They found a place to sit where they could buy something small without being expected to leave as soon as they'd finished it. Beth chose the table. Theo took the chair farthest from her, then seemed embarrassed by the choice and put his camera on the empty chair between them.
Nina would have left if either had asked her to. Neither did. They had arrived with her and were not yet ready to decide what to do when she was gone.
“Let me see it,” Beth said.
Theo looked at her.
“The phone.”
“No.”
“You answered your father after I told you—”
“I know what you told me.”
“Then why?”
He pushed the camera strap around his wrist. “Because he asked about something other than where we were.”
“He didn't, though, did he?”
“He did first.”
Beth leaned back. Her eyes were wet. Theo looked at them and became angrier, as if the tears were an argument he couldn't answer without being cruel.
“I'm not saying he was right. I showed them.”
“You didn't show me.”
“You'd have stopped me before I got to the part where I answered.”
Nina kept her hands around her cup. She could see the neat solution: Theo showed Beth the same exchange, Beth agreed it belonged to the report, everybody had one account and they could move on. It would require Theo to spend the one thing he'd chosen to keep back, and Beth to pretend that one act of truth had removed her fear. It would be efficient for Nina.
“I need to know if someone else has been contacting you,” Beth said.
“You can ask.”
“I'm asking to look.”
“You're asking for everything.”
He took the phone out and set it on the table with his hand over it. He was willing to make it visible. He wasn't willing to let go.
Beth looked at Nina. “Do you think this is reasonable?”
“I think you're asking him two things.”
“Please don't do work at me.”
Nina stopped. Beth looked ashamed for a second, then refused to let the shame make her take the sentence back.
“I know,” Nina said.
The server came with three drinks and a plate nobody remembered ordering until Beth said it was hers. The interruption made room for all of them to look away.
Theo turned the phone around, opened the conversation he'd shown and slid it a few inches toward his mother.
“This. Not Leo's stuff. Not my pictures.”
Beth didn't take it at once.
“If there's something about where you are, or someone trying to find you, I need to know.”
“I know.”
“You didn't tell me this.”
“I'm telling you now.”
She read. Slowly, going back once, her finger stopping above the screen without scrolling into another conversation. Theo watched her hand more than her face.
At his reply she looked up.
“You wanted to see Leo.”
“Yes.”
“You could have told me.”
He gave a short, unhappy laugh. Beth looked down again.
When she'd finished, she slid the phone back. She didn't ask about the next conversation. Theo closed the conversation and put the phone beside his plate.
“If anyone asks where we are, you tell me,” she said. “Not afterward.”
“Okay.”
“And we work out how you talk to Leo. Without your dad between you.”
Theo looked at her cautiously. “Okay.”
Neither apologized. They ate a little. Nina heard Beth ask whether the camera was actually broken and Theo say the corner was bad but it worked. A smaller question, one they could finish.
Nina's phone lit with Helen Wu's name. The message asked whether she could speak that morning about the concern she'd raised. Northreach had received a source-preservation question; Helen wanted to understand what Nina could properly help with. Nina read it twice.
Beth saw her expression. “Work?”
“The property company. The one involved in the old forwarding action. Helen runs part of their review work.”
“Do you know her?”
“Yes.”
“Does she believe you?”
Nina looked at the message again. “I don't know yet. She wants to speak.”
“What would you tell her?”
“What I did. What I found in the source material. I'd like to show her the reply you kept, including the notes. If you'll let me make a copy for that purpose.”
Beth glanced at Theo. He was watching the people outside with the phone held loosely now.
“Not his messages.”
“No.”
“And not where we are going.”
“No.”
“The reply. What they said it meant. I want to know what they sent him and why.”
Nina wrote down the question for Helen.
Beth brought out the paper. Nina photographed the two sides while it lay flat on the table, covering an unrelated handwritten number Beth didn't want copied. She checked the images with her, then handed the original back without folding it.
Beth put it away.
“If she wants to ask me something, she can ask. Through you for now. That doesn't mean I say yes.”
“I'll tell her.”
Theo reached into the recovered bag. Beth moved her foot to give him room. He took out the small card case, checked its label and found a reader from a pocket in the same bag.
“Got it?” Beth asked.
He nodded. His whole attention changed. For the first time that morning Nina saw him forget what his face was doing.
He connected the reader to his phone and found a file. A few seconds later he put it in the middle of the table.
The fox was unmistakably a brush. Theo had given it paper eyes and four thin legs that moved with a stiff, concentrated purpose. It approached a blue cloth river. Stopped. Backed up. The river shifted between frames, the cloth wrinkling in different places.
“That's my dish towel,” Beth said.
“I know.”
“Dani gave it back.”
“I saw.”
The fox tried a bridge made from pencils. One rolled. It fell backward into a small heap, got up and shook itself one frame at a time. Nina laughed before she could decide whether it was supposed to be funny.
Theo looked at her. “The leg came off there. I made it part of it.”
“It works.”
“You can see the hand.” He pointed to one corner.
“I didn't.”
“You will now.”
They watched the fox make another attempt. It didn't cross in a single ingenious leap. It stole the little boat already floating in the river, pushed it out, nearly lost it and clambered aboard. On the far bank it looked back at the broken bridge, then walked out of the picture.
There was a pause before the file ended, an empty landscape held just too long.
“I need to cut that,” Theo said.
“I liked it,” Beth said.
“You're my mom.”
“I can still like a thing.”
He smiled without looking at her. Not much. Enough that Beth looked down at her plate and left him alone with it.
Nina answered Helen. She could come that day, with specific material she was permitted to share and an account of her own work. She didn't include the film or the messages or a promise that she could make the whole system safe again.
At the next table a woman asked Theo what he'd made. He took the phone back, turned his chair slightly and began explaining the fox. Nina listened for a moment, then stopped listening. The explanation wasn't for her.