Milwaukeee’s German Quarter, 1873, lay tucked against the steel gray expanse of Lake Michigan. Its narrow streets smelled of yeast and coal smoke. The air always tinged with the faint sourness of fermenting hops from the breweries that gave the city its lifeblood. Even in the biting cold of January, the clatter of wagon wheels over cobblestone was constant, mingling with bursts of German from bundled men on their way to Schlitz, Best or Kelner’s Brewery.

 On Galina Street, the RTOR house stood like any other, a modest, clabbered home with frost patched windows and a crooked iron fence. There was nothing in its plainness to suggest the fear it would come to inspire. Henrich and Greta Richter had brought their daughter Emma to America when she was an infant after a crossing so violent that the ship’s doctor had warned she would not survive the night. she had.

 But something about her seemed forged in that liinal space between life and death. Her frame stayed slight. Her complexion pale enough to seem translucent under winter light, and her eyes an unblinking gray so cold it was almost metallic. Missed nothing. Emma did not run or chatter like other children.

 She did not clamor for her mother’s apron or her father’s knee. Instead, she watched. At three, she could recall whole conversations from days before, reproducing every inonation with eerie accuracy. At four, she began counting steps, stitches, seconds between the brewery whistles. By the time she was 11, numbers clung to her mind like breath to cold glass.

 The German quarter was tight-knit, its 8,000 residents recreating a miniature Bavaria in the American Midwest. Beer gardens bloomed even in the frost. Bakeries sold dark loaves still warm from the oven, and church bells marked the passing hours. Neighbors knew one another’s business without malice. It was the rhythm of survival.

 But Emma’s knowledge was different. It was not gossip carried from one stoop to another. It was the precise measurement of life itself. The first true tremor of unease came on a gray February morning. The lake wind had a knife edge, rattling the kitchen windows as Greta packed her husband’s lunch. Emma sat at the table, small hands wrapped around a bowl of porridge, eating in slow, even spoonfuls.

 Without looking up, she said, “Mr. Dietrich will not come home from the brewery today. He will die at 14 minutes past 2.” Greta’s hand froze over the tin pale. Emma, what kind of talk is that? Emma lifted her gaze. those still storm gray eyes straight into her mother’s. He has been drinking from the small brown bottle for 17 days.

 Yesterday he drank three times more than usual. His steps to the brewery were uneven, 251 instead of his normal 244. When patterns change more than 10%, something significant happens within 72 hours. His change was 12%. Henrich, pulling on his heavy coat, stared at his daughter as if she had spoken in tongues.

 Yes, Dietrich drank, but so did half the men in the quarter. Yet the calm certainty in Emma’s voice lodged like a splinter under his skin. At 2:14 that afternoon in the brewery’s malt room, Yan Dietrich collapsed. The doctor said it was heart failure from years of drink. The men who found him muttered about how strange he’d been lately, his drinking worse, his nerves shot, but what unsettled them most was the timing.

Word spread. The RTOR girl had said the hour of his death. In the weeks that followed, neighbors glances lingered on Emma as she walked beside her mother to mark it. Some crossed themselves, others turned away quickly, as if to break the thread of her gaze. Father Coller, the stout Bavarian priest who had once called her a child blessed by God, now urged Henrich to keep her indoors more.

“The Lord gives gifts, yes,” he told him after mass. “But the devil twists them if we are not careful.” Greta tried to keep Emma close to her sewing table to distract her with small domestic tasks, but the girl would always drift back to her post at the kitchen window. From there she watched the narrow street as though it were a stage and she the only audience.

 Every wagon, every footstep, every slight change in gate or timing, she recorded them in her mind, a living ledger. Winter deepened. Snow turned the rooftops to muted humps of white, muffling the clamor of daily life. It was in that muffled quiet that Emma began seeing not just numbers, but patterns in human behavior. the kind that hinted at things best left unknown.

A neighbor who always walked one way to work now took a longer route every Wednesday. A woman who hung her laundry in the same order every week changed it when her husband was late. These details nested in Emma’s mind like clockwork parts, fitting into a mechanism only she could see.

 To the rest of the quarter, it was a winter like any other, bitter, cramped, endured with beer and prayer. To Emma, it was the beginning of an equation, one that would not stop solving itself. She did not yet knowwhat answer it would yield, only that each passing day added another variable to the sum. And somewhere beneath the icecrusted streets and the hiss of coal stoves, fear began to stir, not of sickness or poverty, but of the pale, quiet girl with the counting eyes, watching, measuring, and waiting for the pattern to reveal itself. The day after

Yan Dietrich’s funeral, the RTOR house felt tighter, as if the walls themselves leaned inward. Greta moved through her chores in a silence heavier than the snow pressing against the windows. She tried to hum as she needed dough, but her voice wavered. Henrich, normally slow to superstition, found himself glancing at his daughter as though she might speak another sentence that would make the air colder.

