By the time the official decision approached, Marcus had stopped rehearsing ways to convince the company to keep him. He had done the work, documented his training, and made arrangements to pursue an equivalent position elsewhere if the job did not materialize. A former Hartley colleague had offered to introduce him to a facilities firm with a predictable schedule, and Marcus had thanked him without accepting immediately. It felt good to have a choice based on actual qualifications rather than desperation.
Emma's new school event was scheduled for a Thursday evening in March. Unlike the classroom presentation in October, the borough science showcase would bring projects from several schools together in a larger auditorium, with students explaining their work to visitors and volunteer judges. Emma had been selected to present an expanded version of her circuit project, now including a simple example of why the same warning could sometimes mean different things depending on what else was measured. Marcus was careful not to turn the project into his own technical lecture; she did the experiments, he helped her obtain safe parts, and Ms. Harper checked that Emma could explain every result in her own words.
For weeks, their apartment smelled faintly of cardboard glue and fresh marker ink. Emma spread her posters across the living-room floor and made Marcus sit in different chairs to practice answering questions from different directions. She wanted the demonstration to look smooth, but she also wanted it to be honest about the tests that had not worked. When a switch stopped responding one evening, she grew so frustrated that she almost threw the model aside. Marcus reminded her that an unexpected result was information, not an insult.
"That's easy for you to say," she muttered. "You fix everything." Marcus sat cross-legged on the floor beside her.
"No, I don't. I get things wrong, and I need help from people who know more than I do. The last time a controller surprised me at work, Leila showed me where I'd missed a setting. And you know what? I was glad she did."
Emma looked doubtful, so he showed her the mistake in his notebook, including the correction he had written afterward.
She studied the page for a while, then turned back to her model. "You really write down when you're wrong?" she asked. Marcus nodded. "Especially then."
Otherwise I might make the same mistake again and forget how I learned the answer. Emma took a pencil and added a small box to her project sheet labeled What I Changed After My First Test. Marcus watched her write, quietly proud that the lesson had become hers instead of remaining something he told her.
The showcase also brought a worry Emma did not mention at first. One afternoon a classmate asked whether her father really had been a janitor in a big office building. Emma said yes, and the classmate laughed and asked how a janitor could know enough about circuits to help with science. The remark was not the most malicious thing a child could say, but it stayed with Emma all the way home. When Marcus asked why she was quiet at dinner, she shrugged and told him nothing had happened.