“New assignment?” I ask.
“Transferred from Haven West this week,” he says. “Luca.”
“Luca,” I repeat. I tilt my head toward the playground. “How many today?”
“Four kids out with Mia near the beds. Two in music,” he says. “Adults are in group in the long room. Doc Navarro left ten minutes ago to get a consult. She’ll be back after lunch.”
Navarro should be here. She doesn’t leave on South Annex days unless it’s a true emergency. I nod like it’s fine because it has to be fine, then look toward the admin building.
Reid steps out into the sun. “Roadwork handled?” he asks me, as if he didn’t ask me to alter the route himself.
“Clean detour,” I say. “Where’s Willa?” Willa is our day supervisor at South Annex. She runs the floor with a calm that can cut through three layers of fear. I expect her to be here with a laminated sheet of updates and a list of things she needs from me that I will try to give her before she can ask again.
“Out sick,” Reid says. “Stomach. Texted in at dawn. Sera’s running point until tomorrow.”
“Anyone cover Willa’s check-ins?” I ask.
“Sera,” he repeats smoothly.
I don’t love that. I also know I have a woman beside me who is looking at everything all at once with a mind I am trying to convince. I park the discomfort, but I do not let it go. “We’ll see her,” I say, nodding toward the far building. “Start with the open studio.”
Reid opens the door and gestures us inside.
Inside, the light is what we designed. It slides along pale floors and catches against the interior glass and doesn’t throw shadows where shadows turn into shapes that whisper. The air is warm but not heavy.
“Morning,” I say to the room at large. Heads lift. People clock us and then return to what they were doing. That is what I want. We are scenery if we are lucky. We are a breeze that doesn’t slam doors.
A teenage boy at the far table looks up twice and then puts his head down and keeps drawing. He’s got the tight shoulders of someone who expects to be called on for something other than his talent. Aurora gravitate toward him without being obvious. She knows how to move through rooms like this.
“I’m Aurora,” she says when she’s near him. “Can I sit here?”
He shrugs in the universal adolescent language forsure, but don’t expect me to talk.She sits, opens her sketchbook, and starts to draw a line that mirrors the one he’s carving. He glances. She doesn’t comment. She just keeps moving her pencil. He draws faster. The two of them fall into a parallel that isn’t performance. It’s companionship, which is sometimes all a kid needs to stop thinking about running.
I watch the way Aurora tilts her head when she sees something that isn’t shape yet and then waits for it to become one. A stupid, dangerous thought claws at the back of my skull:maybe today it’s me the world gives her.
Sera appears, hair in a knot, clipboard under her arm. She’s got paint on her wrist like she’s been on the floor not in the office, which is the right answer. She greets me with a quick nod and a “Morning, Cass,” like we are in the middle of a week not making a tour for my benefit. That earns her points she doesn’t know she had to earn.
“Willa out?” I ask.
“She texted at five,” Sera says. “Fever. We told her to stay away. I’ve got the slots covered. Mia took kids to the beds and will loop back for group. The women in long room are halfway through a check-in. I’ll sit in when we hit the wire talk.”
“Anyone new?” I ask.
“One intake,” she says, voice rounding around the word like it’s fragile and she doesn’t want to drop it. “Came late last night. Placed in 2C. Sleeping now. I’ll introduce later if she wants it.”
“Alright,” I say. “Security?”
Sera glances at Reid and back at me. “Steady. Two on the gate. One walking the south fence where the camera glitched last night. Luca transferred from West; I like him. He reads quietly.”
“Any glitch?”
“Minor,” Reid supplies. “Dropped feed for ten seconds on the south run. Recovered. I’ve got the tech on it this afternoon.”
I slide my phone out of my jacket and glance at the internal feed. The grid is green. It was green in the car after one blip. It is green now. If there’s a ghost in the line, it’s sleeping. I file it next to the detour and Willa’s stomach. I’ll wake it later. Not now. Not with Aurora watching me decide what matters.
I move us on a slow path through the building. We pass the music room and Aurora doesn’t look in right away. She looks out through the glass into the garden, then back to see who is in there. A girl with a cello. A man with his face turned to the wall, headphones half-on, half-off, fingers on a keyboard like he’s playing with the idea of sound. Aurora smiles at the girl and then keeps walking. The girl’s bow arm relaxes a fraction when she thinks no one is looking. I store it. It’s the kind of tiny change that tells me a week from now that girl will step into the sun without flinching.
We stand in a doorway while a therapist at a whiteboard in the long room reads off the group’s rules. She makes it achorus like a game they pretend they are too old to play. The women repeat each one with flat voices that are not flat. When the therapist glances at me, I shake my head.Keep going. Don’t lose your rhythm because a donor walked by.
