Chapter 55 She’s in the city

Chapter 55 She’s in the city
The search was taking longer than Nia had hoped.

She had expected this. Gia had told her clearly from the beginning that the absence of records was itself a kind of record, that whoever had removed the trail had done it carefully and that careful removal took careful undoing. 

She had said she understood. She had meant it at the time.

That did not make the waiting easier.

She spent her evenings at Sophia's kitchen table going through everything her grandmother had left behind. There was not much. 

Her grandmother had been a woman who believed that what you kept said something about what you valued, and that some values were best kept hidden. What remained was partial, curated in a way that Nia was only now beginning to properly understand.

But there were fragments.

An old address book with names she did not recognise in her grandmother's careful handwriting, some of them crossed out and rewritten, some with cities beside them, some with nothing beside them at all. 

A letter begun and never finished, folded into the back of a document folder, that referred to someone only as H without ever using a full name. 

A birth record that listed a date and a city of origin and a line for next of kin that had been filled in with a name Nia had never heard before. 

She did not know if the next of kin was still alive. She did not know if the name was real or a placeholder. 

She wrote it all down anyway because it was more than she had before she found it.

She organised everything carefully. She cross-referenced dates and names and tried to build something solid out of the fragments and mostly what she built was a clearer picture of how much had been taken from her without her knowledge and how thoroughly the taking had been arranged.

Someone had been meticulous about it. That level of care suggested fear. Fear of what might be found if the trail was left in place.

She thought about that word for a long time one evening after Sophia had gone to sleep. 

She sat at the kitchen table with the address book open in front of her and thought about the kind of person who goes through every record and every photograph and every document and removes them one by one with deliberate intention.

It was not the work of someone who was ashamed. Shame made people careless. This was the work of someone who was afraid. And fear, in her experience, always pointed toward something worth protecting against.

She did not tell Sophia exactly what she was looking for. She said it was research. She said it was connected to the case. 

One evening Sophia came out of her room, stood in the kitchen doorway for a moment, and looked at the papers spread across the table, the careful arrangement of them, the way Nia was handling each page like something that might break and did not say a word. 

She went to the kitchen and made tea and set a cup beside Nia's elbow and went back to her room without asking a single question.

Nia looked at the cup sitting there.

She looked at it for a long moment.

Then she went back to the address book.



Anthony called again two days later.

She was at her desk at work, just after lunch, phone face up beside her keyboard. His name appeared and she answered on the second ring.

"I have something for you," he said. No preamble this time. Something slightly more urgent underneath the words, though he was managing it carefully. "The woman you are looking for. She has been in the country less than a year. And she is in this city."

Nia said nothing.

"That is all I am giving you for now," Anthony said. "When you give me something useful, you will get more. You know how this works."

He ended the call.

She sat at her desk for a moment completely still. Then she stood up, told the colleague passing her doorway she would be back shortly, and went downstairs to the side entrance. She stood outside in the cold air and breathed and thought.

He was feeding her in small amounts. She knew that. Just enough to keep her moving forward, just enough to make the next piece feel worth reaching for. 
it was exactly how he operated and she recognised the shape of it clearly because she had been watching him operate this way for over a year now. He gave you enough to want more and made you feel that wanting more was your own idea.

She also knew that if it was true, there was no particular reason it could not be true. it was more than she had an hour ago.

Her mother was in this city.

She stood with that for a moment. Held it carefully, the way you hold something that has not yet decided whether it is real.

Then she went back inside and instead of returning to her desk she took the lift to the third floor and knocked on Xavier's office door.

"Do you have a few minutes?" she said.

He looked up. "Yes. Close the door."

She closed it and sat down. "Gia's search," she said. "Has there been anything new in the last few days?"

Xavier looked at her for a moment before he answered. "He narrowed the range two days ago. The records are pointing toward this city."

She went very still.

"He was going to update you formally tomorrow," Xavier said. "But I take it something has happened."

"Anthony called."

"When."

"Twenty minutes ago." She met his eyes. "He told me she is in this city. He did not say where. He said there will be more when I give him something."

Xavier was quiet. His expression did not change but something behind it shifted.  A sharpening, a settling, the particular quality of a man deciding what to do with information before he has finished receiving it. "He knows you are searching."

"Yes."

"And he has been sitting on this."

"Yes."

He wrote something briefly. Then he set the pen down. "Nia."

"Yes."

"You should have told me about the first call."

She held his gaze. "I know."

He nodded once. Not an accusation. Just a note placed between them and left there without elaboration. "Tell me next time."

"I will."

She stood and left. Walking back to her desk she thought about the difference between the way Anthony had just spoken to her and the way Xavier had just spoken to her and what that difference said about each of them.  How long it had taken her to be in a position where she could see it clearly enough to name it.