Chapter 9: Served

Jem took the envelope.

He didn't open it.

He signed the man's clipboard in his neat block capitals and handed it back.

"Anything else?" he said.

"That's it," the process server said, and left with the bell ringing behind him.

Four customers stood frozen at the counter.

A man in a fleece vest was holding a bike lock he hadn't paid for.

A woman with a toddler on her hip was staring at me.

I was standing on the bottom stair in Jem's T-shirt with bare legs.

"Morning," I said.

"Morning," the woman with the toddler said.

The apprentice cleared her throat.

"Who's next?" she said, very loud.

Nobody moved.

Jem slit the envelope open with a key blank and skimmed the first page.

"Defamation," he read. "Tortious interference. Breach of confidentiality. And the shop, for hosting the stream."

"They're suing your grandfather's shop?"

"They're suing my grandfather's shop."

He turned the page.

"Eight million. Jointly and severally."

"What does that mean?" the apprentice asked.

"It means they want it from whoever's easier to squeeze," I said.

The man in the fleece vest put his bike lock down on the counter.

"I'll pay for this later," he told Jem. "I want to see what she does."

Nobody left.

I went back up the stairs.

I came down five minutes later in my own jeans, with my laptop, the borrowed one that had never seen Hush.

I set it on the counter beside the empty casserole dish.

"How many results came in?" Jem asked.

"I haven't looked."

"Look."

Since the Hush Test went up, couples had been running it themselves and sending their screen recordings to the shop email.

The apprentice had been sorting them into folders on her lunch breaks.

She called it her emotional support spreadsheet.

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