“He said I’m a liability.”

“Kent once served soup in a chipped bowl and called it rustic. His judgment isn’t sacred.”

She sat beside him. Daniel told her about the pier, the unpaid training, and the confiscated phones. June listened without interrupting.

“You’re going back,” she said.

“I don’t know.”

“You do. You’re just worried you’ll end up doing what Orsini wants.”

“Exactly.”

“Then don’t do it for him.”

June reached into her pocket and handed him a photograph she had found in Nathan’s garage. It showed a woman standing at the cooperative’s long table, holding a pot of soup. On the reverse Nathan had written: ADA PIERCE, THE PERSON WHO KEPT US TOGETHER.

“She’s alive,” June said. “I checked. She runs a small restaurant across town.”

They visited Ada the next morning. She was eighty-one, sharp-eyed, and unimpressed by the photograph.

“Your father always chose the worst pictures,” she said. “Look at my hair.”

Daniel asked about the cooperative. Ada told him it had not been a charity. Every worker paid a small amount when they could, cooked when they had time, and ate whether or not they had contributed that week. The table was important because the cooks sat beside the loaders, cleaners, drivers, and mechanics. No one was assigned a better seat.

“The kitchen wasn’t what frightened them,” Ada said. “It was what happened after people finished eating. They compared wages. They told each other which machines were dangerous. They discovered they weren’t alone.”

“Why didn’t you rebuild it?” Daniel asked.

“Some tried. They lost work. Others had families to feed. Nathan was ashamed that he couldn’t keep us together. But shame doesn’t tell the whole story.”

She opened a drawer and removed a bent metal serving spoon. Its handle had been repaired with a small brass rivet.

“He fixed this after the fire. Said a useful thing shouldn’t be thrown away because someone damaged it. I kept it to remind him he was wrong about himself.”

Ada gave Daniel the spoon, not as an inheritance or a clue, but as a challenge.

“If you speak at that hearing,” she said, “don’t spend your time telling them your father was a good man. Tell them what workers need now.”

Chapter Six A: The Lunch Line

Later that same Friday morning, Daniel went back to North Pier while June bought supplies for her bicycle shop. He wore an ordinary sweatshirt, carried a paper bag with two sandwiches, and had no plan beyond watching the line. The hiring office opened at eight; at seven forty-five, thirty people were already waiting. Some balanced coffee cups on the fence. A man with a cane sat on a low wall. A young mother tried to keep a tired child quiet while she filled out a form.