Chapter 208: Victim
Mia arrived at eleven fifty-eight.
Sean heard the knock from upstairs and came down to find her standing in the building lobby with her hands in her jacket pockets and the specific look of someone who had been awake since before six and was running on something beyond sleep.
She looked at him.
"All twelve," she said. Like she was still getting used to the weight of those two words.
"All twelve," said Sean.
She nodded once and came inside.
Makima’s apartment had the warm smell of food that had been cooking since early morning and Makima was at the stove when they came in and she turned and looked at Mia with the same full attention she’d given her Friday night.
"Sit down," said Makima.
Mia sat.
She looked at the kitchen, the flowers on the counter, the table set for three, the Sunday morning light coming through the window, and something in her expression had the quality Sean had noticed when she’d looked at the building from the outside, that specific register of somewhere that felt settled.
"Soo-Jin called me," said Mia. "An hour ago."
Sean looked at her.
"They gave her a phone," said Mia. "A victim support person sat with her while she called. She." Mia stopped. Looked at the table. "She cried for the first ten minutes. I couldn’t understand most of what she said. Then she stopped and she said I told you someone was coming." She looked up. "I never told her someone was coming. I just sent her a message through her school email that said help is coming. She held onto that for twelve days."
Makima brought tea and set it in front of Mia without saying anything.
Mia wrapped both hands around the cup.
"She’s going to be okay," said Mia. Not a question. Something she was saying out loud because she needed to hear it in her own voice.
"She’s going to be okay," said Sean.
"She has her test results," said Mia. "From Wednesday. She passed. She was telling me about the test in between crying." A quiet sound that was close to a laugh and wasn’t quite. "She passed a chemistry test while she was waiting for a federal operation to free her from a criminal debt scheme."
"That’s who she is," said Sean.
"Yes," said Mia. "That’s exactly who she is."
Makima set food on the table and sat down and the three of them ate in the comfortable way of people who had been through something together and were on the other side of it and didn’t need to fill the space with anything except the food and the Sunday morning.
After a while Mia said, "The fifteen year old. You said someone was briefed to tell her it wasn’t her fault."
"Reyes confirmed it personally," said Sean.
Mia held her cup. "Her name is Jiyeon," she said. "She goes by Ji. She likes dogs. She has a small one at home named something I could never pronounce correctly and she described it to me once for twenty minutes and it was the most animated I ever saw her." She paused. "She’s going to go home and see that dog today."
"Yes," said Sean.
Mia looked at the window.
"Forty-seven," she said. "You told me forty-seven total."
"Across all four cities."
"I only knew about twelve," she said. "I thought it was bigger but I didn’t know how much bigger." She held his gaze. "All forty-seven are safe."
"All forty-seven," said Sean.
She nodded slowly and looked at her food and ate a few bites and then looked at Makima. "This is very good."
"Thank you," said Makima.
"What is it," said Mia.
"Braised chicken," said Makima. "My mother’s recipe." She paused. "I make it when things feel settled enough to take the time."
Mia looked at her. "Things feel settled today."
"Yes," said Makima. "They do."
They ate.
—--
After lunch Mia helped clear the table without being asked, which Makima received with the same expression she’d received it from Sean the first time.
They washed dishes together, Makima and Mia, and Sean sat at the kitchen table and drank coffee and listened to them talk.
Mia asked about the building, how long Makima had run it, what it had been like before. Makima told her about her father, the specific version she told people she’d decided were worth telling it to, the way the building had been his argument with the world and how she’d inherited both the argument and the obligation to keep making it.
Mia listened with the notebook quality of her attention, the way she listened when she was filing rather than just receiving.
"You kept it," she said. "Even when people were trying to take it."
"Yes," said Makima.
"Why," said Mia. "Practically speaking. It would have been easier to sell."
"Because my father built it," said Makima. "And some things you keep because of what they represent, not what they’re worth."
Mia thought about that. "The list," she said. "The one I kept. It wasn’t practical either. It made things more dangerous. If they’d found it."
"But you kept it anyway," said Makima.
"Yes," said Mia.
"Same reason," said Makima.
Mia looked at her. Something moved through her expression that was complicated and real.
"I want to study law," said Mia.
Both Sean and Makima looked at her.
She looked slightly surprised herself, as though the sentence had arrived before the full decision had consciously formed. "I’ve been thinking about it since the café on Monday. Maybe since before that." She held her cup. "What they did was legal on the surface. The contracts were real. The company was registered. The debt was documented properly. Everything that trapped us was designed to look like something people had legitimately agreed to." She paused. "I want to understand how that works and how to stop it from working."
Sean looked at her.
"Elena Voss," he said.
Mia looked at him.
"The property attorney who handled the Moyer case," said Sean. "She’s the sharpest legal mind I’ve worked with. When this is fully closed and you’re ready, I’d like to introduce you."