. “And you want to platform it.”
Silence stretches between us—heavy, uncomfortable.
Harper looks down at her hands. When she speaks again, her voice is quieter. “This letter scared me.”
That gives me pause. “Why?”
“Because it didn’t sound like a troll,” she says. “It sounded… convinced.”
I laugh—short, sharp. “That’s what conviction looks like when it’s wrong,” I say. “History is full of it.”
She doesn’t laugh with me.
“I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t ask,” she says. “About your father. About this woman.”
My chest tightens.
I don’t know the truth, I think. And I don’t want to. I have enough ghosts. Enough versions of myself to manage.
“I’ve told you everything that matters,” I say. “You know my story.”
“Stories change,” Harper says gently.
There it is—the crack.
For the first time since I met her, I feel her loyalty shift. Not gone. Not yet. Just no longer solid—ice thinning under a careful step. A tremor of terror runs through me.
Because this woman—earnest, well-meaning, dangerous—is the reason I’m sitting here instead of a cell.
And she might be the reason it all slips through my fingers like sand.
I lean forward, hold her gaze.
“If you chase this,” I say quietly, “you will hurt people. Me. Yourself. And for what? A letter from a nobody.”
Her eyes flicker—doubt, conflict.
“I just don’t want to be blindsided,” she says.
“I won’t blindside you,” I promise, and I mean it in the way that matters to me. “But this? This is noise.”
She nods slowly, but it isn’t agreement. It’s postponement.
“I need time,” she says.
My stomach drops.
Time is the one thing I don’t have.
She stands, folds the letter again, slides it into her bag like unfinished business.
“We’ll talk again,” she says.
“Of course,” I reply, smiling when she looks back.
