I look at what I'm feeling. I name it. I check it against the list—the lift, the racing, the part of me that thinks I'm untouchable.
Because here's the truth I'm not running from.
I've spent the goodwill of three of the most careful people in my life on a woman I've known less than a month.
Dag. Esperanza. Meghan. Hell, even some of my mother’s cooking.
A year ago, that kind of certainty about anything would've been the first warning.
The lift. The racing. TheI know better than the medsfeeling that ends with me on a locked ward.
I check it.
There's no lift to it. Nothing racing underneath. No voice telling me I'm chosen, special, or untouchable. It's as plain and solid as a fence post.
I'm just sure.
I've made a hundred reckless calls off a brain that lied to me, and I know exactly how those feel from the inside, and this isn't one of them.
This is the first time I've been this certain of anything while completely, boringly sane.
That should scare me more than it does.
She comes back over that evening, before I've even started a fire.
I hear her truck in her drive. Her screen door. Her feet crossing the grass between our houses, Hoagie ambling behind her like an afterthought.
When I open my door, she's standing in the last of the light with her arms crossed and her chin up, braced for me to have changed my mind overnight.
"You don't have to keep feeding me," she says. "I came to say thank you. And to find out if you were serious."
"Come in. I'll tell you what the lawyers said."
Her whole face moves on the wordlawyers.
I sit her down at the table.
"Their names are Dag and Esperanza," I tell her. "Married. Both attorneys. Dag's known my father since before I was born."
"And they—what? They'd look at it?"
"They're taking it. Already said yes."
Her crossed arms don't move, but her thumb starts working at the inside of her elbow, fast, like she doesn't trust the ground yet. "Njal, lawyers cost?—"
"Esperanza told me what she thinks of the evidence." I lean forward, forearms on the table. "She says fabricated stuff like that is brittle. Looks solid right up until somebody asks it where it came from. A real text's got a carrier behind it. A real photo's got a file behind it, with the where and the when and the what-device baked right in." I watch her chin lift, a fraction. "Whoever made yours is betting nobody ever asks. She's going to ask. She's going to make that school board hand over what they don't have, and it falls apart in their hands."
She goes very still.
I watch her take the first full breath I've seen her take since she came through my door in the rain.
It goes all the way down. Her shoulders come off her ears. Her arms slide loose from around herself and her hands settle flat on the table, and she looks down at them like they belong to somebody who isn't drowning anymore.
"It can come apart," she says, quiet, testing the words like a step on bad ice.
"Itcancome apart."
"And they want everything you've got," I finish. "Esperanza wants to meet you this week. And she said to tell you you're not paying them, so don't start up about it."
