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We spend the next several minutes going through the drawing and the accompanying records, but the conversation gradually drifts away from the file.

Ross studies the margin notes before asking, “Do you always notice things everyone else has already stopped looking for?”

“Usually only when I’m paid to.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

I glance at him. “What did you mean?”

He leans back slightly.

“Why this? Provenance, private collections, archives. It isn’t the most obvious route.”

“For someone like me?”

The words are out before I can stop them. Ross pauses. It’s the first time I’ve seen him hesitate over a sentence.

“No,” he says carefully. “That came out wrong.”

I wait.

He exhales once through his nose.

“I meant most people don’t end up in this kind of work unless something pulls them toward it.”

That answer softens me more than I expect. I close the folder and rest my hands over it.

“I like knowing where things have been.”

Ross’s attention stays on me.

I continue.

“Not just who owned something or what it’s worth. I like the gaps. The parts people forget. A painting can survive a war, a marriage, a bankruptcy, three countries, five owners, and somehow end up hanging in the same room for eighty years.”

I realize I’ve been talking too long and stop.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Why?”

“I’m rambling.”

“You’re not.”

I glance at him.

Ross gives me a small nod. “Keep going.”

There’s nothing performative in his expression. He actually wants to hear the answer.

So I do.

“I think I like that objects remember things people don’t,” I say.

“Not literally, obviously. But records disappear. Families rewrite stories. People forget details. Sometimes the object is the only thing left that tells you something happened.”

Ross looks down at the drawing, then back at me.