NEVA POV
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Mitch had the answer within an hour.
"Different women," he said, setting his phone down at the round table with the specific finality he used when a question had been fully closed. "Holt's Maren — full name Maren Ashcroft — was twenty-eight at the time of Elara's convergence, already established in council work, and verifiably in a different territory entirely on the date in question. I cross-referenced her attendance records from that period." He looked at Corva. "It's not her."
Corva absorbed this without visible disappointment, which told me she hadn't let herself hope too hard in the first place — sixty years of careful management of expectation had taught her that particular discipline thoroughly.
"Then the girl I remember is someone else," she said. "Also named Mare
