I sat with that.
"Why didn't you tell me," I said, "that you were building this level of care into it."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Because I don't generally announce the emotional content of my work," he said. "I let the work carry it." He paused, and something in his face shifted — the specific opening I'd watched more of since Brinne's arrival, the loosening of a man who had spent years being precise about everything except the parts of himself that weren't strictly professional. "Also—" He stopped.
"Also?" I said.
"Brinne helped with the structural organization," he said, to his coffee rather than to me. "The witness section specifically. She has an excellent instinct for what councils actually need to receive information — not just what's true, but what's structured in a way trut
