Monday afternoon, June 30, 2014 — earlier that day — Lia
The drive was small enough to disappear beneath Lia's palm. She had carried more weight in the days since Nova than anything that small ought to hold.
Rome was alive. Niq had told her twice, once by phone and once in a message after visiting. Lia read the message again before putting the phone down.
At Nova she had been looking at Maine with Yas. Then Kash had spoken, Maine had moved, and the room had become people trying to leave or reach somebody on the floor. She remembered how long she had spent angry about where Maine was looking before the gun appeared.
She disliked every version of that memory.
The journal lay beside the laptop. She plugged in the drive.
Folders appeared: DEVELOPMENT, PROPERTY, CITY, PEOPLE, FINANCIALS, MEETINGS, PHOTOS, CROWN.
And FOR_LIA.
She rested the cursor above her own name, then moved it away. First she wanted to know what he had been keeping. First she wanted one thing outside her head to agree with the things happening inside it.
She listed the folders on a page and set her phone beside it. Niq hadn't replied yet. Lia turned the ringer up and opened PROPERTY.
The first file matched the page from the envelope. Same address and reference. She moved to the next.
PROPERTY held the envelope's records and copies she hadn't seen. She made one list of the familiar material, then another of what was new. A page stored in two folders stayed one page.
DEVELOPMENT included the Atlas partnership she had followed. Beside it was a note about locating the earlier transfer documents—the ones her unsuccessful call to the firm had been meant to find. Her father had asked the same question.
She checked the file date against the paper and wrote Chancellor's name beside the request. This time she had something specific to ask for.
PEOPLE was less useful at first. Initials, names without explanations, references to meetings whose notes were elsewhere. She set those aside and got up to stretch before she began guessing.
Carmen knocked and came in without waiting long enough for Lia to decide what she wanted hidden.
"Niq hear anything else?"
"He's recovering."
Her mother leaned against the dresser. The same dresser that had held these things while they all moved around the room believing they knew what was in it.
"You spoke to Maine?"
"No."
"Since the hospital?"
"We talked before Nova."
Carmen watched her face. "Good talk?"
"Not really."
"You can still ask how he's doing."
Lia looked at the phone. She knew. Knowing what she could do had not made doing it easier.
Carmen's eyes moved to the laptop, then the journal.
"Take a break before it turns into night."
"I will."
Her mother did not say you said that already. She left the door partly open, and Lia let it remain that way.
Lia listened to her mother's footsteps move away before opening Maine's contact. The message field was empty.
How are you?
It was a reasonable question. It was also the question everyone had been sending him since his father was shot. She could hear his I'm good before he typed it.
She erased it.
I'm sorry about Rome.
That sounded as though she had watched from a distance. She had been in the room. She remembered Maine on the floor, his hands trying to hold his friend in a way that made the bleeding stop belonging to the night.
She erased that too.
You don't have to answer. I hope Rome's doing better. I'm thinking about you both.
She pressed Send.
Then she returned to the drive and let the phone remain quiet.
*
In MEETINGS, a note referred to a conversation whose record wasn't there. Lia searched the same words in CITY and FINANCIALS, found a second reference, and no account of what had been said. She wrote the missing record beside the earlier transfer papers she needed. Two things to ask for, instead of another hour opening folders.
PHOTOS held more than the image she had carried to graduation. She opened a familiar face, studied it, and closed it before longing could become another excuse to avoid the rest.
Then she opened CROWN.
The word had the uncomfortable force of something adults might have said in another room while she and Maine were children. It belonged on the drive without becoming understandable merely because her father had capitalized it.
NASIR_CONNORS appeared inside the material she began sorting.
She stopped with her hand on the mouse.
Uncle Nasir, smoothing Maine's collar outside Barclays. Uncle Nasir looking at the old photograph as if she had brought him a question nobody else could hear. Nasir bleeding on a stage, then sitting in a hospital while another room filled with people who needed him.
And Curtis telling her that some people had come out of old arrangements better than others.
She opened the file.
The first page listed the property-transfer references she recognized. Beside the earlier one, Tylil had written a question in the margin: Ask Naz who requested the change. Chancellor handled the filing.
She brought the paper copy close. The reference matched. Her father had intended to ask Nasir about this exact transfer—not merely about Atlas, not about business in general.
Below it was another instruction: Compare the earlier paperwork before accepting the explanation.
There was no answer recorded there. But there was a question she could take to Nasir without borrowing Curtis's version of the story. She copied it word for word.
She thought of the way Nasir had accepted being called Uncle all her life. The rides, meals, ordinary checking on her mother when a week had become difficult. None of the entries on the screen erased those moments. None required her to let those moments explain away what she did not understand.
She remembered asking Nasir whether something was wrong with the graduation photograph. He had told her no. She put his answer beside her father's question and left the pen there.
She wrote two questions.
Who requested the change on this transfer?
Which earlier paperwork did Dad mean?
She copied the reference beside both. If Nasir could not answer, Chancellor might be able to tell her which records existed.
Curtis had given her a story about old arrangements and unequal benefits. She looked for something that actually confirmed his account and could not say she had found it.
She wrote that down. Then she added the two festival calls to a separate page. Neither supplied a transaction or a reason for what happened. Both had come before the shooting.
When she spoke to Nasir, she would need to tell him about those calls too. She couldn't keep asking people for complete answers while deciding which questions they were allowed to hear. The thought frightened her enough that she wrote it beneath the reminder.
She wrote Ask Nasir above the transfer reference and underlined it.
Her phone lit up. Deion wanted to know why she hadn't answered his last call.
She read the message, then the question she had written about the company. She had been thinking about anger as though it could answer something for her.
I'm trying to understand what happened, she replied.
He asked whether she meant Nova. She put the phone down before answering either yes or no.
*
By evening she had a record of what she had opened and where it led. The unread folder remained at the bottom of her list.
FOR_LIA.
She moved the cursor onto it. Her finger rested on the mouse button.
She wanted to hear her father speak to her. She was afraid of how much she would want him to keep speaking after whatever he had left ended.
"Not tonight," she said.
She wrote unopened beside the folder, a fact as plain as the address she had begun with. Then she looked at the questions that required someone living.
She put a clean copy of the transfer reference in an envelope for Nasir. Not the journal, not the whole drive. One page and her father's question.
Melo had been in the photograph too. She wrote his name beneath Who can explain the old history? If Nasir couldn't speak yet, she could ask Melo how to arrange a conversation instead of waiting for the right moment to appear.
Her phone lit up with a message from Maine.
Appreciate you. He's resting.
She wrote Good. Tell Niq I love her if you see her before I do.
Then she stopped. She could tell Niq herself. There was no reason to make Maine carry the message simply because he had opened the conversation.
She deleted it and sent I'm glad.
She safely disconnected the drive and returned it to its place beside the journal. FOR_LIA stayed unopened on her list.
She messaged Niq to ask how she was doing, and whether Mrs. Neal needed anything.
This time she stayed with the conversation after the answer came.
Before bed, she put the envelope for Nasir in her bag. The page with the two warnings went behind it.
She opened Melo's number.
Can you help me find a time to speak to Uncle Nasir? It's about papers Dad left. I need to tell him something else, too.
She sent it with the bag beside her feet.