Clare arrived shortly after lunch, driving her own car and wearing a simple gray sweater rather than the structured jacket Ethan associated with her at work. She parked at the curb rather than in the driveway, as though uncertain what kind of space she had permission to occupy. At the front door, she paused long enough to check the address again. A row of small pumpkins lined the steps, one painted with a crooked face and another labeled ENGINEER LILY.
Lily opened the door before Ethan reached it. "Dad, the work lady is here," she called. Clare smiled at the blunt introduction, then bent slightly to meet the child's eyes. "I'm Clare Bennett," she said. "I know," Lily answered. "Dad doesn't talk about you much."
Ethan appeared behind her with a dish towel in one hand. His expression was neither hostile nor welcoming, only cautious. "Miss Bennett," he said, and Clare heard how formal the name sounded in the doorway of a home where he had every reason to resent her. She asked whether they could talk somewhere private and made clear she would leave if it was a bad time.
"Lily has a rehearsal," Ethan said. The girl informed Clare that it involved a model airplane and a question period, and that visitors could watch as long as they did not touch the propellers. Clare looked toward the dining table, where the little plane rested with its casing open. She asked whether she could see it.
Lily carried the airplane over proudly. Its frame had been assembled from inexpensive parts and painted with irregular blue stripes, and a homemade linkage sat inside the center section. Clare recognized the principle immediately, though the details were simplified for a school project. A fault on one side would not prompt the other side to compensate blindly; the design would reduce the harmful response and allow a controlled descent.
"Who designed this?" Clare asked. "I did," Lily answered, lifting her chin. "Dad helped me understand why the first one fell, but he says the answer doesn't count if somebody gives it to you before you think." Clare looked at Ethan and realized that the little project contained a lesson he had been trying to teach an entire corporation.
They moved into the kitchen while Lily returned to preparing her presentation. Clare placed a copy of the recovered safety report on the table, but Ethan did not sit. "I know what it says," he told her. She admitted that she had not received it until the evening after his dismissal, and that the report had been improperly removed from her executive review queue.
"You asked me to document the concern," Ethan said. "I did." Clare nodded, without immediately explaining the pressures of her position or the many competing demands that had occupied her attention. He watched her for a moment and asked whether the company had already decided to put the technical problem back on his shoulders.
"No," she answered. "I'm here because the report should have reached me and because I approved a process that let someone keep it from me. You were dismissed under that process, and I need to understand what happened." Ethan considered her words carefully. "You don't need me to understand that part," he said. "You need the record and the people who changed it."