The dark eyes move to me one more time. They're serious eyes, older than twelve, the kind that have been reading rooms for long enough that it's become the shape of how she sees. She opens the door slowly, cautiously, before moving back and allowing us to enter.
The apartment is small and warm and smells like coffee, with that particular lived-in smell of a space where people actually use every inch of what they have. I take it in the way I take in every room I enter — quickly, completely, noting exits andwindows and the small choices that tell you who lives here. Secondary locks on every window, new hardware, better than the building standard. A camera lens in the upper corner by the front door that I clock the moment I step inside. A note on the fridge in large, clear handwriting that I can read from here:At work. Door stays locked. Call Mr. Roberts if you need anything. Call me if there’s an emergency. Love you.
Evie has retreated to the couch and pulled her knees up, watching me with the cautious eyes of a child who has decided to observe before she declares anything. She's dark-haired, dark-eyed, small for twelve, wearing socks that don't match and a sweatshirt with a school name on it. There's a textbook open on the coffee table, and papers spread around it in the disorder that indicates homework that isn't going well.
Mr. Roberts claps a hand on my shoulder. "I'll leave you to it. Evie, you need anything you just holler."
"I know, Mr. Roberts," she says, certain.
He goes. The door pulls shut. And then it's just the two of us, and Evie looks at me from the couch with those assessing eyes, and I look back and let her finish whatever calculation she's running.
"You can sit down," she says finally, with the specific graciousness of a child who has decided to be a host and is taking the responsibility seriously. "She’s in the shower, she won't be out for a bit."
"I'll wait," I say.
"It's a long wait."
"I don't mind." I sit in the chair across from the coffee table and look at the homework spread across it. Math. Long division, by the look of it, and there are more red marks than correct answers on the page she's been working on. "How long have you been at this?"
She glances at the papers like she'd rather I hadn't noticed. "A while."
"It's not working."
"I noticed," she says, with a dryness that doesn't belong to a twelve-year-old.
"The method your teacher is using has an extra step in it that makes the whole thing harder than it needs to be." I lean forward slightly and look at the page. "Which part are you losing it at?"
"All of it," she says. "But mostly the middle part."
"Show me what you're doing."
She looks at me. Looks at the papers. Looks at me again with the expression of someone weighing pride against a problem they've been stuck on for an hour, and the problem wins, which tells me she's practical, which tells me she's her mother's daughter. She unfolds from the couch, comes to the coffee table, and turns the paper toward me.
I look at it.
"You're doing the subtraction before you've finished the division step. See here—" I reach for the pencil on the table. "May I?"
She nods, cautious.
I work through the first problem differently, backing up two steps and rebuilding it from the point where she went wrong. She watches with her chin in her hand and her eyes moving between the paper and my hand with the focused attention of someone who actually wants to understand it, not just get the answer.
"Oh," she says when I finish.
"Try the next one yourself," I say.
She takes the pencil. Works through it. Gets it right. Looks up at me with something that is not quite a smile but is close enough that I'll count it. "Why does everyone teach it the wrong way?"
"Because they were taught the wrong way and nobody corrected them."
"That seems like a big problem."
"It is," I say. "Systemic."
She considers this with the gravity it apparently deserves and then pulls the next page toward her. "Can you stay while I do these?"
"That's why I'm here," I say.
She works through six problems while I sit across from her, and the apartment settles into its late-night quiet around us. She asks two more questions, and I answer both of them. She doesn't chatter — she's not a chattering child, she's a thinking child, the kind who speaks when she has something to say and is silent when she doesn't, which I find I prefer. Between problems, she taps the eraser against the table in a slow, rhythmic way that I think she doesn't know she's doing.
