Chapter 208| A Name in São Paulo

Priya’s update arrived nearly two months after the South American connection first surfaced, and Allen recognized, from the careful, measured pace of her opening words, that whatever her team had found required delicate handling before proceeding any further.

"We located a living descendant," she said, once the family had gathered. "A woman named Camila Duarte, currently residing in São Paulo. Her own family history traces back to the nineteen-sixties incident we identified in the archives, though as far as we can tell, she has no current awareness of any connection to it."

"How certain are we of the match?" Myria asked, already reviewing the documentation Priya had forwarded.

"Reasonably certain," Priya said. "Genetic markers consistent with the pattern we’ve documented in your own family’s case, alongside real, meaningful circumstantial evidence connecting her lineage directly to the original nineteen-sixties account."

Allen felt old, familiar unease settle alongside genuine, cautious hope. "Does she show any signs of the same cultivation pattern we found in our own family’s history? Anything suggesting she’s currently being watched, the way we apparently were?"

"Nothing conclusive," Priya admitted. "Which could mean the pattern skipped her generation entirely, or simply that whatever observation exists remains far more discreet than what your own family experienced. I don’t want to alarm her unnecessarily before we understand which possibility we’re actually facing."

"How do we approach this?" Vivian asked. "Carefully, I assume, given everything we’ve already learned about how devastating this kind of revelation can prove."

"Very carefully," Priya confirmed. "I’d like to make initial contact through official channels first, framed as a routine genealogical inquiry rather than anything immediately alarming. If she shows willingness to engage further, we can gradually introduce the fuller, more difficult context."

Allen absorbed the plan with quiet approval, recognizing in Priya’s own careful methodology the same patient wisdom that had guided their own family’s difficult journey toward understanding. "I want to be involved," he said. "If she’s willing, eventually. I think hearing from someone who’s already walked this road might help, the same way it helped Corvin."

"I suspected you might," Priya said. "I’ll factor that into the approach, once we’re confident she’s ready for it."

Vivian tilted her head, considering. "What made Corvin willing to hear it from you specifically, and not just from Priya’s team?"

"He said it was different, hearing it from someone who’d already lived through the part where the ground stops feeling solid," Allen said quietly. "Priya’s team can hand someone the facts. I think what actually helps is knowing the facts don’t have to be the end of the story. That someone came out the other side of it and still has a life worth living."

"Then it’s worth doing again," Myria said. "Even if it never gets easier to watch."

---

The initial contact proceeded over the following weeks, Priya’s team establishing careful, gradual rapport with Camila through legitimate genealogical channels, and Allen found himself, following the process’s slow, deliberate progress from a respectful distance, grateful all over again for exactly how much more thoughtfully this kind of difficult outreach had grown since Corvin’s own earlier, more improvised introduction.

"She’s curious," Priya reported, several weeks into the process. "Engaged, without being alarmed. I think we’re approaching the point where a more direct conversation becomes appropriate."

"When?" Allen asked.

"Within the month, I’d estimate," Priya said. "I want her fully informed before we introduce your own family’s involvement, though. She deserves the chance to process the foundational truth first, without extra complexity layered on top of it immediately."

"That’s fair," Allen said, though something in his chest ached at the thought of another stranger, somewhere across the world, standing at the very beginning of the same devastating journey his own family had already survived.

Vivian, listening with her own careful, considering attention, finally spoke. "Do you think her situation mirrors ours closely?" she asked. "Or might the cultivation pattern have shaped her family’s history in some entirely different way?"

"Too early to say," Priya admitted. "Every bloodline we’ve examined so far has shown its own particular variations. I don’t want to assume her experience will map neatly onto your own, however much overlap the underlying pattern suggests."

"Understood," Vivian said. "I just want to make sure we’re prepared to meet her where she actually is, rather than where our own history might lead us to expect her to be."

"That’s precisely the right instinct," Priya said, something approving in her tone.

"We’ll be ready," Myria said, "whenever she’s ready for us."

Allen let the promise settle, drawing quiet purpose from exactly how far this patient, expanding work had already carried them, and found himself, watching the evening deepen over Hegeville’s own steady, hopeful lights, grateful for a family that kept finding new, meaningful ways to turn devastating truth into genuine, lasting good.

"One more thread," he said quietly, "in a story far bigger than any of us first understood."

"One more thread," Vivian agreed, "and one more person who won’t have to face it entirely alone."

Later that evening, Allen found himself pulling up what little he could learn about Camila through legitimate, public channels — a modest architecture practice, a handful of professional photographs, a life that looked, from every visible angle, entirely ordinary and unremarkable. He studied her face a long moment, wondering what she might be doing at that exact hour, unaware that a family on the other side of the world was already quietly preparing to change the entire shape of her own understanding.

"You’re thinking about her," Myria observed, finding him still scrolling.

"I keep imagining what it must be like," Allen admitted, "living an ordinary life, having no idea any of this exists yet. I remember what that felt like, before Reginald’s own deception finally came undone. I don’t envy her the moment it stops being ordinary."

"No," Myria agreed softly. "But I think, given everything we’ve learned about how to approach this properly, she’ll have far more support navigating it than any of us did, back when our own reckoning first began."

"I hope so," Allen said, and finally set the tablet aside, letting the evening’s quiet weight settle into something he could properly carry toward tomorrow’s continued, patient work.

He was still turning Camila’s ordinary, unsuspecting face over in his mind when his own tablet chimed once, sharp and unfamiliar against the room’s easy quiet — not Priya’s usual channel, but a flagged, priority alert from Farrow’s office, the kind that hadn’t come through in months.

"That’s not São Paulo," Myria said, already reading over his shoulder, her expression sharpening. "That’s the Kagen case file."