museum curator …
“I also teach a few classes at a community college, and I developed a program that would seek out nontraditional students within a connected community and group them nonhomogeneously into study and support groups.”
“You—what?”
“See, nontraditional students, meaning those students who aren’t enrolling straight from high school, sometimes struggle. Especially with math. There can be a gap in skills, or—if they’ve dropped out of high school entirely and are enrolled with a GED—or …” Now he was pacing, and Dini stood rock-still as he cut a path around her. “Even older students, because let’s face it, we don’t teach math the way we used to. Like maybe not the way they learned it back then. So this program lets them—or their academic counselor—plug in some info and help them meet other students to form study groups that fit with their schedule and ability. They don’t always know how to seek help.”
“Stop.” He was speaking like one of those voices at the end of a pharmaceutical commercial. Dini held out a hand that would have caught his arm if she’d let it. “Why did you make me think that you were here just for …” She made a vague gesture around the room. “This.”
He put his hands in his pockets, instantly transforming into something like an awkward teenager in front of her. “Because I followed you around for two hours listening to your ghost talk, and I thought you were so”—he looked away and back—“pretty. And then you were so cool with your hair and your card magic, and I thought if I told you I was here to pitch my software for creating algorithms to create nonhomogenous groupings of nontraditional community college students, you’d think I was some kind of tech nerd.”
She looked meaningfully at his shoes. “Aren’t you?”
He laughed, a literal ha-ha. “I suppose I am. Some people from Alamo Community Colleges reached out to me. I met today with one of the counselors who’s helping me with the pitch. Look, this picture creeped me out, but I never considered actually coming here until this opportunity.”
Truthfully, Dini hadn’t heard much since Quin said she was pretty, but her ears locked this in. A business meeting. Not a date, not a girlfriend. Probably not. Most likely not. Not that it mattered, because Quin wasn’t here to search out his roots or finish an old family story. Still…She kept her reaction hidden under the face she’d perfected. Already she’d been caught snooping in his closet, no need to add phone spying to her crimes.
“Some coincidence, getting a call from the same city where your great-great-grandfather lived.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence.”
“Fate, then?”
He shook his head. “I believe that God has a plan, and that He brought me here. Put me in your ghost tour group.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“Not at all. Coincidence and fate are random. I’m a math person. I don’t do random. God is purposeful. We live in an equation of His design.”
“Like an algorithm that brings nonhomogenous people together in a study group.”
Quin looked pleased—no other word for it—like Bea whenever Dini could correctly identify the elements of one of her crayon-scrawled pictures. “I’d never thought of it like that before, but sure.”
“Or like a card trick.”
“Maybe?” He looked a bit more skeptical.
“The mark thinks I’ve magically made his card appear, when it was counted and hidden from the beginning.”
“Exactly.”
She wanted to answer back that her life had been nothing but chaos for as long as she could remember. Living on buses and trains, falling asleep in theaters and waking up in motel rooms. Her caregivers an unreliable parade of performers—singers, jugglers, dancers, dog trainers. Orphaned at sixteen, never having been a child. Having a foster mother for a best friend. Only friend, really, over the last five years spent springing between seasons of sleeplessness and scraping gigs. If her life was an equation, it was one of those crazy wall-sized ones. But she said none of this. Mostly because that very moment—isolated in time—seemed so settled. Balanced.
“What if they hadn’t?” She wandered back over to the table and ran a thoughtful finger around the soft edges of the box. “If ACC hadn’t called you. What was your plan for all of this?”
“I don’t know, really. I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. I got pretty busy finishing the details on the software, meeting with coders, and working out glitches. All of it didn’t click together until I was booking my flight and choosing