His face has changed.
Not pity.
Good.
I do not want pity from him. I do not want it from anyone.
“That sounds exhausting,” he says.
“It is boring more often than exhausting.”
“Boring?”
“Exhausting sounds dramatic. Mostly it’s repetitive. A comment here. A look there. Someone asking a question they wouldn’t ask Josh. Someone deciding you’re making a point when you’re just doing your job. Someone praising you in a way that somehow still manages to remind you they didn’t expect you to be competent.”
He is very still now.
I should stop.
I do not.
“And then you get promoted, and you’re proud because you’ve earned it, but you also know everyone is watching what you do with it. Not everyone. Enough. If I get something wrong, I get something wrong as Pippa Hart, firstfemale watch manager in the county. Not just Pippa. Not just a watch manager. The whole sentence comes with me whether I want it or not.”
AJ looks down at his notebook.
He has written almost none of that.
Strange man.
“Is that why the article bothered you so much?” he asks.
My stomach tightens in the old, familiar way.
“Yes.”
He takes that in.
“Because I put my question in the wrong place,” he says.
It is not defensive. That is worse.
“You put the question next to my appointment,” I say. “Not directly. You were careful. But careful isn’t the same as harmless.”
His mouth pulls tight.
“No.”
“And the farm fire was already messy. Everyone was tired, emotions were high, people were scared, and then there was this lovely little implication that maybe me being a woman was the real issue.”
“I did know what I was doing,” he says quietly.
That surprises me.
“I don’t mean about you,” he adds. “Not the full impact. But I knew how to place uncertainty. I knew how to make a piece feel sharper without saying anything I couldn’t defend.”
He gives a small, humourless smile.
“I was proud of that, actually.”
