“And I grew up believing that if I worked hard enough, I could make people treat me fairly,” she said. “We were both wrong about how much control one person has.”
He was quiet. Then he kissed her hand, briefly, with no audience beyond a passing delivery driver.
At the institute the following day, Luz Herrera had arranged a community documentation session. Tomas brought his aunt Maria and photographs of Elena Vega in the Harbor Circle's original kitchen. Pearl arrived carrying the ledger. Agnes came with her daughter and insisted on dictating her account of the meeting with Talbot's consultant. She wanted a complete statement, including why she had been tempted to sign.
Selene showed everyone how their materials would be stored and who would have access. Families could withdraw sensitive personal information before anything was made public. The institute would not claim ownership of donated objects merely because it scanned them. Tomas had never met an academic who spent so much time explaining permissions, and she knew it sounded tedious.
“That all seems like a lot for old photographs,” he said.
“It seemed like a lot for my research once,” she answered. “I was wrong about that.”
Luz found a second paragraph in Emilio's letter that no one had been able to read. It referred to a witness who worked for the freight company and had personally seen the women turn over their renovation savings. The witness had signed a statement in 1987, although the writer doubted the statement would survive in the company's files.
“We have the lawyer's invoice,” Selene said. “Maybe the original correspondence is in the same box.”
“Perhaps,” Luz said. “But the letter is not the same as a recording.”
They made a list of places to search and assigned the requests to people who had the authority to make them. The work was dull. That afternoon a photograph yielded a street number, which matched a building permit. The permit led to an inspection report and the name of the company that had installed the ground-floor stove. A new witness might be reachable through its successor. Piece by piece, what had seemed a family legend became a history capable of being examined.
Then someone posted a photograph of Selene and Dante outside the union hall.
The caption read: MOB TYCOON'S GIRLFRIEND LEADS CAMPAIGN TO BLOCK PAYOUTS TO WORKERS.
It was accompanied by a screenshot of the brochure bearing Selene's name. The original had already been corrected, but the correction was nowhere in the post. She felt old panic begin in her hands. She had once watched a lie become easier to repeat than the documents disproving it.
Mara told her not to answer in anger. Instead, Selene made a brief written statement clarifying that she represented no side in the property transaction, that her institute was documenting the Harbor Circle's history with the participants' permission, and that she had not been a consultant to Talbot. She attached the developer's correction and the institute's conflict-of-interest policy. She gave it to an editor rather than arguing in comments.
Dante called before she finished drafting. “I can have my communications team—”
“No,” she said.
He stopped. “All right. What do you need?”
“A ride to the institute later. I left my umbrella on the train.”
He laughed despite himself. “That I can do.”
At six, heavy rain began. Water poured over the gutters and pooled in the alley behind Harbor Street House. Rosa called Tomas because a ceiling stain above the second-floor landing had darkened to nearly black. A piece of plaster had dropped onto the stairs.