Elena’s face fell, but she did not cry. She nodded once, as if a suspicion had finally become solid enough to carry.
“I thought so,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She looked surprised by the apology. “You didn’t do it.”
“No,” I said. “But I benefited from not seeing it sooner.”
Grace glanced at me, not correcting, not interrupting.
Elena’s shoulders loosened a fraction. “What happens now?”
“We preserve everything,” Grace said. “We speak to investigators. We protect you from being pressured.”
Elena nodded, then looked at me again. “There’s one more thing.”
The room seemed to tighten.
“The man who mailed that note,” she said, “I think he came to my campus two weeks ago.”
Grace leaned forward. “Why do you think that?”
“He attended a public lecture I gave on nonprofit transparency. Afterward, he told me some charities are built like locked rooms. Then he said the first key is usually held by the person who thinks she was only a guest.”
I felt a chill pass over my skin.
“What did he look like?”
“Older. Gray hair. Very formal. He had a scar near his left eyebrow.” Elena hesitated. “He said his name was Daniel Vale.”
My father’s name.
The lounge blurred at the edges.
Grace turned to me slowly. “Olivia?”
I shook my head. “That’s impossible.”
My father had died when I was twenty-three. A heart attack, sudden and devastating, while I was in my first year at Sterling Point. He had left behind a modest estate, a stack of handwritten notes in every book he owned, and the belief that I could survive any room by refusing to shrink inside it.
“He must have used a fake name,” I said.
Elena’s eyes filled with sympathy. “Maybe.”
But she did not sound convinced.
I stood and walked to the window overlooking the lobby entrance. Outside, the rain had returned, silvering the pavement beneath the awning. My reflection hovered in the glass, pale and composed, though my heart was pounding.
Behind me, Grace asked Elena to describe him again.
Older. Gray hair. Scar. Careful voice.