Chapter 180: He Finally Put It in Writing

Dove made room for the carrier at their outdoor table, but she kept her dinner in front of her. Ash had already interrupted enough meals without being physically present. He wasn’t getting this one too.

Before taking the papers, Dove pointed at his boots. "How are you beating everybody here? Please tell me there’s a bus nobody bothered to mention."

"I jump between bases," he said. "It’s my awakened skill. Only places I’ve reached myself. A new base means traveling there the hard way first."

Dove stared. "Then why aren’t you carrying all of us?"

"Mail comes with me. People don’t. And I have to visit every base in my circuit before I can return to the one I started from. I can’t bounce between two gates because someone wants an answer."

"Of course there’s a catch. Can you find people too?"

He shook his head. "I still ask at freight offices and walk to the address. Your shop’s where I delivered before. I can’t jump to you."

So Ash couldn’t hitch a ride, and the carrier couldn’t magically track her down a road. Dove accepted the papers. The public statement rejected Garren’s authority to expel her and denied anyone permission to retrieve her. Ash, the keeper, Varek, and several witnesses had signed it.

"Were they there when this was signed?"

He nodded. "I heard it read aloud before I took the copy. Others went to the road stations."

Thorne leaned close when she offered the page. His expression changed at Varek’s name, then settled into something harder to read. Edrik stayed beside her, his knee touching hers beneath the table.

Ash’s letter was shorter. Garren had been removed from deciding who entered or left the Warren while the matter was examined. Copies had gone to the road stations. Ash couldn’t promise that every person who had heard a rumor would stop believing it, but he had told his people that Dove had left under an order he did not support.

Then came the sentence that made her put down her fork.

He had made it easier for others to believe the worst of her, and that part belonged to him.

Dove looked toward the restaurant, where a man carried bread through the door. Her dinner sat cooling beneath the awning they had built themselves.

She had wanted those words while she was still cold and frightened. Getting them beside a meal she had earned for herself didn’t make them useless. It made her angry about how long they had taken.

"Do you want me to go inside?" the carrier asked.

"No. I want a minute without anybody asking what I want."

He nodded and drank his water. Thorne’s hand found hers beneath the table. He didn’t tell her this was good news or that she should feel relieved. Edrik didn’t offer to turn the letter into something she could burn. They let her read the rest.

Ash was at the western freight yard. The final line had been pressed so hard into the paper that she could feel it with her thumb: I came this far to see you, Dove. I’m not turning back without seeing you’re alive myself.

"He knows you saw me," she said to the carrier.

"I told him. He’s still waiting."

Of course he was. Someone else saying she was fine apparently counted for less than Ash getting to stand over her and decide it himself.

She looked toward the street, angry that knowing he was close had made her check it. This was her evening. She wanted her dinner and Thorne’s hand, not another man deciding he belonged in both.

"I’m not answering the meeting part tonight," she said.

The carrier could wait until morning before continuing his circuit. He could also walk back to the nearby freight yard tonight. Dove asked him to tell Ash she had received the pages and would decide when she was ready.

"Tell him not to turn up here," she added. "I’m not having him looming over breakfast. I like breakfast."

She asked whether the public statement included her new appearance. The carrier said it did not; it referred to the earlier notices by name and date. Dove was relieved. She wanted the claim against her corrected, not a fresh description sent to every man who happened to hear it. She asked him to keep her current room out of his messages too, and he repeated the request back before leaving.

After the man left, Edrik picked up the signed statement with her permission. "This may help when someone thinks an old notice is worth more than your answer."

"It won’t stop every idiot," she said, thinking of the men who had preferred a rumor to her answer.

"No. That’s why you have us."

Thorne gave him a sideways look. "Sometimes she stops us too."

Dove laughed despite herself and took another bite of dinner. It had gone lukewarm, which seemed like a petty thing to resent after everything in the letter. She resented it anyway. Edrik traded his covered plate for hers. The quiet kindness caught her harder than Ash’s carefully chosen words.

"You don’t have to do that," she said.

"I know. Eat while it’s warm."

She did. Later, she kept the signed statement with their travel papers and the private letter somewhere customers couldn’t reach it. Ash’s feelings weren’t a new display for her shop.

They closed together and packed for the charging visit, keeping the mechanic’s payment separate from their food. Dove put Ash’s letter away before it swallowed the rest of her evening.

In the rear room, she sat on the bed while Thorne brushed the end of her tail. Edrik folded the yellow dress she’d left over a chair and set it beside her clean shirt.

"Do you think I should see him?" she asked finally.

Thorne stopped brushing long enough to meet her eyes. "I think you should decide after you’ve slept."

"You both keep giving me sensible answers. It’s ruining the mood."

Edrik looked at her across the bed. "We can ruin it another way if you prefer."

She kicked gently at his leg, and he caught her ankle with a smile that made her glad she had finished dinner. Thorne resumed brushing. Dove caught his free hand and squeezed it, remembering that his own letter still had no answer. She hadn’t forgotten his father, and she didn’t want him mistaking her silence for that. He squeezed back without asking her to fix the waiting. For a few minutes, they stayed close and let the brush move through her tail.

Before sleeping, she asked Sprout to show tomorrow’s appointments without putting Ash’s name above them.

"I can hide the reminder."

"Hide the dragon while you’re at it."

Sprout hid the reminder, not the folded letter with her papers. Dove checked the mechanic’s appointment instead. She wanted an honest answer before she spent anything else on it.

Then the dealer’s fault list slipped from the map, exposing the warning beneath the inspection notes.

Water had entered beneath the rear bed. The place she had most wanted to call hers might be the reason the whole thing wasn’t worth buying.