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I still am not prepared to hear it.

“The file carries your name,” Charlotte says.

“Blaire Wilson.”

I look down at the copy she has placed in front of me.

There it is.

My name.

Not handwritten this time, but typed beneath a reference to cataloguing and provenance documentation prepared during the Kensington collection review. Seven years disappear with humiliating efficiency.

I can see the library before I can stop myself. Dark shelves. Old paper. Rain against tall windows. A man standing across the room from me with pale-blue eyes and the kind of stillness that always made me more aware of him than movement ever could.

I pull my attention back to the document.

“My involvement with the Kensington collection was limited to a specific project,” I say.

“It was a long time ago, and I haven’t worked with the family since.”

“I understand.”

“I also don’t have current privileged access to their archives.”

“I understand that as well.”

I look at Charlotte. “Then I’m not sure my old name on a file gives you the advantage you think it does.”

“It tells me you have already seen material other advisors would need weeks to learn exists.”

“That doesn’t mean I can retrieve it.”

“No,” Charlotte says. “But it means you know the architecture of the collection.”

I hesitate.

She is not wrong.

The Kensington collection was never simply paintings hanging in rooms. There were family trusts, estate holdings, storage facilities, private residences, insurance records, historic inventories and layers of documentation that crossed between them. Understanding where something lived on paper could be almost as important as knowing where it hung physically.

“I’d still be approaching them as an outside advisor,” I say.

“That is what I expect.”

“And there is no guarantee they’ll sell.”

“I know.”

“The fact that your family once owned the work may create moral weight, but if their legal title is clean, they can refuse.”

“I know that too.”

I study her for a moment.

“You’ve thought this through?”

“For years,” she says sternly.