Clever girl. But not clever enough.
“Tell me about Phoenix,” I say.
She freezes, the cup halfway to her mouth. “What?”
“Your application mentioned you studied there. Before Florence.”
“I—” She sets the cup down. “How do you know that?”
“The foundation keeps thorough records.” A lie. The foundation’s records are minimal. I know about Phoenix because I paid a very expensive investigator to build a comprehensive file on Violet Murphy’s entire life, from her birth certificate to her last grocery receipt. “I’m curious about your training. It’s an unusual path to restoration work.”
The tension in her shoulders eases, just slightly. A question about her work is safe. Familiar. Not the minefield of personal history I almost stepped into.
“I started in structural engineering,” she says. “But I kept getting distracted by the buildings themselves. The history in them. The hands that built them.” She turns her cup in circles on the saucer, a nervous habit I’ve seen her perfom a dozen times.“My advisor thought I was wasting my potential. Said I could be designing skyscrapers instead of crawling around in rubble.”
“And what did you think?”
“I thought skyscrapers were boring.” A small smile. “All glass and steel and ego. No soul. Nothing that would make someone weep in four hundred years when it finally came down.”
She doesn’t know what she reveals when she talks like this. Doesn’t understand that every word confirms what I already suspected. That she sees the world the way I do. That she understands the value of what’s damaged, what’s dying, what everyone else would discard as beyond saving.
We are the same, she and I. The only difference is that she restores broken things.
I collect them.
I lean forward, close enough that she has to look at my mouth when I speak. It’s deliberate. I’ve watched women respond to proximity before, the slight flush, the quickened breath, the way their eyes drop to my lips and stay there. Violet’s no different. Her pupils dilate slightly. Good.
“Finish your coffee,” I say. “Then show me your documentation on the structural concerns. I’d like to see your calculations.”
She nods, lifting her cup again as a small blush creeps into her cheeks. I wait until she takes the first sip before I allow myself to relax into my chair.
We talk for another twenty minutes. Technical details, mostly. Things like load-bearing capacities, humidity readings, the chemical composition of the original mortar versus modern alternatives. She grows more animated as we discuss her work, her hands dancing, her eyes bright with a fervor of someone who has found their purpose.
I listen. Ask questions. Memorize the cadence of her voice, the way she pauses before difficult words, the little furrowbetween her brows when she’s calculating something in her head.
This will be the last conversation we have as strangers. The last time she looks at me without fear or hatred or the complicated tangle of emotions that captivity breeds.
I find I want to preserve it. This moment. Her trust, fragile and unearned, offered up like a gift she doesn’t know she’s giving.
She finishes her espresso and reaches for the small pitcher of milk just as my phone rings. I ignore it.
“Would you like another?” I gesture toward her empty cup.
“I should get back to work.” But she doesn’t move to leave. “The light will be gone in a few hours, and there’s a section of the ceiling I still need to photograph.”
“One more. My treat.”
She hesitates. Then nods.
I catch Rosa’s eye, and signal for two more. She brings them quickly, her suspicion softened somewhat by the past hour of civilized conversation. The sedative goes into Violet’s cup while Rosa’s back is turned, a movement so practiced it might as well be breathing.
Violet adds milk. Stirs.
Drinks.
“This is good,” she says, surprised. “Better than the first one.”
It’s the same coffee, tesoro. You just can’t taste what’s underneath.
