Walter's gaze drifted toward her backpack. Then toward the old brass key still hanging from the lock. "You know," he said, "most people at that college wouldn't recognize that tag if you put it right under their noses." Maya thought of Lisa. "Someone did."
Walter looked at her. "Who?" "Lisa Grant." Something flickered across his face. "She asked my father's name."
Walter became very still. "And?" "I told her." He looked toward the faded photographs. Maya followed his gaze despite herself.
One photograph showed a younger David Carter standing in this very room, smiling beneath fluorescent lights, his arm around a group of adult trainees. Maya looked away. Walter lowered himself onto a bench. That video from lunch is already making the rounds. Maya's head snapped toward him.
"You saw it?" "Everybody's seeing it." Her stomach tightened. Walter continued quietly. "I also saw what you didn't do."
Maya stared at the floor. "I couldn't." Walter studied her. "No," he said. "You chose not to."
There was a difference. Maya knew it. So did he. She looked at the heavy bag still swaying gently behind her. "At Crown Bridge," she said, "they think they know exactly who I am."
Walter glanced at the key. "And that's their mistake." Maya wrapped both hands around the warm paper cup. Outside, somewhere beyond the brick walls, the Route 417 bus rumbled through Jefferson Heights. Walter rose and headed for the door.
"Lock up when you're finished." "I will." He stopped beneath the doorway. "And Maya?" She looked at him.
"Don't lose that key." Maya's fingers tightened around the cup. "Why does everyone keep saying that?" Walter looked back toward Room 214. For the first time that evening, the old man's expression held something Maya couldn't read.
"Because," he said quietly, "one day somebody at Crown Bridge may finally remember what it opens." Then he walked away. Maya stood alone in Room 214, listening to Walter's footsteps fade down the corridor. The heavy bag still swayed from her last kick. Back and forth, back and forth.
The old brass key trembled slightly in the lock. She looked at the faded photograph on the wall again. David Carter stood in the center of it, broad-shouldered and smiling, surrounded by adult trainees in work clothes and borrowed athletic gear, a hospital custodian, a restaurant cook, a bus driver, a woman in scrubs. People who had come to Riverton after long shifts because David had believed safety should not belong only to people who could afford private lessons. Maya had been too young to understand the full weight of that work when he was alive.
Now she understood pieces of it, not all. Walter clearly knew more than he was saying, so did Lisa. Maya turned off the lights and locked Room 214 behind her. By the time she reached the main gym, Walter was stacking folding chairs near the entrance. "You're avoiding my question," Maya said.