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“Look, I’m not going to pretend to imagine what this all feels like, but I will say, for whatever it’s worth, in my years of teaching, I’ve discovered one thing above all else that makes me calm in moments like this. It’s an Einstein theory originally, which is why it sounds better in German.”
“You may have to go with English,” Bailey says.
“Einstein said, So far as the theories of mathematics are about reality, they are not certain; so far as they are certain, they are not about reality.”
Bailey tilts her head. “Still waiting on the English there, Professor,” she says.
“It basically means, we don’t know shit about anything,” he says.
Bailey laughs—softly but genuinely—and it’s the first time she’s laughed in days, the first time she’s laughed since this all started.
I’m so grateful that I almost leap over the table to hug Professor Cookman.
Before I do, Scott and Cheryl walk back into the office.
“Here’s the roster from the spring semester, 1995. In 1994, you were teaching two different senior seminars. And in ’96 you taught graduate students exclusively. Spring ’95 was when you taught underclassmen. So that’s the class the student would have been in.”
Cheryl hands over the roster triumphantly.
“There were seventy-three people in the class,” she says. “Eighty-three the first day, but then ten dropped out. That is pretty common in terms of normal attrition. I’m assuming you don’t need the names of the ten who dropped?”
“No,” he says.
“That’s what I figured, so I went ahead and crossed those out for you,” she says, like she just discovered something smaller than the atom. And, in my book, she has.
As Professor Cookman studies the list, Cheryl turns to us. “There’s not an Owen on the list. Or even a Michaels on the list.”
“That’s not a surprise,” he says.
Cook keeps his eyes on the list, but he shakes his head.
“I’m sorry I don’t remember his name,” he says. “You think I would know, having had his work framed above my head for all that time.”
“It was a long time ago,” I say.
“Still. It’d be far more helpful if I could recall that much, but these names aren’t adding up to anything for me.”
Professor Cookman hands the list over and I take it from him, gratefully and quickly, before he changes his mind.
“Seventy-three names are a whole lot more manageable than a billion. This is a whole lot more manageable than having nowhere to start.”
“Assuming he’s on there,” Professor Cookman says.
“Yes, assuming that.”
I look down at the printout, seventy-three names staring back at me—fifty of them men. Bailey peers over my shoulder to look too. We need to find a way to go through them as quickly as possible. But I am more hopeful than I have been that we have somewhere to start from. That we have a list of names to cull from, Owen somewhere among them. I feel certain of this.
“You don’t know how much we appreciate this,” I say. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” he says. “I hope it helps.”
We stand up to go, Cookman standing up as well. He is not particularly eager to get on with his day. Now that he is invested, he wants to find out more. He seems to want to know who Owen used to be, how that led him to where he is now—wherever that is.
We start walking toward the office door when Cookman stops us.
“I do want to say… I’m not sure what is going on with him now, but I can tell you that back then, he was a nice kid. And smart. It all starts to blend, but those early years I remember some of them. Maybe because we try harder in the beginning. But I do remember. I remember he was a really good kid.”
I turn back toward him, grateful to hear something about Owen, something that feels like the Owen I know.
