She didn't know for sure who had left the box on her desk, but her best guess was Rude. Reno couldn't have possibly passed it on without some kind of smart remark, given the contents. As for Tseng . . . Tseng would have seen fit to preface it with some comment, because he believed quite firmly in the importance of context. No, the only one of them who was likely to just leave the box on her desk without a word was Rude. She was grateful for that, because it meant that she wound up going through it in the privacy of her own office, unobserved.
She didn't even know what it was at first—just a cardboard box. Examination indicated that it wasn't a bomb or a biohazard, and she began to sift through it, bemused by the jumble of pens, the scraps of paper, scribbled notes, memos. It was someone's desk detritus, as familiar in its way as the contents of her own desk. Then she saw the name 'Katherine' on a memo, and her heart leapt up her throat like a living thing.
"Elena," Tseng began, ducking his head through the door to her office, "—do you have the data for—Elena?" She wasn't behind her computer. She was, very much to the contrary, sitting on the floor with her back against the front of her desk, holding a photograph. Her shoulders shook with laughter, but there were unshed tears in her eyes. Which was even more unusual than finding her sitting on the floor, because she never cried. Made a point of it, in fact.
"I can't believe she kept it," she said.
Of all the obvious possible questions to ask, he chose, "Who?"
"My sister," Elena said, and suddenly everything became clear, or at least clearer. She held out the photograph, and after a moment, he took it.
At first he didn't know what he was looking at. It was a cheap photo, taken outdoors and probably by an amateur, of two girls, one fair and one dark—teenagers, in high school uniforms. It took nearly half a minute (which was, by his standards, a very long time) before he realized that the girl in the foreground, the one with unruly blonde pigtails, was in fact Elena.
"It's you," he said.
"And my best friend from high school," she said, reaching up to take the photo back. "I must have been about sixteen. It was in with some stuff from her old desk. God, I can't believe she kept it."
"She was your sister," he said, after a moment.
"Yeah, but—we fought like cats and dogs." She laughed, and the laughter ended on a thick sound, almost but not quite a sob. "That's not really true. I fought like cats and dogs. She used to just stand there calmly and watch me rant and bitch and call her names, and then she'd say something like 'Temper, Elena, you're making a fool of yourself,' which of course would just set me off again. And I couldn't stand her because, the truth was, she really was better than me at most things."
He didn't say anything—there wasn't anything for him to say—but he offered her his hand after a moment, and she took it and got up.
"I never thought she kept any pictures of me. She was really . . . focused."
"She was that," he said.
She sniffed. "I don't know why I'm reacting like this." She wasn't going to say the word crying, and in fact was wiping the water from her eyes, regaining her composure. She didn't have her sister's easy, natural discipline, but she was teaching herself to make up for it. "She's been dead for years." She was looking at the picture of herself again, herself years before (but not so very many years before—she was so young, and that was easy to forget, hard to believe). "I dunno why she kept it. I look like an idiot."
He could think of several reasons, beginning with She was your sister, but she wasn't really talking to him, and didn't want an answer. She would later pretend that they'd never had this conversation, he predicted, out of sheer embarrassment. She talked too much, regretted it afterward.
So what he said was, "The coffee's fresh. Reno just put the pot on."
"Oh, good," she said, tucking her hair behind her ears. "I was afraid it was that horrible burnt stuff from last night." And as he watched, she tamped down her emotions, breathed, smiled, put on the mask, as they did, as they all did.
Her sister would have been proud.