Page 89 of Thorne
Talia's brow furrows. She looks at me, then at Lily, then back at me.
"Wait." She holds up a hand. "I assumed Thorne wasn't allowing any contact between you and his daughter."
"He wasn't." I keep my voice even. "Initially."
"From what I understand, he wasn't exactly happy when he found out, either."
Lily's bouncing stops. She looks at me, her forehead creasing.
"Daddy was mad at you?"
The room goes very still.
"No, sweetheart." I turn to face her fully. "Your daddy was concerned. I'm here to work on something important, and he wanted me to focus on that."
"Yeah, but then you showed me how numbers can be friends instead of rude." Lily's voice picks up speed again, the worry already forgotten. "And now I'm a math genius."
"Yes, now you're a math genius." I allow myself a small smile. "But you still have to practice. You've got to learn everything I'm teaching you."
"I am! I am!" She slides off the chair and grabs Talia's hand. "Look, I can show you something else. Watch my fingers."
Talia looks startled, but she lets Lily pull her hand closer.
"Okay, so." Lily holds up her own hand, palm facing out. "Most people think you can only count to five on one hand, right? But that's baby counting."
"Baby counting," Talia repeats, her lips twitching.
"Watch." Lily touches her thumb to the base of her pinky finger. "One." She moves up to the middle segment. "Two." The tip. "Three." She shifts to the ring finger. "Four, five, six." The middle finger. "Seven, eight, nine." Index finger. "Ten, eleven, twelve." She holds up her hand triumphantly. "Twelve on one hand. Because every finger has three parts."
Eliza leans in. "The phalanges."
"The, what?"
"The bones in your fingers. That's what they're called. Phalanges."
"Fa-lan-gees." Lily tries the word out. "Okay, the fa-lan-gees. So if I count thefa-lan-geeson this hand," She holds up her left hand. "That's twelve. And if I count them on this hand," The right hand goes up. "That's twelve more. So that's twenty-four."
"That's very clever." Cassie smiles, speaking to Lily directly for the first time.
"I'm not done." Lily flips her hands over, showing the backs. "If I count the other side of myfa-lan-gees, that's twenty-four more. So I can count to forty-eight on just my hands." She spreads all ten fingers wide. "I'm a super counter."
The women are watching with expressions that have softened despite themselves. This is not what they expected to find in this safe house. A six-year-old teaching FBI analysts about phalanges.
"Julianna taught me that." Lily points at me. "She knows all the secrets. She said math isn't hard; it's just that some people's brains need different doors."
"Different doors." Talia is looking at me now with something that wasn't there before.
"It's a Trachtenberg concept." I trace the edge of my tablet. "The idea that mathematical understanding isn't one-size-fits-all. Some minds need?—"
"Different doors," Eliza finishes. "I like that."
The check mark in the corner of Lily's paper catches my eye. She put it there herself. A child who believed she was broken is now grading her own work.
The shadow fills the doorway.
Thorne doesn't cross the threshold. He stands in the frame, his silhouette blocking the hall light, watching his daughter demonstrate finger-counting to a roomful of strangers.Something shifts in his face, not softening, exactly. Something underneath the tactical mask.
"Lily-bug." His voice is gentler than it's ever been. "Time for bed."
