Footsteps approached. Gideon entered without knocking, trailed by an assistant holding a phone. "There you are. Ruolan, the room is wondering if we're staging a new prize category. And Miss Mercer, you've made quite the impression."
"Her name is Nia," Dr. Shen said.
"Of course. Nia. The good news is we can make a wonderful story out of this. A service professional with unexpected gifts, discovered at our gala." Gideon offered a polished card. "My communications team can arrange an interview. There might be a position teaching introductory language workshops."
"I already have a job," Nia said.
"For the moment, yes." His smile made the words almost invisible. "Frank tells me you disrupted service. I'm prepared to smooth that over."
Dr. Shen stood. "What about your wager?"
Gideon glanced at his assistant. "A playful remark, surely."
"You named an amount in front of witnesses."
"I offered it as an incentive to speak Mandarin. She has spoken Mandarin. We can discuss the details privately." He faced Nia. "I imagine someone in your position knows the value of a discreet arrangement."
Nia felt an old childhood memory rise: her mother declining a landlord's offer to forgive late rent if she'd stop complaining about a broken furnace. Some bargains cost more than they paid.
"I'm not interested in being your discovery," Nia told him. "And I want to know why you looked angry when Dr. Shen mentioned Lena."
For the first time, the man's expression slipped. "Because we are discussing a great composer's legacy on the basis of a waitress's recollections. It is disrespectful."
"Then respect the facts," Dr. Shen said. "Let an independent scholar examine the music."
Gideon adjusted his cuff. "I'll speak to my counsel."
He left them in a silence threaded with the muffled sound of waiters collecting glassware. Nia wanted to go home and say none of it mattered. But the familiar tune remained in her head, and beneath it she could hear Lena counting in Mandarin, teaching a little girl to wait through the rests.
"Do you have anything she left?" Dr. Shen asked.
"A cedar box," Nia said. "Some notebooks. A photograph of children holding instruments."
"May I see them?"
Nia hesitated. Lena had trusted her with those things, not an institution or a stranger from the gala. Then she remembered Dr. Shen's face when she heard the tune. It had not been the expression of someone chasing a valuable antique. It had been grief, arriving late.
"Tomorrow," Nia said. "At my mother's house. If you're willing to hear why Lena didn't tell me everything."
Dr. Shen nodded. "The things people don't tell us are sometimes the ones they most wanted to say."
CHAPTER 03
A Box Beneath the Bed
Caleb Mercer watched the gala video three times before Nia reached home. He was eighteen, restless, and serious about music in a way that made every spare room feel temporarily like a rehearsal studio. His cheap keyboard crowded the kitchen table. A stack of audition scores leaned against the toaster. On his phone, Nia appeared between a billionaire and a chandelier, speaking Mandarin while someone in the comments typed that she must be an undercover heiress.
"They think you're secretly rich," Caleb said when she opened the door.
"Then maybe they can tell me where I hid the money."
"You really said all that in Mandarin?"
"Did you think Lena taught me to order noodles and nothing else?"
He grinned, then sobered. "The restaurant called. They said to stay home until management reviews what happened."
Nia put her bag down with greater care than it deserved. Their mother's wages from the school district covered utilities; Nia covered the mortgage, groceries, and most of Caleb's lessons. Suspension meant lost shifts. She had no secret fortune, only forty-eight dollars in her checking account until payday.