Chapter 54: Two Kinds of Homework

Undefined Conviction

Chapter 54: Two Kinds of Homework

Mia's second interview lasted forty minutes, considerably longer than the first, and she came out of the building with an expression Cole hadn't seen on her since she was maybe nine years old and had just won a spelling bee she'd genuinely doubted herself into losing beforehand. She walked down the steps slowly, savoring the moment before she'd let herself announce it, the specific delayed gratification of someone who'd learned, the hard way, that good news deserved a proper entrance.

"Well?" Reeve asked, practically vibrating on the front steps where they'd all agreed to wait, honey bread bag between them as a bribe for good news nobody had wanted to jinx by mentioning out loud.

"I'm in," Mia said, and then, like the words needed a second attempt to feel real, "I'm actually in. Full spot. Not provisional. They said my portfolio was one of the strongest they'd seen from a public school applicant in years."

The steps erupted into the specific chaotic noise of people who'd been holding their excitement in reserve for weeks, Reeve nearly knocking the honey bread over in his enthusiasm, Cole pulling her into a hug that she only pretended to resist for the first two seconds before hugging back properly, arms tight enough that he could feel her shaking slightly with the release of two months of quietly carried tension.

"You did that," Cole said. "Entirely yourself. No mark, no Verdict, no supernatural anything. Just you being genuinely brilliant while everyone else's chaos was happening around you."

"Don't make it weird."

"It's supposed to be weird. This is a weird-worthy moment." He pulled back, grinning, something fiercely proud settling behind his expression. "I mean it, though. You built this entirely on your own, in a house where everyone else's crisis usually eats all the oxygen. That's not small."

Mia's composure cracked slightly, eyes going bright in a way she clearly hadn't planned on in public. "Thanks," she managed. "For actually noticing. And for not making today about anything else."

"Today's entirely yours. Tomorrow the world can have its crisis back."

Reeve produced a slightly squashed cupcake from his backpack, clearly smuggled along on the off-chance the news went well, and presented it with the solemnity of a much grander gift. "I got you this. It's been in my bag for two hours, so structurally it's had a rough day, but the sentiment's intact."

"That's the nicest and saddest cupcake I've ever received."

"High praise. I'll take it."

The world, predictably, didn't wait for tomorrow, though it had the decency to keep its demands considerably smaller for once.

Cole and Vesper walked the six blocks to Halvern Textiles that same afternoon, mostly because Vesper had been unable to concentrate on anything else since finding the photograph, and Cole had decided, quietly, that some mysteries deserved company even when they couldn't be solved in a single visit.

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The factory stood mostly intact, boarded windows and a chain-link fence keeping out anyone without better tools than curiosity, but the sign above the entrance had survived decades of weather well enough to still read clearly: HALVERN TEXTILE WORKS, EST. and a year that made Cole's chest tighten on reflex — decades before Kaelmoor, considerably closer to whatever era had first started producing marks like his own.

An old man sat on a bench across the street, feeding pigeons with the specific unhurried patience Cole had started associating, uncomfortably, with people who remembered things nobody else did anymore.

"You two lost?" the man asked, not looking up.

"Just curious," Cole said. "About the factory."

"Not much to be curious about. Closed before either of you were born. Economic downturn, they always say. Never quite the whole story, that phrase." The man finally looked up, eyes sharp despite his age, studying them both with more attention than idle curiosity usually carried. "My mother worked there. Told me stories, growing up. Said there was an accident, before the closure. Something with the machines going wrong all at once, workers getting hurt in ways that didn't quite make sense afterward. Company hushed it up quick. Paid everyone involved to stop asking questions."

Vesper went very still beside Cole. "Did she ever mention a name? Anyone specific who was there?"

The old man considered the question a long moment, feeding another handful of crumbs to pigeons that clearly recognized him as a regular benefactor.

"There was a young woman," he said finally. "Worked the machines. My mother mentioned her sometimes — said she had a strange energy about her, even before the accident. Said after it, she disappeared entirely. No funeral. No records. Company just quietly removed her name from the payroll like she'd never existed at all."

"Do you remember her name?"

"After sixty years? No. Wish I did, for your sake, whatever you're actually looking for." He studied Vesper a moment longer, something almost knowing behind his weathered expression. "You've got her look, though. If it means anything. My mother kept a photograph, actually — from a company outing, before the accident. I could probably still find it, if you're genuinely curious enough to wait a few days for an old man to dig through boxes he hasn't touched in a decade."

"We'd appreciate that," Vesper said, voice carefully controlled despite the tremor Cole could feel radiating off her where their shoulders touched. "More than you probably realize."

The old man nodded, unhurried, and returned his attention to the pigeons, the conversation apparently concluded on his own terms rather than theirs.

They walked home slowly, the factory's boarded windows fading behind them into ordinary city blocks, and Vesper didn't say much until they were nearly back at the apartment.

"An accident with the machines," she said finally. "Sixty years before Kaelmoor. Maybe that's actually where all of this started. Not Kaelmoor. Something smaller, quieter, decades earlier, that nobody bothered remembering properly because it only cost one factory instead of an entire city."

"Maybe."

"Or maybe I'm building a story out of coincidences because I want my missing years to mean something bigger than just being missing." She exhaled, frustrated with herself. "I don't know which anymore. Every thread I pull just gives me more thread."

"For what it's worth," Cole said, "even if it turns out to be nothing, today wasn't wasted. You got an old man to remember his mother fondly for twenty minutes. That's not nothing, whatever else it does or doesn't turn out to mean."

Vesper looked at him a long moment, something softening behind her tired eyes. "You're annoyingly good at finding the version of things worth keeping, even when the actual answer's still missing."

"Learned from watching Mia today, honestly. Whole life doesn't have to be about the big scary mystery. Sometimes it's just an old man and his pigeons and a mother's memory. That counts too."

She bumped his shoulder gently, and they walked the rest of the way home in the comfortable quiet that had become, somewhere along the way, considerably more valuable to both of them than any answer either was still chasing.

[End of Chapter 54]