 Emma noticed nothing unusual in their unease. She still spent hours at her place by the kitchen window, her eyes tracking the rhythm of the street as if she were listening to a song only she could hear. When she did speak, it was not to fill the room, but to deliver fragments of observation. Mr. Krueger took 247 steps to the brewery today.

 On Wednesdays, he takes 284. Mrs. Fischer’s laundry was hung in reverse order this morning. It is the fourth time this has happened since Christmas. These utterances were not guesses, and she offered them without malice. But to Greta, they felt like intrusions, cold fingers lifting the curtains of other people’s lives. One March morning, while the snow still clung to the gutters, Emma spoke again.

She was peeling potatoes, her hands moving with a slow precision when she paused and said, “Mrs. Weber will be discovered tomorrow at 11:00 in the morning. Her husband will find her with Mr. Kelner in the brewery office. There will be violence. The knife slipped in Greta’s hand. Emma, stop that talk. Emma’s tone didn’t change. Mrs.

 Weber has been arriving at the brewery 7 minutes earlier each week for 6 weeks. Mr. Kelner has been staying 33 minutes later each day. Tomorrow, Mr. Weber will return from his delivery route 47 minutes early because his horse’s left for leg has been lame for 11 days. The gate irregularity will slow him enough to cause the convergence of these three variables.

 Henrich standing in the doorway felt his jaw tighten. How do you know about the horse? I count her steps when she passes our house. Emma replied on March 1st. She favored her right legs 53% of the time. Today it was 68. The next morning, exactly as Emma had calculated, Wilhelm Weber’s delivery wagon clattered into the brewery yard early.

 What happened in Kelner’s office was the stuff of whispers before sunset. Wilhelm striking Kelner so hard he broke the man’s nose. Anna Weber’s face modeled with bruises by the time the doctor was summoned. It was an ugly public scandal, but for many, the more chilling fact was that the RTOR girl had seen it coming. By the week’s end, the air in the quarter had shifted.

Neighbors passed Henrich on the street with eyes that slid away. In church, pews near the richtors stayed empty. Even children, once curious about the pale, silent girl, were called indoors when she walked by. The idea of Emma predicting death was terrifying enough that she could also lay bare the private shame of respected families was worse.

In a place where reputation could make or break survival, her knowledge felt like a blade. Henrich and Greta tried to keep her close, hoping to stifle whatever this was before it consumed them. But Emma was tireless. She began keeping a leatherbound journal, its pages filling with columns of numbers, small sketches of street corners, and notes so meticulous they might have been the work of a trained surveyor.

 Greta once caught sight of a page marked with names, dates, and what looked like lines of measurements, 73 cm, 127 steps, 17 minutes. She didn’t ask. She didn’t want to know. It was late March when Emma spoke of fire. She had been silent for hours, writing steadily in her journal while the wind pushed smoke from the chimney down into the kitchen.

 Then she closed the book, folded her hands on the cover, and said, “There will be a fire at the Zimmerman house on Sunday evening. It will begin at 8:47 and spread to three adjacent buildings. Mr. Zimmerman will not survive.” Greta’s breath caught. Emma, he has been drinking lamp oil mixed with whiskey for 12 days, Emma went on.

 His wife left for Chicago yesterday. Their chimney has structural damage calculated from the angle of smoke and soot patterns. The probability of fire is 93%. Henrich told her to keep silent, but that evening he went to warn Fran Zimmerman. The man laughed it off, wreaking of drink and lamp oil, but promised to be extra careful.

 On Sunday night, as the last light faded, flames roared from the Zimmerman roof. The wind carried the fire to three neighboring houses before the volunteer brigade could muster. Fron Zimmerman’s body was found in the kitchen. The clock on the wall had stopped at 8:47. After that, the whispers sharpened into somethingharder.

 Former friends would not meet Henrik’s size. Shopkeepers served them quickly and without warmth. In the brewery yard, conversations fell silent when he approached. Even Father Collar kept his distance. Emma, untouched by the cold around her, recorded the fire’s sequence of events in her journal. She made adjustments to her calculations based on wind speed and the timing of the brigade’s arrival, then turned her gaze back to the street.

