The missing name belonged to a woman who had never saved his life.
That was what frightened Eli most.
He noticed it the morning after the qualifying floor, while Sera rearranged a paper route on the rest-room table. No live equipment, no timed exertion. They were reviewing the junctions they had crossed, and Kellan had drawn an ordinary staircase to explain why carrying a case around a turn required more width than carrying it straight.
Eli said the sketch looked like the back stairs in the building where he had lived as a child.
“There was a woman on the landing,” he added. “She kept a chair there when the weather got hot.”
Tessa smiled. “Did she let you pass?”
“She made us say excuse me. Even if she had to pull the chair all the way inside first.”
He could see it: a woven seat with one leg wrapped in cord, a square of faded light, the woman’s slippers placed side by side beneath her. He remembered her calling down to someone about a delivery. The ordinary impatience in her voice came so clearly that he almost turned his head.
