The ledger said Eli had answered Darius.
He could read the promise, its circumstances, and the source of the account. He could identify the man to whom he had spoken. He knew why keeping the promise mattered. What he could not do was reach the interval in which hearing another person’s words had become a choice to answer them.
The loss was not a general fog over the whole of Darius. It had an edge cruel enough to examine. Earlier records described the cadence he had lost before this intervention. The newer entry marked the conversation itself as gone after the return fitting separated. Reading the older loss did not explain the newer one away.
Tessa sat beside the workroom window, where there was no daylight but a clear view of the guarded passage.
“Tell me something about your father,” Eli said.
She looked at the ledger, then at him.
“Something you want in the account?”
“Something you remember.”
