The disclosure hit the public record overnight.
I knew because my phone started buzzing at dawn. Not Cole — people. The oat-milk-cortado woman. Two suppliers. A neighboring shopowner in the station corridor. A barista I'd worked with three years ago who now ran a pour-over bar in LoHi. All of them had seen the filing. All of them were reaching out with the specific, careful concern of people who'd read a legal document about a woman they bought coffee from and didn't know what to say.
You okay? The text from the oat-milk woman. Her name was Helen. I'd been serving her for months without knowing her name and now she was texting me because a public filing had told her something about my life I hadn't chosen to share.
I'm fine, I typed. The shop is open. Come get your cortado.
