Page 37 of Puck Daddies
She puts the phone down and rubs the heel of her hand over her eye. “We can flag. We can post. It doesn’t stop the score.”
“Let me call my lawyers. They can do a takedown request for bad-faith reviews. They can send a letter to the platform and force a freeze while they verify accounts. They can send a cease and desist to the source. They’ll move fast.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t afford your lawyers.”
“I’ve got it.”
She backs up a step. “No.”
“Meg.”
“It’s my shop. It’s my problem. I will fix it.”
“You don’t have to do it alone. This is time-sensitive. The longer it sits, the more it sticks.”
“I know that.” She pulls in a breath and lets it out slowly. “I also know what it looks like if I bring in your family’s lawyer and they steamroll a problem for me. People will say I can’t handle my business without money I didn’t earn.”
“It doesn’t matter?—”
“This is my problem, Oliver.”
I lean both hands on the counter. “Okay. Then we still need a plan. Flag and log everything. Screenshots with time stamps. Send a press note to Baltimore Eats and the neighborhood blog about the fundraiser and the night we had. Ask regulars to post real reviews this week. I can get our sponsors to order a drop-off for their offices. Large tickets push the queue back up.”
“I’ve got this. No lawyers.”
“I won’t call unless you ask.” It costs me to say it.
“Thank you,” she says. She picks up the coffee and sits at the table like if she doesn’t sit she might break something. I sit across from her. She scrolls and flags. Sips and scrolls some more.
It takes time, but her hand is steady now. That’s good. She texts the staff and adds a line about not replying to anything from personal accounts.
I clear my throat. “If it spikes again, can I at least get a first consult pro bono? Quiet. No billing. Just advice on the right language and the right inbox to hit.”
She presses her lips together and thinks. “If it’s free and it doesn’t tie me to your name in any public way.”
“I’ll call a guy who does platform policy for small businesses. He owes me a favor from a Habitat thing. He’ll write me an email I can forward you. That’s it.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
I step into my room to make the call. It’s quick. He says he’ll send me three bullet points and two email addresses for the platforms’ small business rep lines. He tells me to include the surge graph and note the copy-and-paste language. He tells me to have her keep screenshots and not just links. I thank him and hang up. I text it all to Meg. She gives me a thumbs-up.
I lean in the door. “You want toast?”
“Fine,” she says, distracted. “One. Light.”
I toast. I butter. I bring it to the table with a plate and a napkin because doing anything helpful makes me feel like a person again.
She eats a bite and relaxes a hair. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
We sit with the quiet for a minute. She stares at the phone and doesn’t touch it.
“I hate that I’m saying no to help,” she says after a while. “I hate the pride in it. It’s not about pride. It’s about not repeating patterns.”
“I know,” I say. “I get it. I like doing things myself too much. It makes me dumb sometimes.”
“It doesn’t make you dumb,” she says. “It makes youyou.”
