Page 6 of Legacy Found

For the first time, he pauses.

It's small, a half-second where the easy flow of his words hitches. But I catch it.

"You recently qualified for our scholarship," he says. "The identification came through a partnership we maintain."

"That's not an answer. Qualified how?"

He looks at me a long moment. And to his credit — this is the part that gets me — he doesn't lie.

"I could give you a version right now," he says slowly. "But it would be incomplete, and incomplete answers to that particular question tend to sound..." He lands on the word with dry precision. "...alarming. Without the context that makes them make sense."

"So there's a whole story."

"There's a whole story."

"And you won't tell me."

"I'll tell you all of it. Gladly. But I'd rather do it when you're willing to hear the whole thing, start to finish — because if I give you the middle of it now, mid-workday, you'll do exactly what any reasonable person would do. Decide I'm out of my mind and stop listening." A pause. "I'd genuinely rather you think I'm being cagey than think I'm a lunatic. I can work with cagey."

"You realize," I say, "'I have answers but I won't give them to you' is exactly what a scammer says. And a cult. That's cult talk. 'All will be revealed when you're ready.'"

"It is," he agrees, unbothered. "It's also what a doctor says before certain conversations. And a lawyer. A scam usually wants your money or your signature today. I'm not asking you for either. I'm asking you to read something."

He draws a folder from the leather bag on his shoulder — cream, that same crest. "The full packet. Everything the letters didn't say. Answers to most of what you've asked, and a few things you haven't."

I don't take it. "I have a packet. It's been threatening me from my kitchen counter for three days."

"You haven't opened it."

It's not a guess. He says it like he already knows, and the worst part is he's right, and I don't understand how.

"...No," I admit.

"Then take this one, or read that one — it doesn't matter which. I only ask that you read it before you decide anything for certain. Not to change your mind. So that whatever you decide, you decide with the whole picture." He tips his head. "That seems fair to me. Does it seem fair to you?"

And there it is again — the question. He keeps handing the decision back to me, so gently I almost don't notice, so there's nothing to push against, because he isn't pushing.

"...Fine." I take the folder. It's heavier than I expect.

He writes on the back of a small card and slips it into the file. "My number. Mobile, not the admissions office — you've had enough of the admissions office. Any hour. I keep strange ones."

"I won't have questions," I tell him. "I'm going to read this, confirm it's an expensive mistake, and recycle it with the others."

He settles the bag on his shoulder and smiles. Like a man who's had this exact conversation before and knows how it tends to end. "Of course. But keep the card anyway."

"Why?"

"Because you're going to start reading, and somewhere around the third page you're going to hit something that doesn't add up. And you're going to want more answers." He grins at me again almost fondly.

I don't have a single thing to say to that. Because he's right, and I hate that he's right, and I'm already — God help me — a little curious what's on the third page.

"Thank you for your time," he says. "I'll leave you to your reading."

And he goes — out of the store with his hands in his pockets, never once glancing back to check whether the hook landed. He never pressured me, never rushed me, never tried to close. He just moved through the whole thing like a man who already knew, with total calm, that I'd call him eventually — like my no was only a longer, more scenic route to the same place, and he had all the time in the world to let me take it. Somehow that's more unsettling than any hard sell.

"Who was that?" Nadia asks, materializing at my shoulder. "Because I have questions, and none of them are about hiking."

"Some professor. From that school that keeps sending me letters."