NEVA POV
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Holt discharged the lien the same day.
He didn't announce it. He made the call, produced the paperwork, sent it to Mitch for confirmation, and was eating Bekah's lunch at the counter by the time it was confirmed — the most unbothered version of himself I'd seen, as if the act of doing the right thing in the right window had simply removed a weight he'd been carrying so long he'd stopped noticing its shape.
Mitch reviewed the documentation with the thoroughness of someone who trusted but verified as a matter of principle, and then he set his phone face-down at the counter beside his coffee and looked at Bekah's wall for about forty seconds.
Bekah watched him do this.
"Done?" she said.
"Done," he said.
She put a plate in front of him.
He ate.
This was, I was learning,
