Peter leaned against the counter. "You were pretty sure about the board." Marcus nodded.
"I was. That's the problem. I remembered a failure I saw years ago and decided this one had to be the same. I should have tested the possibility before giving it a name."
Gerald watched the exchange from the doorway and made a note on the evaluation sheet. The error counted against Marcus's technical score, but the manner in which he recognized it counted in his favor. Competence in maintenance was not a collection of impressive guesses; it was the ability to keep checking when a familiar explanation might be wrong. That afternoon Gerald told Natalie that Marcus had areas where he needed training, as expected, but also demonstrated unusually strong troubleshooting habits.
Natalie asked for the complete assessment rather than the short summary. She reviewed the unsuccessful exercise as carefully as the successful ones, noting that Marcus had been candid about what he missed. Diane reminded her that the permanent role would still require a vacancy and completion of specified training. Natalie agreed. "I don't want to manufacture a position to congratulate myself for noticing him," she said. "I want the department to know whether hiring him makes sense for the work."
At home, Marcus found the paperwork less intimidating than the question he had not yet asked Emma. On Wednesday evening, while she sat cross-legged on the living-room rug building a neighborhood from cardboard scraps, he told her he might be working with the maintenance crew instead of the cleaners. She looked up immediately. "Like when you fixed refrigerators?" He nodded. "A little, except these machines belong to the building."
"Will you have to leave in the middle of dinner?" The question came without hesitation, and Marcus felt the old years crowd behind it. Emma remembered enough of his earlier work to associate repair calls with sudden departures. He sat on the rug beside her and gave himself time to answer carefully.
"Not if we agree on the schedule we've talked about," he said. "The people there know I need to be with you at certain times. Nothing is decided yet, and I won't accept something that means breaking promises without warning." Emma considered that and pushed a cardboard house toward him. "Good. Because I need someone to help me fix the streetlight."
Marcus turned the little paper pole in his fingers. "You're the engineer tonight. Tell me what's wrong."
She rolled her eyes in affectionate impatience. "You always say that." He laughed. "And you keep finding answers anyway."
His first formal temporary assignment began three weeks after the night of the conference-room failure. Meridian Tower had approved a limited maintenance placement with a documented training plan, and Marcus retained a right to return to his cleaning position if the arrangement ended. His new schedule remained predictable, largely overnight, with two scheduled training blocks during school hours each week. He would earn the applicable maintenance rate for work performed under the new role, rather than being asked to prove himself through unpaid favors.