Chapter three
Jessica
"Of course you are," I say.
The sigh comes out longer than I mean it to, and the forearms recede in my estimation, immediately and entirely, replaced by the memory of three cream envelopes and a phrase that has apparently followed me into the store: please do not disregard this letter.
Jon Matthias doesn't flinch at the sigh. If anything, the corner of his mouth twitches, like he expected it and finds it cute.
"You've received our letters, then."
"I've received several of your letters." I set down the headlamp I'm holding, because this feels like a conversation that requires both hands free for gesturing.
"So let me save us both some time. There's been a mistake.
Someone put the wrong Jessica May Miller on a list, and she's probably very annoyed you keep turning up at my address. "
"And yet," he says mildly, "you haven't called to correct it. Most people, certain they'd been contacted in error, would pick up the phone and say so. It's less effort than being annoyed."
I open my mouth. Close it. Because that's annoyingly true, and I don't love that he called me on it.
"I've been busy," I say. "I fell down a mountain recently. It's been a whole thing."
His gaze drops, briefly, to the trekking pole I'm leaning on, then back up, and his expression softens a degree. "So I gathered. Are you here because I ignored the letters? Did you fly to England to hand-deliver a fourth one?"
"No. I had business in the north — a colleague to see. When I realized how close I was, stopping in seemed more respectful than another envelope." A smile. "You'd clearly formed opinions about the envelopes."
"The envelopes were very pushy," I admit.
"They were," he agrees, with the grave sincerity of a man apologizing on behalf of stationery. "The admissions office believes persistence reads as enthusiasm. I've told them it more often reads as a threat."
That gets a laugh out of me — short, surprised. And that's the problem, right there in the first ninety seconds: he's easy to talk to. Calm. He listens. He answers. I don't trust it even slightly.
"Okay," I say, planting the pole. "Let me list the reasons this is impossible, and you can tell your admissions people you did your due diligence. One — I have a job. I like my job. I'm good at it."
"You clearly are." He glances around the store — the teenager I helped now happily trying on boots, the couple who left with the right tent.
"I've been standing here for a few minutes, and you've already made three people feel like they can do something they were nervous about.
That's a skill. I'm not proposing to take anything away from you.
I'm proposing to add an option. You can always decline an option.
You can't decline one you never knew you had. "
I hate how reasonable that is. "Two. Even if I wanted to — which I don't — I can't afford to quit and move to another country."
"Tuition, housing, meals, books, travel — all covered. There's a stipend on top. You would not spend a penny to attend Luftis." He pauses. "If someone told me that, I'd assume there was a catch buried in the paperwork. There isn't. But you don't have to believe me. That's what the paperwork's for."
"Three. I don't even know what Luftis teaches. Your website is very pretty and says approximately nothing."
"Leadership. History, strategy, ethics — how societies organize themselves, and how they fail.
It's old, it's demanding, and it's genuinely unusual, more than the website lets on.
" Then, quieter, "It sits in the Alps, for what it's worth.
I've walked those hills nineteen years and I still stop halfway up a ridge just to look.
You strike me as someone who'd understand that. "
And, damn him — I do. Completely.
I stand there gripping my trekking pole and realize I haven't landed a single hit. He hasn't argued. He's just set a calm, reasonable answer beside each thing I threw, building a wall out of the bricks I keep handing him.
"You're very good at this," I say, half accusing. "At not saying anything I can actually fight."
"I've found arguing rarely changes minds. Answering questions sometimes does. So I answer the questions."
"That's a smart way of handling this."
"I am a professor," he says. "And I have been for quite a few years."
He's a professor. Which is a problem, because somewhere in the last five minutes my body has filed a very detailed complaint about how badly it would like to climb this man — more than it ever wanted the ex I moved to an entire other country for, which is honestly insulting to two full years of my life.
He is a professor, Jessica. From a school you are not even attending.
Down girl. Bad Jessica.
I should let it go. But there's a question sitting under all of this that none of his tidy answers have touched, and I have never once managed to leave a real question alone.
