Mara went anyway. The clocktower leaned because of an old foundation problem; pigeons staged a nightly coup on its ledges. At 4:17 the light slanted perfectly between two buildings, turning dust into gold. She waited, holding a copy of the index in her bag like contraband. People came and went: a woman with a grocery bag of basil, a man with a briefcase who checked his watch twice, a kid on a skateboard who did three near-misses with a lamppost. None of them met her.