Page 46 of Pocket Wife

The conference closes.

Then Lucy crosses the room and takes my hand, not gently. “Do you understand what you just risked?”

“Yes.”

“Do not answer like that.”

I look down at our joined hands. “I may lose the position I built my life around.”

“And?”

“And losing it frightens me less than becoming the man Helix expected me to be.”

Her grip softens.

“I do not want to be the reason you lose everything,” she says.

“You are not the reason.” I turn my hand so our fingers link properly. “You are the reason I can see what everything is worth.”

Lucy looks away first, blinking hard.

I collect the Westline evidence case with my free hand. “We have one hour.”

A breath of laughter escapes her, shaky and real. “Of course we do.”

Together, we begin sorting the evidence for the review that might end my career.

This time, I don’t stand at the valley’s rim as an observer.

I stand inside its risk, with Lucy beside me, and sign my name anyway.

CHAPTER 19

LUCY

Celia arrives with flour on her sleeve and a secret in her pocket.

I’m still sorting evidence in the council chamber when the older woman slips through the side door, locks it behind her, and crosses the room without greeting anyone. That alone makes me stand straighter. Celia normally greets chairs, walls, and cold stoves if the morning is long enough.

Today, she only looks at Rethan’s sealed evidence log, then at me.

“I found something in the bakery ledger,” Celia says.

Torren looks up from the projection table. “Unless Helix is hiding inside bread accounts, I’m going to need more.”

Celia ignores him and pulls a folded sheet from her apron pocket. “My grandmother used old civic shorthand when she recorded community baking allocations. I took it for habit. It wasn’t.”

I take the sheet carefully.

At first, it looks ordinary. Flour measures. Oven time. Festival loaves. Deliveries to the schoolhouse, clinic, and elder hall.

Then I catch the marks tucked beside certain entries.

Three dots beneath water.

A split line beside burial bread.

A small sunburst beside harvest tithe.