Celia Voss finds me at the repair counter on a Monday, which tells me she planned it that way. Monday is slow. I have time to talk, and fewer witnesses to see my hands shake when I recognize her coat before her face.
"Four years," she says, like an opening bid. "I won't pretend I came here for a radio." She sets a folder on the counter between us, careful not to crowd the register. "We're building an exhibit for October fourteenth. I want the empty frames to stay empty. I want you to help me decide how."
I keep my eyes on the folder instead of her. "Why me."
"Because you were there, and because everyone else who was there already works for me, which makes them careful in ways you're not." She says it without apology, which I respect more than I expected to. "It's paid. Short-term. You inspect what we've built before you agree to anything public."
I think about the eighty-one minutes the way I think about a scar, not daily, but never gone. I think about the reward number that still doesn't feel real, and the year of silence after I handed in my badge. I think about Leon, who I haven't spoken to since the week Celia asked me to disappear from the reopening.
Under the folder I can almost see the coffee cup from that meeting eight days after the theft, the one I held while Celia explained why I should stay away from the reopening. She hadn't forbidden me to speak. She'd asked me to make myself scarce, and I'd done more than she asked. I remember the relief in her shoulders when I agreed. Later, in the hardware aisle, she'd brought me the reward notice, but neither of us had reopened that conversation. Four years of leaving it alone sit on the counter now. I don't know whether she thinks this invitation settles it. I need to find out before I touch the folder.
"You're not asking me to stay quiet this time," I say, testing the shape of it. "No," she says. "You can disagree with what we've built. That's part of the work."
"I'm not doing this so people feel better," I tell her. "I've seen what happens when a museum turns its own wound into a gift shop."
"I know what you've seen," Celia says, and for a second something crosses her face that isn't quite shame but stands close to it. "That's why I'm asking you to look before you say yes to anything beyond looking."
It's a smaller offer than I expected, and that's what decides me. Not forgiveness. Not trust rebuilt whole. Just a woman willing to let me inspect the thing before I'm asked to stand next to it in public.
"One visit," I say. "I look. I tell you what I think. That's the whole agreement today."
Celia nods like she'd have taken less. "Thursday morning. The galleries are closed to the public until noon." She leaves her card on the counter, though she knows I still have the number memorized, the one I never called even once in four years. I slide it into the drawer under the register instead of my pocket, where I keep things I haven't decided about yet.