Maya slept at a friend's apartment because her own rooms were cold and she didn't want to wake beside the heater notice.
Her friend Ellen had left clean towels on the bed and a note saying the shower would make a noise, it always did, don't call anyone. Maya laughed once when she read it. Then she lay down in her clothes and slept without dreams she could remember.
By afternoon she was in Imani's small office, choosing the chair that didn't face the wall clock.
She gave the facts in order. Three direct calls, two confirmed emergencies, the address of her own house and the heater taken out of use. Rae's presence. The nonexistent call still preserved on Elias's phone. The two earlier recordings matching Rae's actual reports.
Imani put the copied audio files with the center's own preserved calls. She did not pretend to know where the sound had come from. She asked what could be established about the installations.
“Rae's signatures are in her field book,” Maya said. “The same batch. The investigator collected the failed parts from the shop this morning. Rae told him Elias had cleaned them. Elias sent crews to selected customers before I reported the connection.”
“When did you see the first part?”
Maya gave the time of her first shop visit, two days before.
“And when did you log the shared concern?”
“Yesterday afternoon. After the second one. I wanted his answer first.”
“About the prediction?”
“About whether Rae's work caused it.”
She kept her eyes on Imani while she said it. That was harder than she had expected.
Imani turned the statement so Maya could read. She found her own words about the delay and stayed on them a moment.
“You're off decisions about the firm's incidents,” Imani said. “You can give information. Someone else handles it.”
Maya nodded.
“We'll need the complete customer record. Not the portion he decides is relevant.”
“Rae has her own job records.”
“Then she gives what she finds in her own name.”
Maya signed. Imani put the statement beside the preserved calls.
Outside, Luis was talking a caller through a locked delivery van with a cat inside. He had one finger held up, asking somebody for the appropriate number. Maya found it and slid a note across his desk without taking the call from him.
He smiled a little. She went out.
Rae was waiting at a diner halfway between the center and the shop. She had ordered soup and a grilled cheese and eaten all but one corner. Maya sat down and asked for coffee.
“Food,” Rae said.
“I ate.”
“When?”
Maya couldn't remember. She ordered a sandwich.
Rae had her phone beside the bowl. For a moment Maya feared she was going to play the recording here, between the sugar jar and the ketchup. Rae turned it facedown.
“I listened once when I got home,” she said. “Not the third. Nora's.”
“What for?”
“To hear what I did after the call stopped. Except I can't. It still stops.”
Maya waited.
“I knew that. I played it anyway.”
“You were trying to understand it.”
“I was trying to make it longer.” Rae rubbed a crumb off the table. “If it was longer, maybe it would tell me why.”
The waitress brought Maya's coffee. Rae waited until she left.
“Does the center think he made it?”
“They're recording what he claims. The files and our calls are preserved. They have the fires to investigate, whatever they think about that.”
“So the fire is real and my voice is something they're recording as a claim.” Rae pushed the spoon into her soup. “Fine.”
Maya waited until she looked up.
“I heard it,” she said. “I don't think you made that call.”
Rae nodded quickly, looking at the soup. “Good.”
Maya told her she'd named the installations and the delay. She'd been taken off related decisions.
“Are you angry?” Rae asked.
“A little.”
“At Imani?”
“No. Well, a little. She's right.”
Rae smiled. It was the first unguarded expression Maya had seen on her since the porch. “You can do both.”
“I have a gift.”
The sandwich arrived. Maya took a bite to give Rae a rest from watching her try to find the correct answer.
After a while Rae said, “Dad always told me you could put your feelings in a box at work.”
“He told me that too.”
“When I first went out alone, you drove past my job three times.”
“Twice.”
“I saw the third. Hood up, like that was going to hide your car.”
“It was raining.”
Rae shook her head, almost fondly. Then her face changed. “I liked knowing you were somewhere. I hated it too. I didn't tell you the part I liked because I thought you'd do it more.”
Maya looked at her daughter. The confession was small, but it had opened something the arguments hadn't.
“I won't drive past,” she said.
“You can drive past if you're going somewhere. You don't have to make a rule about it.”
Maya laughed. “All right.”
“I want to call you about things. I want to call Dad too. It feels like every call I make is evidence now.”
“Not every call.”
“How do you know?”
Maya had no answer she could support. She touched the edge of the plate instead of Rae's hand.
“I'd like to hear about Sunday,” she said. “If you come. What you want to eat. Whether you bring somebody. That sort of thing.”
“I'm not bringing somebody.”
“I didn't say you were.”
“You said it in a way.”
“I have other gifts.”
Rae laughed with her mouth full. The sound made Maya briefly forget the phone on the table.
Then Rae reached for it. A customer had called back. She listened to the voicemail and wrote a name on a work slip.
“They've all heard from the office,” she said. “Some think it's a routine check. I'm going to tell them the actual reason.”
“Have you got somewhere to send them if the rooms are cold?”
“An assistance number. It isn't a room.”
Maya took the card Imani had given her from her pocket. “This is the contact they're using. Give it to the residents or managers directly.”
Rae put it in her wallet. “It might help.”
They paid separately. At the door, Rae waited while Maya found the sleeve of her coat.
“I still want you to call me Sunday if you don't make it,” Maya said.
“I can do that.”
“You always say you can.”
“I will.”
Rae went out into the rain. Maya followed a moment later, without checking which way the van turned.