Chapter 52: Chapter 52: Does That Not Deserve Punishment?

Chapter 52: Does That Not Deserve Punishment?

Daphne Whitlock did not manage to drag herself out of bed until late morning.

The curtains in her bedroom had done a poor job against the sun, and the light along the floor made the whole room feel too awake for a woman who had slept after dawn. She sat up with her hair loose over one shoulder, one hand pressed against her forehead, and spent several seconds deciding whether the world deserved her cooperation yet.

Last night had been a disaster for her sleep schedule.

Every time she closed her eyes, Cory appeared again.

The child had sat in her apartment with those pale lashes, that too-polite voice, and that small, careful posture that made a person want to pick him up and lock the front door afterward. He had thanked her after eating. He had looked up at her like she was safe.

Daphne knew the thought was rotten, and that was part of what made it harder to throw away.

A child who trusted adults should not be alone in the hallway at night. A child that pretty should not be sent wandering around an old apartment building with nobody holding his hand. A child that fragile-looking should not exist in a world with people like her.

That last point was the one her brain kept circling.

In her dream, Cory had not been as sweet as the boy at her table. He had sat on the edge of her bed, white hair falling around his face, and looked down at her with open disdain. The dream version of him had spoken in a cold little voice, saying things no child should know how to say. He had criticized her, ordered her, and watched her squirm like he had planned the whole thing from the start.

Daphne woke up heated, embarrassed, and weirdly offended by her own subconscious.

That was probably true.

The way he ate last night had planted the suspicion. He had cleaned out far more of the food than his small body should have been able to hold, then left with perfect manners before she could get his address. He had looked innocent the whole time, which was exactly what made the memory annoying.

If he had done it on purpose, then he was a tiny menace.

If he had not done it on purpose, then Daphne was the problem, which was worse because she already knew that.

She shuffled to the bathroom and splashed water on her face. The woman in the mirror looked less like a responsible teacher and more like someone who should not be trusted with private thoughts. Her students knew her as patient, pretty, and composed. Parents liked her because she knew how to sound serious without sounding cold. Other staff members trusted her with school visits and difficult conversations.

None of that helped when her mind returned to Cory’s face.

During his fever, he had looked even smaller, breakable enough that the memory should have made her protective in a normal, adult way.

Instead, there was that other urge.

The urge to leave a mark on something untouched.

Daphne gripped the sink and drew in a slow breath through her nose. A child was not a blank page. A child was not a little thing to be shaped because her own head had poor boundaries. She knew that. Knowing it did not stop the uglier part of her from imagining what it would feel like if Cory looked at her first, trusted her first, ran to her first, and let her become the adult he thought of when he needed food, shelter, or comfort.

If he came again, she needed his address.

She would call it safety, obviously.

The excuse sounded fake even inside her own head, but it was at least useful.

Her phone rang from the bedroom before the thought could grow worse. Daphne walked back, picked it up, and saw her mother’s name on the screen.

She answered while still toweling water from her jaw. "Hi, Mom."

"Daphne, are you up?"

"I am now."

Her mother ignored the dry tone. "A tenant complained a while ago that the building security was too loose. I talked it over with the management company, and they agreed the cameras should be installed today. The workers are supposed to come this afternoon. Since you are already there, keep an eye on it for me."

Daphne paused with the towel in her hand.

The cameras were finally happening.

She had brought that up to her family before, mostly because the hallway was too old, too dim, and too easy to cross without being seen. At the time, she had told herself the concern was practical. A teacher living alone should want a safer building. Tenants should want basic security. Her family owned enough of the property to make the change happen, even if they took their time about it.

Now, though, the timing felt almost insulting.

Yesterday, Cory had slipped away before she could follow.

Today, cameras would go up.

"All right," Daphne said. "I will be here."

"Make sure they cover the hallway properly. The front entrance too."

"I understand. I will check the angles."

After the call ended, Daphne held the phone for a while and smiled despite herself.

There was still time before afternoon.

She could order lunch, pretend to grade something, and let her thoughts wander back to Cory without anyone in the room judging her.

The cameras could wait a few hours.

Cory, unfortunately, was not in her apartment to wait with them.

By afternoon, Grayhaven had settled into the heavy warmth that made sidewalks shimmer and coffee shops feel like public mercy.

