Mara and Evelyn sat across from him. Ellis stood by the door. Sheila brought water and closed the tent flap against the music outside.

“I’ll be clear,” Ada said. “You installed a second controller that was not on the approved layout. The floor moved after we directed you to disconnect it. I need to know why.”

Julian tapped his fingers on the table. “The secondary system was intended for redundancy.”

“Why did it initiate a movement sequence?”

“A signal fault.”

Mara looked at his handheld controller. “You were pressing buttons during the fault.”

“To stop it.”

“Then show us the stop sequence.”

He hesitated. Ellis held out his hand.

“May I see that?” the technician asked.

Julian refused. Ada said nothing, but her expression hardened.

Evelyn, who had been silent, leaned forward. “I want to ask you one thing, Julian. Did you ever connect a lighting cue to Peter’s expansion port on the night Alicia fell?”

The man’s face changed more completely than it had in front of the simulator.

“I was fourteen,” he said.

“That wasn’t an answer.”

He looked down. “I built a little light sequencer. Peter had said the garden was beautiful, but the light couldn’t follow it quickly enough. I thought if I sent the timing through the unused port, the lights would move with the panels.”

“Did you tell him?”

“No. I wanted to surprise him.”

“What did you connect?”

“The lighting desk to the controller. I thought the port was an output, not an input.”

Evelyn nodded slowly. “And the floor jumped.”

“I pulled the wire out. Nobody noticed. Everyone was helping Alicia.”

“You let Peter blame his emergency key.”

Julian’s voice rose. “He was responsible for the entire machine. I was a child. I didn’t understand what I’d done.”

Mara thought of the boy in the photograph, his jacket hanging off narrow shoulders. It was possible to believe he’d been terrified. It was impossible to excuse the same man, decades later, building the exact hazard into a public show.

“Why did you bring it back?” she asked.

Julian looked toward the sound of the parade. “Because I spent my whole life knowing the Glass Garden could be magnificent. Brightline had a contract for a centennial attraction, not a municipal safety seminar. This was my chance to finish what we started.”

“You mean what Evelyn and Peter started,” Mara said.

He flushed. “I worked there too.”

“You did. And you had a chance to tell the truth and help rebuild it properly.”

Julian placed the controller on the table. “I didn’t intend for anyone to get hurt.”

Ellis answered quietly. “But you kept removing the things that would have stopped it.”

No one spoke for several seconds. Outside, children cheered as the lantern procession turned onto the path.