 There were always more patterns, always more to count. In the silence that followed the fire, Greta realized it wasn’t just that her daughter saw too much. It was that she felt nothing of what she saw. Not grief, not fear, only the satisfaction of an equation balanced to the last digit.

 And Greta, who had carried this child across an ocean, began to wonder if something essential had been left behind in the crossing. By the first week of April, the German quarter was no longer the warm lattice of neighbors that had greeted the RTORS when they first arrived from Bavaria. It had grown colder, more brittle, like ice that looked solid but cracked underfoot.

 The Weber Kelner affair and the Zimmerman fire had been two hammer blows to that fragile surface, and Emma’s role in both had not gone unnoticed. People no longer whispered where Henrich could hear. They simply looked away. A butcher who once offered him the best cut of pork now wrapped his parcels without a word.

Greta’s trips to market were met with frosty courtesy. In church, pews around the family remained conspicuously empty. The quarter was closing its doors one by one, not with shouting or accusation, but with the quieter cruelty of exclusion. Inside their small home, the air grew heavy with unspoken things. Greta moved through her chores like someone counting down the days until a sentence was carried out.

 Henrich busied himself in the garden when weather allowed, though frost still clung to the earth. And Emma, Emma remained at her window, her journal always near, her gaze locked on the world beyond the glass. That journal had become her constant companion. The neat columns of numbers were joined now by charts, diagrams of street corners, and notations about the habits of nearly every family in the quarter.

 Greta once caught a glimpse of a page where names were matched to strings of measurements and symbols. She closed the book quickly, as though it might burn her fingers. When she spoke, Emma’s words landed like stones dropped in still water, sending ripples through the fragile calm. Mrs. Schneider buries objects in her garden every Sunday afternoon, cloth wrapped, placed 73 cm apart in a grid.

 Her Krueger leaves the brewery with a half empty card on Thursdays. On Fridays, it returns full. There was no malice in her tone, only the detachment of someone stating the day’s temperature. But for Greta and Henrich, each observation was a reminder that Emma’s sight reached into places no one wanted uncovered.

 One evening, after Emma had gone to bed, Henrich sat at the kitchen table with his hands wrapped around a mug of beer gone warm. “Greta,” he said quietly, “this cannot continue. She is too young to carry so much, to see so much.” Greta’s needle stilled over her mending. “Do you think I don’t know that?” The neighbors cross the street when they see me.

 Father Coller hasn’t set foot here since Dietrich’s funeral. I am frightened, Henrich. Not of Emma, but of what people will do if she keeps speaking these things aloud. 3 days later, the fear sharpened into something closer to panic. Emma was helping Greta peel potatoes for supper when she stopped mid-motion, her gaze focusing somewhere far beyond the kitchen. Mrs.

 Weber will be found with Mr. Kelner again, she said, but this time there will be blood on the floor. Greta’s knife slipped against the wood. Emma, enough. But Emma continued, her voice calm, deliberate. It will be on Tuesday after mister. Weber returns from his route earlier than expected. His horse’s lameness has worsened.

 The step irregularity increased to 68% today. The probability of violence is 89%. Henrich, listening from the doorway, felt the dread coil in his stomach. And yet, 2 days later, it unfolded exactly as Emma had said. Another confrontation, this one leaving Kelner with three cracked ribs and Mrs. Weber in the care of Dr.

 Mueller for injuries she would later claim came from a fall. No one believed her. By now the quarter was alive with stories about the RTOR girl, that she had the second sight, that she had made some unholy bargain, that she could will these events into being. The last was whispered by those who feared her most, that perhaps her predictions were not merely observations, but causes. Then came the fire.

 The Zimmerman blaze had torn through four houses in under an hour. And though the cause was never officially stated, everyone knew what had been said before it happened. That night, as the flames lit the low clouds orange, some swore they saw Emma watching from her bedroomwindow, her face pale and still against the dark.

 Whether she was there or not, the image stuck. In the days that followed, displaced families found shelter with friends or distant cousins. Fran Zimmerman was buried in a closed casket, his widow staying on in Chicago. The quarter tried to focus on repair, roof beams replaced, chimneys inspected, but the sense of safety had been scorched away, and wherever the rtors went, the weight of what Emma had foretold followed them.

 The isolation tightened. Greta was no longer invited to help with church dinners. Henri found himself assigned the worst tasks at the brewery. In the small rituals of daily life, where you bought bread, where you stood in line at the butcher, there were now invisible lines the richtors could not cross.