"Then answer this one," I say. "How did you find me? Because I'm nobody, Jon. I sell headlamps. I left college early. I didn't apply, I didn't take a test, I'd never heard of you. So what did I do that put me on Luftis Academy's radar?"
For the first time, he pauses.
It's small, a half-second where the easy flow of his words hitches. But I catch it.
"You recently qualified for our scholarship," he says. "The identification came through a partnership we maintain."
"That's not an answer. Qualified how?"
He looks at me a long moment. And to his credit — this is the part that gets me — he doesn't lie.
"I could give you a version right now," he says slowly. "But it would be incomplete, and incomplete answers to that particular question tend to sound..." He lands on the word with dry precision. "...alarming. Without the context that makes them make sense."
"So there's a whole story."
"There's a whole story."
"And you won't tell me."
"I'll tell you all of it. Gladly. But I'd rather do it when you're willing to hear the whole thing, start to finish — because if I give you the middle of it now, mid-workday, you'll do exactly what any reasonable person would do.
Decide I'm out of my mind and stop listening.
" A pause. "I'd genuinely rather you think I'm being cagey than think I'm a lunatic. I can work with cagey."
"You realize," I say, "'I have answers but I won't give them to you' is exactly what a scammer says. And a cult. That's cult talk. 'All will be revealed when you're ready.'"
"It is," he agrees, unbothered. "It's also what a doctor says before certain conversations. And a lawyer. A scam usually wants your money or your signature today. I'm not asking you for either. I'm asking you to read something."
He draws a folder from the leather bag on his shoulder — cream, that same crest. "The full packet. Everything the letters didn't say. Answers to most of what you've asked, and a few things you haven't."
I don't take it. "I have a packet. It's been threatening me from my kitchen counter for three days."
"You haven't opened it."
It's not a guess. He says it like he already knows, and the worst part is he's right, and I don't understand how.
"...No," I admit.
"Then take this one, or read that one — it doesn't matter which. I only ask that you read it before you decide anything for certain. Not to change your mind. So that whatever you decide, you decide with the whole picture." He tips his head. "That seems fair to me. Does it seem fair to you?"
And there it is again — the question. He keeps handing the decision back to me, so gently I almost don't notice, so there's nothing to push against, because he isn't pushing.
"...Fine." I take the folder. It's heavier than I expect.
He writes on the back of a small card and slips it into the file. "My number. Mobile, not the admissions office — you've had enough of the admissions office. Any hour. I keep strange ones."
"I won't have questions," I tell him. "I'm going to read this, confirm it's an expensive mistake, and recycle it with the others."
He settles the bag on his shoulder and smiles. Like a man who's had this exact conversation before and knows how it tends to end. "Of course. But keep the card anyway."
"Why?"
"Because you're going to start reading, and somewhere around the third page you're going to hit something that doesn't add up. And you're going to want more answers." He grins at me again almost fondly.
I don't have a single thing to say to that. Because he's right, and I hate that he's right, and I'm already — God help me — a little curious what's on the third page.
"Thank you for your time," he says. "I'll leave you to your reading."
And he goes — out of the store with his hands in his pockets, never once glancing back to check whether the hook landed.
He never pressured me, never rushed me, never tried to close.
He just moved through the whole thing like a man who already knew, with total calm, that I'd call him eventually — like my no was only a longer, more scenic route to the same place, and he had all the time in the world to let me take it.
Somehow that's more unsettling than any hard sell.
"Who was that?" Nadia asks, materializing at my shoulder. "Because I have questions, and none of them are about hiking."
"Some professor. From that school that keeps sending me letters."
"That's a professor? I want in. Sign me up right now."
But I'm not really listening. I've looked down. The folder's warm from my hands.
Call me, I keep strange hours.
I run my thumb along the seal, the same way I did with the envelope on my counter three days ago — the one I still haven't opened.
I told him I'd read it just to get him to leave, but I realize I'm actually considering opening it.