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Professor Said Mathematicians Failed 50 Years — But Truant Freshman Girl Cracked It in Class

Professor Said Mathematicians Failed 50 Years — But Truant Freshman Girl Cracked It in Class

Chapter 27

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"Of course, honey. What's your name?""Ren. Her granddaughter."There was a small pause. "Oh, you're Ren! She talks about you constantly. Told half the nursing staff her granddaughter's some kind of math prodigy at the university."Ren felt her throat tighten. "She said that?""Practically bragged the whole staff's ear off," the nurse said, warmth in her voice. "Get some rest yourself, all right? She'd want that."Ren thanked her and hung up, sitting in the dark a long while afterward, holding on to those few borrowed words like something solid. She thought about calling Reese. Instead, she simply sat with it the way she had learned to sit with hard things her whole life: quietly, until it became bearable enough to move again.Two days after the hearing was announced, with only a single day left before the symposium, Ren decided to do something she hadn't planned on. Dorothy had mentioned a name in passing, almost accidentally while helping her look through old records: Walter Simmons, Professor Emeritus, retired now, living somewhere just outside town. He and Edwin Hartman had been hired the same year, according to the old faculty photograph. If anyone remembered what really happened fifty years ago, it might be him.Ren found his address through the alumni office: an old colonial house at the edge of Ashford Falls, surrounded by tall oak trees just starting to lose their leaves. She stood on the porch for a long moment before she found the courage to knock.The man who answered the door was eighty-one years old: tall, but stooped now, wearing a cardigan despite the mild afternoon. He looked at her for a long moment before he spoke."You have his eyes," he said quietly. "Edwin's, I mean. I'd know them anywhere."Ren's breath caught. "You knew my grandfather?""I did," Walter said, "a long time ago. Come in, dear. It's... it's cold out here for an old man like me, even if it isn't for you."His living room was lined with books, decades of them, spines cracked from use, and photographs on nearly every surface, most of them faded to soft sepia. On the mantle sat a small framed photograph Ren hadn't noticed at first: two young men standing beside a chalkboard, both grinning, one of them unmistakably her grandfather.She rose without thinking and picked it up, studying it closely.
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Professor Said Mathematicians Failed 50 Years — But Truant Freshman Girl Cracked It in Class

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