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She pointed to my formula. Her finger landed, unhesitating, on a notation I’d botched—swapped a negative sign where none belonged. A minor error, but still mine.
“Why do you think that?” I asked, more amused than curious.
She just smiled—that gap-toothed, triumphant, five-year-old smile that made the world feel like it had one unbreakable truth.
“Because it goes down instead of up, and you said things that go up are hopeful.”
I laughed, not because she was wrong, but because she was entirely right in a way I hadn’t taught her. She didn’t know the math. She didn’t need to. She saw theshapeof it, the rise and fall of truth across a line.
And in that moment, I knew.
She wouldn’t just follow my footsteps. She’d leap beyond them. My tiny baby bird would soar higher in the heavens than my imagination could even fathom—and not despite her smallness, her fragile frame, her quiet voice, butbecauseof it.
Because she saw from a different angle.
Because she listened harder, looked longer, asked better questions.
Because she had the kind of mind that didn’t simply solve puzzles, butfeltthem.
And I knew, without a shadow of any doubt, I would give my life a thousand times over to make sure the world never dimmed the brilliance that shone within her.
For her part, she bore her difference with a quiet dignity I had never earned and might never grasp. Perhaps that’s why I loved her the way I did—not just as any father would, but as a man in awe of her very existence. She had survived a world not built for her, and every day she stayed alive inside it felt like defiance, a sort of soft rebellion against life’s cruelty.
I sat on the edge of her narrow bed, just watching.
Her curls—dark and wild and ever unruly—framed her face like ink spills on parchment. I reached out, brushing one back from her temple, my hand trembling as it always did when I touched her in sleep.
There was something sacred in those moments. Was it the stillness? The silence? The illusion of safety? I could never be sure.
She made a soft sound and rolled, her bare shoulder peeking from beneath the blanket, all bird-bone and pale skin.
“Kicsim,” I whispered.My little one.
My thoughts drifted again, symbols forming in my mind’s eye, on the walls, across the bed linens. I saw them everywhere sometimes, when inspiration’s muse deigned to caress my cheek. It was in those moments I felt alive.
I hadn’t meant to build a future. Just a machine.
I’d started with equations, with permutations of ciphers and the flaws in the British Enigma machine that every good mathematician could see. I’d wanted to prove it could be done better, cleaner, unbreakable.
And then . . . it was.
The Soviets saw what I had not. They saw a weapon, a guarantee of secrets, a machine to silence all others.
They wanted to own it.
And I wanted to protect her.
That had been our pact.
Now I knew better.
And now it was too late to walk backward.
I leaned down, resting my elbows on my knees, hands clasped, staring at the tiny shelf above her bed. She’d placed a toy horse there—the one with the chipped paint and the ragged tail.
She’d said it looked like America.
She didn’t know what America looked like.