Though she's been mulling over Dr. Clover's new assignment since she got it, it's nearly ten hours later and Indy has made zero progress.

When you scrape it free of all the flowery embellishments on the rubric and all the buzz words (formatting, word count, citations) bolded for emphasis as if their eyes wouldn't go straight to them anyway, it's a project she's done a million times before. It's little more than a simple research paper, and she knows some of the others have already picked some random cold case off the first page of the search results and decided to run with it. Not that Indy blames them. It's certainly the easiest way.

She just isn't very good at doing things the easy way.

Now, she waits just inside the dimly lit vestibule of a noisy bar and grille, a leather bench underneath her, a window—frigid as a sheet of ice, as if it absorbed the cool night beyond it—behind her. The sizzle of flames in the kitchen somewhere fill her ears, as does the merriment of mingling voices, coworkers and friends gathering after a long day at work, clinking glasses and yelling about whatever sports game was playing on the tiny televisions above the bar.

The hostess shoots Indy the third pitiful look she has in the past twenty minutes. Thus, for the third time, Indy wishes there was a polite, non-insane way to say that she isn't being stood up; her mom is just always like this.

The door swings open; Indy shudders involuntarily. Despite the fact it's just a casual weekday dinner, to "catch up," as she put it, Antoinette Helaire has dressed like she'll be heading to the red carpet immediately after the check's been paid. Bundled in a peacoat and high-heeled boots, her lips painted over red, she exhales and loosens her scarf from around her neck and grins when she sees Indy.

"Indy!" she says, always squealing like she hasn't seen her in weeks, like Indy didn't choose a school that was barely an hour away from her family. "There you are. How've you been? Have you been eating well? And this hair. I keep telling you, you need to do something with it."

Indy sighs, enduring her mother's onslaught of kisses. Absentmindedly, she tugs on one of her tightly-wound curls; it stretches about to the length of her shoulder before it springs right back into place. "Sometimes I let Sylvia test styles out on me, but isn't it fine like this too?"

Antoinette makes a face. Indy knows this face: she wants to say something else, and she will, but she'll save it for later. "Sure, of course. Sorry I was late, by the way. The Mitchells were having some friends over and I just wanted to pop in and say hi before I drove down."

Indy was hoping to get out of the night without discussing Percy at all, but of course she wouldn't be so lucky.

Indy nods at the hostess, who flashes a relieved smile and picks up two menus, ushering the pair back into the darkness of the restaurant. They get a booth against the window; the spire atop Proudley's library shines a dim gold in the distant night.

"Which reminds me," Antoinette says, wrestling her coat from her shoulders and laying it on the seat beside her. "They said they haven't heard from Percy in a while; he won't even answer Harvey's calls. Everything okay with him?"

The menu's very much what she expected. Burgers, an assortment of fried things, soups heavy with cheese and cream and a vegetable or two to make it healthy. Nevertheless, it's suddenly very interesting. Much more interesting than this conversation. "Percy? Yeah. Sure. Mm."

"Are you two fighting again?"

"We're not fighting," Indy says. She replays it in her head, and her voice sounds too combative. She softens it. "We don't—fight. We're just busy people, Mom. I didn't know going to the same college meant I had to keep track of him all the time."

Antoinette makes another face Indy recognizes. Indy cringes, expecting a sharp rebuke, but then her mother just pushes out a long sigh instead. "Of course not, Indy. But this is why everyone was excited you both chose Proudley, you know. So you could look after each other."

But I'm tired.

She would say it. She should. But she closes her mouth instead.

Antoinette considers the menu for far longer than necessary, until she settles on some sort of fish filet and a side salad, and Indy gets a burger she knows she'll probably only eat half of. Indy asks about her dad, an impromptu business trip being the reason for his reluctant absence. If he were here, Indy would probably be in a far better mood. Her mother is always an ardent flame, always was since she was a kid, according to Indy's grandparents, but her husband knows how to calm the heat in a way it seems no one else ever can.

"And your brother's out sightseeing again or whatever it is he does now," Antoinette says, cutting her fish into tiny pieces. "Where was he again the last time we spoke? Something about a Paul."

"Paul? Who's Paul?"

"No, like the name of the country. It had a pal in it."

"Nepal?"

"Yes! Nepal."

"Nepal," Indy repeats, and shakes her head. Last year, Sterling had written a psychological thriller that was on the New York Times Bestseller's list for approximately one month and sixteen days. It didn't take him long to take the money and leave from his day job to travel basically every end of the planet. Back in her dorm, Indy had a drawer in her desk just for all the postcards he sent her. "What is he doing in Nepal?"

"Climbing mountains, or something."

"Sounds like something Sterling would do."

"And you?" Antoinette asks. "How's school going?"

She could answer simply, and part of her wants to. But another part of her mind is still there, searching not for the most convenient answer, but for the one that means something. "Have you ever gotten into cold cases, Mom?"

Antoinette pauses her eating, looking at her daughter blankly. "Like, how so?"

"I don't know. Didn't you ever have a minute when you were into true crime, or something? Didn't you ever hear about something that just...bugged you, and you didn't know why?" Indy asks. Quietly, she sets her fork down. This is what she wants to write about: a case that should be simple, but isn't. A case for which the only reason it was left unsolved was that its secrets became too much to bear for those tasked with keeping them. It's a long shot, but it's what she needs if she wants this paper to shine.

Antoinette just gives a bewildered laugh. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Indy."

"I have to write about a cold case," she explains, "but I don't know. We have so long to work on it—I feel like it has to be important."

Antoinette waves a hand. "It's just an assignment, Indy. I'm sure you can find plenty of cases online."

"When I'm really a journalist, when I'm out there shooting documentaries and everything in the field, is that how I'm supposed to think? Like it's just an assignment?"

Antoinette frowns. Indy picks up a limp fry, more than content with giving up.

"There is one I can think of."

Indy raises an eyebrow.

"It happened a when I was kid, growing up in Erskine. Some woman called a maintenance man to her house because the AC had gone out. The maintenance man left, next thing you know her neighbors find the woman brutally murdered. There wasn't much press about it; they took the maintenance guy in, and I think he was executed," Antoinette says, and frowns. "It never felt right to me."

Erskine, a town just half an hour from Proudley and where her mother grew up, was known for its clear divisions along race and class lines. Some of the contention has smoothed over the years, Indy's heard, but not by much. Her fingers itch for a pen, but she doesn't have one right now, so she just fiddles with her hands beneath the table. "This woman...was she white?"

Antoinette nods.

"I'm guessing the maintenance guy was black?"

Antoinette nods again. "He's probably guilty; it's not like I would know. But there was a part of me that always wondered if the only reason he was killed was because they needed someone to blame, and he made the easiest mark."

Antoinette looks up and then, and Indy's sure her mother sees it: the interest in her face, the blooming thirst for answers that has kept her afloat all of her academic life, and her life in general, too.

"What was this woman's name?"

"Oh, I don't know. Dobbs, or something, maybe," Antoinette says, and huffs, her gaze floating up in the direction of the ceiling for a second. "I remember the maintenance man's name, though. Mostly because of all the angry signs I read it from."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Lamar Pine," Antoinette says. "I think his name was Lamar Pine."