Inside a small café near the busier shopping stretch, the air conditioning hummed over low conversation and the sweet smell of syrups, milk, and coffee. People came in for iced drinks, stayed for the outlets, and left when their cups emptied. In a back corner, half-hidden by a potted plant and a wall menu no one read closely, Audra Sloane sat across from Cyrus Calder with a notebook between them.

Audra had dressed differently from yesterday.

The change was not loud enough to look desperate. She would never make that mistake. The blouse was softer, the skirt cleaner in line, the earrings small but deliberate. The whole outfit had been chosen to look accidental from a distance and impossible to ignore up close.

Cyrus had not looked at it once.

He sat opposite her in his St. Alder uniform, bangs lowered, pencil in hand, attention locked on the problem she had written out for him. His coffee had gone mostly untouched. His posture was serious enough that any passing adult would have praised him as a model student.

Audra should have been pleased.

He was studying. His focus had improved. He no longer looked like he might fall asleep with his face in the worksheet.

Her fingers tightened around the edge of her book.

Was one glance too much to ask?

If Cyrus had looked once, even by accident, she could have forgiven the rest. Instead, he treated her like a human answer key with nice handwriting. That should have been insulting. It was insulting.

Unless he had looked already.

The hair hid too much of his face. With most of his eyes covered, he could have glanced at her several times without making it obvious. He might even be doing it on purpose, carefully pretending to be serious while sneaking looks whenever she dropped her attention to the book.

Audra found the idea believable enough to irritate herself with it.

She had met boys who played that game. They acted distant, then watched from reflections, windows, dark phone screens, and the edges of conversations. Some were clumsy enough to be funny. Others thought restraint made them deep. Audra rarely bothered exposing them because the effort gave them too much credit.

Cyrus was different only because he was better at making her doubt whether he was playing at all.

In that case, fine.

She wrote a harder problem and slid it across the table.

"This one uses the same method, but the setup is less obvious," she said. "Try it without asking me first."

Cyrus took the paper. "I can try."

Audra lowered her attention to her book, or at least made it look that way. In truth, she watched him through her lashes.

Any little movement would count. A pause too long. A shift of the head. A flicker toward her hands, her collar, her mouth, her earrings. Almost anything would do.

Cyrus gave her nothing.

He read the problem twice, marked the useful information, and started working. Once, his pencil stopped, but he only crossed out a line and rewrote the equation beneath it. His shoulders did not turn. His head did not lift. His attention remained so thoroughly on the math that Audra began to feel punished by her own test.

The café changed around them. A couple left the window table. Two college students came in with laptops. Someone at the counter ordered a drink with so many modifications that the barista had to read it back twice.

Cyrus kept working.

Audra stared at the same page in her book and failed to read a single paragraph.

After roughly fifteen minutes, Cyrus placed the pencil down and looked up, though even then his attention moved to the paper first.

"I finished this one," he said. "Can you check whether I set it up correctly?"

Audra took the page.

He had solved it.

Not perfectly, because his line work was still ugly and one step was more awkward than it needed to be, but the answer was right. The method was right too.

Audra felt her smile appear before she decided what it meant.

"You did well," she said.

"Thanks," Cyrus said. "Your explanation from yesterday helped."

That was the kind of answer a tutor should appreciate.

Audra drew another sheet from the folder.

If he got it wrong, she could give him ten extra problems.

Since he got it right, twenty seemed more reasonable.

She began writing.

Cyrus looked at the growing list with a slow blink. "Is this homework?"

"It is practice," Audra said.

"That is a lot of practice."

"Your progress is obvious, so it would be a waste not to build on it."

The explanation sounded clean enough to survive in court.

The truth was much simpler.

He had sat across from her and thought only about math. Did that not deserve punishment?

By the time the tutoring session ended, several rounds of customers had passed through the café. The ice in Audra’s drink had melted into a pale watered-down layer, and Cyrus’s pages were covered with work. He looked tired, but not defeated. That part annoyed her too.

Audra gathered the papers into a neat stack and pushed the final set toward him.

"You did well today," she said.

Her voice came out calm. Her eyes avoided his for half a beat.

Cyrus accepted the papers and tucked them away. "Thanks for the help. I will see you tomorrow."

