Chapter 327: A Design Contest from Years Ago

Freya approached a design contest from years ago with the same rule she had adopted for every discovery connected to Marianne Cole: evidence first, interpretation later. The rule sounded simple, but it had become harder to follow as the investigation moved closer to her marriage, her past, and choices she had once believed belonged only to her.

One university competition included a written component about rebuilding a community after financial collapse.

Louis sat through the discussion with a stillness Freya recognized immediately. It was the expression he wore when anger, calculation, and concern were all competing for the same space. Months earlier she might have tried to soften the moment for him. After the truth about his hidden recovery plan, she no longer believed protecting each other from discomfort was always kindness.

Freya barely remembers entering because she did not win and considered the project unimportant.

They asked Derek to document the discovery and Mercer to identify what could actually be tested. Claire was included where the records touched narrative research, while lawyers handled private data. The process prevented a fascinating clue from becoming an accepted conclusion merely because everyone wanted an answer.

Freya was particularly careful about that temptation. She had awakened in a world she once knew as fiction. She had watched predictions resemble real events, seen chapter headings change, and found records that appeared to anticipate parts of her life. Yet almost every time someone claimed to understand the whole mechanism, another piece of evidence complicated the explanation.

So she continued living outside the mystery. Sunroom's cultural-center project had entered active development, bringing contractor meetings, preservation surveys, and budget revisions. Awake Stories was preparing a seasonal release list. The Open Page had expanded its community events. None of those things became less real because an old research archive contained her name.

That evening, Louis joined her at the dining table with two cups of coffee. Their relationship was still recovering from the bankruptcy revelation. They were speaking normally again, but normal did not mean repaired. Freya had made that distinction clear, and Louis had finally stopped trying to accelerate forgiveness by solving practical problems.

Instead, he answered questions when she asked them. If he did not know something, he said so. If a document made him look bad, he handed it over anyway. The change was not dramatic enough for a romance novel, Freya thought, but it mattered more than dramatic declarations ever had.

She also noticed something uncomfortable about herself. Part of her wanted the Marianne investigation to produce a clean explanation for everything: why she came to this world, why Louis and Freya married, why Claire wrote Gentle Devotion, and why the manuscript seemed to know their future. A single explanation would make the chaos feel designed.

But design was not always truth.

Freya knew that better than most. A beautiful floor plan could hide terrible circulation. A convincing story could hide missing evidence. A compatibility score could describe two people without creating the love between them.

Before bed, she added the day's facts to her notebook. She kept conclusions in a separate section and left several lines blank beneath them. Those empty lines were deliberate. They reminded her that new evidence was allowed to change her mind.

Louis paused at the bedroom door and asked whether she was coming to sleep. Freya looked at him for a moment. Their argument had not disappeared, but neither had their marriage.

In a little while, she told him.

He nodded and left without pressure.

Freya finished the final line, closed the notebook, and switched off the desk lamp. Whatever Marianne had predicted, arranged, or accidentally discovered, Freya would not allow a dead researcher's model to decide what happened next.

That privilege still belonged to the living.