“Approximately.
More if certain systems deploy successfully.”
I stared at her.
She leaned back.
“Dr.
Kerr told us you might underestimate your leverage.”
“I’m not a doctor.”
“Not yet.”
Despite myself, I smiled.
Then she became serious.
“Sylvie, do you know why we pursued you?”
“My research.”
“Partly.”
I waited.
“Most analysts build systems to predict obvious failure.
Yours detects concealed instability before conventional indicators move.”
“That’s the idea.”
“Your architecture found a pattern in one of our public datasets that our own teams missed.”
I frowned.
“What pattern?”
“A vendor network inside one of our subsidiaries was moving expenses between entities to obscure losses.”
I remembered that dataset.
I had used anonymized public filings during an academic demonstration.
“You verified it?”
“We did.”
My stomach tightened.
“Were people fired?”
“Some.
Others are under investigation.”
“Oh.”
Ingrid studied me.
“You don’t sound pleased.”
“I don’t like the idea that my thesis accidentally destroyed someone’s life.”
“It didn’t.
Their decisions did.”
She tapped the folder.
“What your model did was find the truth.”
That sentence stayed with me.
Find the truth.
I signed on Thursday.
On Friday morning, my mother called.
She had not called me in eleven weeks.
I stared at her name until the ringing nearly stopped.
Then I answered.
“Hello?”
“Sylvie, honey.”
Her voice was so sweet I almost laughed.
“Mom.”
“How are you?”
“You tell me.
Apparently I’ve been devastated since failing graduate school.”
Silence.
Then a sigh.
“Oh, that.”
That.
My humiliation had become a pronoun.
“I was trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
“People asking questions.”
“I graduated.”
“Yes, Cora mentioned there may have been some confusion.”
“Confusion?”
“Let’s not turn this into drama.”
I closed my eyes.
I was standing beside the window of my apartment.
My signed Wexford contract lay on the kitchen counter.
“Why did you call?”
Another pause.
Then her tone changed.
“Your aunt Cora showed me something on the internet.”
“What?”
“A university announcement.
Your project won some kind of prize.”
My research had received a national graduate systems award two days earlier.