"I will see you tomorrow," Audra said.

He left with no hesitation.

Audra watched his back until the café door closed behind him. The bell above it chimed once, bright and ordinary, and then the street swallowed him.

Her expression settled into something even she did not name.

Cyrus stopped at the same convenience store on the way home and bought two hot breakfast sandwiches from the warmer.

He had been passing that store too often. The woman at the register already recognized him well enough to reach for a bag before he asked. This was bad for anonymity, but good for efficiency, and efficiency won because the sandwiches were hot.

He ate while walking.

By the time he reached the apartment building, the food was gone and his mood had improved.

Everything in the building looked normal at first. The entrance door still stuck near the frame. The stairwell still smelled faintly of dust, detergent, and someone’s takeout from a different floor. The hallway outside his apartment was still dim enough that the corners blurred unless the motion light caught.

Cyrus did not notice the small new camera tucked near the ceiling.

Once inside, he dropped his bag by the chair, washed his hands, and spread Audra’s extra problems across the desk.

The Most Improved Student Award was still waiting somewhere ahead of him. Every solved problem was money in a more annoying form.

Thinking about it that way helped.

He worked from afternoon into evening, pencil moving, stomach digesting, fan pushing room-temperature air across a room that stayed cooler than it should. Problem by problem, the café faded from his mind. Audra’s clothing, if it had been meant to do anything, achieved no measurable result against algebra.

By the time he finished the twenty problems, the apartment had darkened around him.

His stomach made a sound that had no respect for academic ambition.

Cyrus leaned back in the chair and looked toward the kitchen area, which contained several things that could hold food and very little actual food. Going next door to deceive Daphne again was possible, but not necessary tonight.

She did not look like someone who would move away soon.

He had time.

A good con required patience.

He tore open two breakfast gel pouches and drank them in quick succession. They were sweet, cheap, and not nearly enough to count as dinner. Still, they kept the rebellion in his stomach from becoming an emergency.

Then he returned to the desk.

At night, after another stretch of studying, Cyrus opened one more gel pouch and stepped onto the narrow balcony.

The city had gone dark in layers. From the second floor, he could see only the sidewalk, a few passing cars, the tired glow from neighboring windows, and the occasional person walking home with shoulders lowered by the day. The air outside was still warm, but the night made it easier to tolerate.

This was his first full weekend lived by his own choices.

It had been better than he expected.

Games at Faye’s house, free lunch, pudding, tutoring that turned into too much homework, food bought with his own money, and a locked apartment that opened only when he used the key. Even studying had helped. When his head was full of equations, it did not have room to replay the years that should not have happened to anyone.

Freedom felt incredible.

He showered, brushed his teeth, and crawled into bed soon after, hoping sleep would smother the hunger before it got louder.

Then a sound came from the front door.

Cyrus opened his eyes.

The hallway light bled faintly under the door, and Daphne’s familiar voice came from outside after a careful knock.

"Cyrus, are you awake?"

Daphne stood on the other side with a food container in her hands.

It was late enough that no reasonable neighbor should have been delivering dinner. It was also exactly late enough for someone to call it concern instead of an excuse.

Cyrus opened the door with his bangs in place and his expression arranged into polite surprise.

Daphne smiled at him. She wore casual clothes now, but the food container in her hands looked familiar enough to make last night’s apartment visit return in full.

"I made too much," she said. "I thought you might not have eaten."

"That is really thoughtful of you," Cyrus said. "I was about to go to sleep, but I appreciate it."

"It will taste better warm. Make sure you eat it soon."

"I will."

They exchanged a few more polite lines at the door. Daphne did not try to step inside. Cyrus did not invite her. The food passed from her hands to his, warm through the container, and for a second he felt moved despite himself.

Then he looked at Daphne’s face and remembered Cory.

This was absolutely not about the dinner.

Back inside, Cyrus set the container on the desk and opened it.

The smell rose at once, rich enough to make the gel pouches in his stomach seem like a personal insult. Gratitude arrived first. Suspicion followed right behind it, dragging a chair up to the table like it had been invited.

Daphne wanted something.

That did not mean the food was not useful.

Cyrus picked up a fork, stared at the meal, and decided the problem required long-term planning.

He really did need to find a way to make that woman spend more money.