Chapter Fifteen AC: Claire Walks Away
Claire found Nolan standing beside his car at the far end of the parking lot after the market had been open for several hours.
He had not entered the hall again.
He watched people carrying purchases toward their vehicles and looked annoyed by their ordinary happiness.
Claire stopped several yards away and asked why he was still there.
Nolan said he wanted to see whether the event could function without his company.
Claire told him it was functioning.
He said a few busy aisles did not prove anything about the future.
Claire asked whether he had arranged the false cancellation messages.
Nolan said he did not know what she was talking about.
She asked about the unauthorized announcement over the public address system.
He shrugged and said people made mistakes during complicated events.
Claire told him that his refusal to answer would not change what the organizers had documented.
Nolan stepped away from the car.
He said she was enjoying humiliating him because she had always resented the success of his business.
Claire remembered being seventeen and helping him stack brochures after the first festival collapsed.
She had believed that working harder would make him less angry.
She had spent years accepting responsibility for his moods.
Now she saw the same pattern in the way he spoke about the vendors.
He claimed their confusion was an attack on him rather than a consequence of the promises he had made.
Claire said she was not there to humiliate him.
She was there because people had paid for spaces that did not exist.
Nolan asked whether she thought he had wanted the first festival to fail.
Claire said his intentions did not erase what had happened.
He looked toward the hall and asked whether she remembered how proud she had been when he gave her a staff badge.
Claire said she remembered.
She also remembered the sellers crying beside trucks that had nowhere to unload.
Nolan said she was choosing strangers over her father.
Claire answered that she was choosing to tell the truth about something she had witnessed.
He asked whether she intended to keep working with Priya.
Claire said she had agreed to help through the weekend.
After that, she would decide what work she wanted to do next.
Nolan said she would come back when the attention faded.
Claire shook her head.
She had not come to the parking lot to negotiate her return.
She had come to ask whether he would stop interfering with the market.
Nolan did not answer.
Claire turned toward the hall.
He called her name, and she stopped without facing him.
He said Dennis had been a difficult man who made everyone else’s work harder.
Claire replied that Dennis had also been right about the blocked entrance.
She continued walking.
Inside, a child was trying to choose between two painted bowls at Ruth’s table.
Claire helped the child’s mother carry a bag while the decision was made.
The small task felt more useful than another hour of arguing beside a car.
