He reads slower than I expect.
He doesn't snatch the pages up or flip through them fast.
He reads the letter all the way down, both pages, then sets it aside and lifts the screenshots into the light.
I watch his face the whole time and it doesn't do one single thing.
That's how I know it's bad. A man whose face goes that still is a man holding something down.
"These messages." He taps the top page. "You didn't send them."
"No."
"That number's not yours."
"No. They just put my name on it."
He nods slowly and turns to the photo, the cropped one with its lie of a caption.
His eyes change for a half second, then go flat again, deliberate, the way a stone drops and disappears under still water.
"Somebody made this." He says it plainly, like he's naming a fact, not asking a question. He taps the screenshot once with one scarred finger. "This doesn't happen by accident. Nobody stumbles into it. It's work. It took somebody time, and that somebody has a reason."
"I know." My throat's closing on me. "I know it, and I can't prove a bit of it. I’m sure by now the whole town already knows, and I'm—" The word comes out smaller than I want it to. "I'm on unpaid leave. I don't know how I'm making rent next month. I don't know how I'm doing anything."
He's quiet for a moment, watching me. "You got somewhere to be tomorrow?"
A laugh comes out of me that isn't a laugh. "No. That's the whole point. I've got nowhere to be for the first time in years."
"All right." He gathers the pages back into a square stack, careful with them, like they matter, likeImatter. "Then here'swhat happens. This isn't going away on its own, and you're right that you can't fight it by yourself. But you're not by yourself."
"Njal." I shake my head. "You barely know me."
"I know enough." He sets the stack down square in front of me. "I know people who do this for a living. Good people. Let me make a call."
"I can't afford?—"
"I didn't say a word about paying anybody." His voice doesn't rise. It just lands. "Let me make a call, Sophie."
I open my mouth to argue and nothing comes out.
Because nobody has offered to stand between me and this.
Not the school. Not the church. Not my own father, who I still haven't been able to make myself call.
And here's a man I've known for what, two weeks, with scarred hands and a cut on his shoulders, telling me I'm not by myself.
"I need work, too." I say it fast, before the rest of it can rise up and drown me. "If there's anybody hiring. Anybody. I'll do anything—paint, scrub floors, I'm not too good to do honest work."
The corner of his mouth moves, not quite a smile. "Might know something about that, too. Let me ask around."
The storm's still going when I get to my feet to leave, and I don't want to.
That frightens me worse than all the rest of it put together.
He walks me to the door.
I turn to thank him, but the air between us has vanished.
