I had only to stop being the thing that held it up.

Chapter 19 — The Dean’s Visit

A knock at my door interrupted my reading, and when I opened it, Dean Harrow was standing on the mat, in a wool sweater instead of his academic robes, a leather satchel over one shoulder, looking far less like a dean and far more like a kind, ordinary man.

I made him coffee, and he sat at my table looking out over the Seattle skyline, and after a while he glanced at the manila folder from the prosecutor’s office.

“The closing documentation,” he said, gently.

“It came, then.”