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The perfect text to Mat would be required to loosen the tight knot of silence between them. Ava considered her options the next morning while she waited for STÄDA’s shipping manager to take her on a tour of STÄDA’s refurbished warehouse. The tour was part of a new shadowing program for STÄDA employees to learn about different parts of the business, and while most of her colleagues groaned about it, Ava was quietly excited.
The floor manager was a short, compact woman who wore her red hair in a tight circular bun. She led Ava from Floor 2 down a flight of service stairs and through a set of double doors on which two hardhats and two orange vests hung from Supportive Door Hooks. She handed Ava a hardhat and recited a list of preliminary safety procedures. Ava pushed aside her pending te
