Sean stared at his desk, at the photograph of Vivian from thirty years ago standing at a city event near this exact block.

"Max," said Sean. "Gerald Pemberton. The retired attorney. Is he reachable?"

A pause. "He’s eighty-one, Sean."

"Is he reachable," Sean repeated.

"I found an address in the suburbs," said Max. "He retired about fifteen years ago but apparently still maintains an office at his home. Whether he’d talk to anyone is a different question."

"Leave that part to me," said Sean.

—-------

He spent Tuesday morning in class with the particular focused patience of someone who had decided what the next move was and was waiting for the right moment to make it. Dr. Whitfield taught a segment on market cycles that Sean found himself genuinely engaged with, less because he needed the information and more because the underlying logic connected to patterns he’d been thinking about for weeks.

Marcus caught him in the hallway afterward.

"The pharmaceutical position," said Marcus, slightly breathless like he’d been waiting. "I got in this morning."

Sean looked at him. "How deep."

"Everything I could responsibly put in," said Marcus. "Which isn’t much by your standards, I know. But it’s significant for me." He paused. "Was that right? Should I have waited?"

"The window was open this morning," said Sean. "It probably stays open another week. After that it starts to close as the information gets louder."

Marcus nodded, processing. "How do you actually know these things? I’ve been trying to figure out your research methodology and I can’t get there. You’re not reading the same sources I am, I can tell."

Sean considered how to answer. "I look at how things are actually moving underneath the way people talk about them. Not the narrative. The mechanics."

"That’s not a methodology," said Marcus. "That’s a talent."

"Maybe both," said Sean.

Marcus studied him for a moment with the specific frustration of someone intelligent enough to know they’re missing something and not able to identify exactly what it is. "Can I ask you something that might be slightly out of line?"

"Sure."

"Do you actually need to be in college right now?" said Marcus. "Like, what are you doing here? Not as an insult. Genuinely. You clearly don’t need the credential. You don’t seem to be here for the social experience. What is this for you?"

Sean was quiet for a moment. It was actually a good question. A question he hadn’t thought about directly since he’d woken up in this eighteen-year-old body with two million dollars in a system he was still discovering.

"It keeps me honest," said Sean finally. "Being around people who are building things from zero reminds me of something important."

"What’s that?" said Marcus.

"That most of what looks like opportunity from the outside is just people paying attention to things other people ignore," said Sean. "College is the last place where that’s still visible in its raw form before everyone learns to dress it up."

Marcus looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly. "That’s actually a real answer."

"I have them occasionally," said Sean.

=============

Sean had James drive him to the suburbs that afternoon, a forty-minute drive that took them through progressively quieter streets until they reached a residential area where the houses had the comfortable size of old money that had stopped needing to announce itself decades ago.

Gerald Pemberton’s house was a large colonial with a well-maintained garden, the kind of property that communicated stability rather than wealth. A separate structure at the back of the property had a light on despite the afternoon hour.

Sean knocked at the main house first. A woman in her sixties, probably a housekeeper, answered and informed him that Mr. Pemberton didn’t accept unannounced visitors.

"Tell him," said Sean carefully, "that I’m here about Meridian Urban Partners. And about Clement Street."

The housekeeper looked at him with the particular wariness of someone accustomed to screening unusual visitors. She closed the door without a word.

Sean waited on the front step. Two minutes. Four. Six.

The door opened again.

"He’ll see you in his study," said the housekeeper. Her tone had changed, something careful in it now. "The building at the back."

—------------

Gerald Pemberton was a small man who had clearly been large once, the frame still there but settled inward with age, a big man’s bones wearing an old man’s skin. He sat behind a desk covered in actual paper files, a pair of reading glasses pushed up on his forehead, and he looked at Sean when he walked in the way very old lawyers look at things they weren’t expecting, with complete professional neutrality that covered whatever was actually happening underneath.

"Sit down, young man," he said.

Sean sat.

Pemberton studied him for a long moment. "You said Meridian Urban Partners."

"Yes sir," said Sean.

"That company hasn’t existed for over thirty years," said Pemberton. "Who told you that name?"

"I found it in a state filing archive," said Sean.

"You found it," said Pemberton. Flat repetition that wasn’t quite a question.

"I’ve been researching the development history of a specific block in the city," said Sean. "Clement Street area. The original rezoning application from forty years ago named Meridian Urban Partners. You were one of the founding directors."

Pemberton was quiet for a long moment. He picked up a pen from his desk and turned it in his fingers without writing anything. A habit, probably decades old, something to do with his hands while his mind worked.

"How old are you," said Pemberton.

"Eighteen," said Sean.

"Eighteen," Pemberton repeated. Another silence. "What exactly are you looking for, Mr.—"

"Miller. Sean Miller."

"Mr. Miller. What do you want to know about a forty-year-old company that most people alive today have never heard of?"

"I want to know what the objective was," said Sean. "Not what the filing said. The actual objective. What was supposed to happen to that block if the rezoning had succeeded."

Pemberton looked at him steadily. "And why does an eighteen-year-old care about that?"