 Emma seemed immune to the shift. If anything, the quiet gave her more space to work. Her journal grew heavier, the leather worn soft at the edges. She no longer needed to sit at the window for hours. She could reconstruct whole days from the smallest fragments. A cartwheel squeak, a change in the slope of a hatbrim. The way someone’s gate altered between morning and evening.

 One night, as the wind rattled the shutters, Gretto whispered to Henrich, “It’s not just the fire or the Webers. It’s the way she looks at people like they’re already part of some equation she’s solved.” Henrich didn’t answer. He was thinking of Dietrich’s death, of the horse’s lame gate, of the fire’s exact minute, and of the unsettling certainty that Emma was still watching, still calculating, and that somewhere in that journal was a future neither of them wanted to see.

 By midappril, the leatherbound journal had become as much a part of Emma as the gray eyes she turned on the world. It never left her reach. If she left the house, it went with her, tucked under her arm like a catechism. If she sat by the window, it lay open on her lap, pages dense with fine, deliberate script.

 Greta had stopped trying to read over her shoulder. Once was enough. The neat rows of numbers and symbols had stirred a chill deeper than any gossip. What unsettled Greta most wasn’t the content she understood, but the vastness of what she didn’t. Whole pages were given over to coded marks, grids that resembled military maps, and sequences of figures so intricate they seemed less like mathematics than some private language. It was in those days that Dr.

Friedrich Mueller began to visit again. Tall, deliberate, and with the precise manner of a man used to being obeyed, Dr. Mueller had treated most families in the quarter. Unlike the priest or the neighbors, he did not cross himself when Emma entered the room. His eyes sharp behind round spectacles, regarded her as one might regard an unusual specimen in a laboratory.

 When Henrich approached him quietly in the brewery yard, speaking in a low rush about his daughter’s calculations, Dr. Mueller’s interest was peaked. “Bring her to my office,” he said. “I will see for myself.” The office above the Water Street Pharmacy smelled faintly of campher and a sharper tang of alcohol. Emma sat straight backed in the examination chair.

 Her journal closed but within reach. Dr. Mueller began with simple questions. Her name, her age, her favorite subjects in school. Her answers were precise, her voice low and even. Then he asked about the predictions. Your father tells me you have foreseen certain events,” he said, choosing his words as if they might crack in his mouth. Emma nodded.

 “Yes, how do you arrive at these conclusions?” Her eyes met his cool, unwavering. I observe patterns and calculate probabilities based on established behavior. People think they act at random, but they follow sequences. When I have enough data, I can predict the outcome with high accuracy. Dr. Mueller leaned forward. Give me an example.

 Emma opened her journal and turned to a page thick with notation. Mrs. Brennan, every Tuesday and Friday for 8 weeks, she walked to the church at exactly 3:15. Instead of entering, she went on to the rectory and remained 43 minutes. On those same days, Father Coller purchased extra candles and wine. His evening prayers lengthened by 17 minutes.

 The correlation is statistically significant. Mueller closed his mouth before the question formed. The implications were clear. The precision disturbed him. But what lodged deeper was the matterof fact way she delivered it without judgment, without curiosity, as though she were describing rainfall. After the examination, he spoke privately with Henrich and Greta in the stairwell.

 “Your daughter’s mind functions differently,” he said. “She processes information like a machine quickly without interference from emotion. This is not witchcraft. It is neurological.” He paused, his voice dropping. “That does not mean the danger is less.” 2 days later, the danger took form. Emma had been at the window most of the afternoon.

 her pencil scratching steadily across the page. Just after supper, she closed the book and said,”There will be a fire at the Zimmerman house on Sunday evening. It will start at 8:47 and spread to three adjacent buildings. Mr. Zimmerman will not survive.” Greta stiffened. Henrich felt the same cold pulse in his chest that had followed every prediction.

 “How could you possibly?” he began. But Emma was already listing variables. Zimmerman’s purchase of lamp oil and whiskey in quantities exceeding normal use. The structural damage to the chimney inferred from the smoke angle. The wife’s recent departure to Chicago. The probability is 93%. Henrich went to Zimmerman himself.

 The man laughed, called Emma a devil child, but promised to be careful. When the flames tore through the Zimmerman house at exactly 8:47, killing the man inside and gutting three neighboring homes, no one mentioned promises. They mentioned Emma. The fire hardened the community’s suspicion into fear.

 In the market, women pulled their children closer as the RTORs passed. At the brewery, men turned their backs to Henrich. Greta began to avoid the streets entirely. Emma did not seem to notice. She added the fire to her ledger, noting each point where her calculations had matched the event, each place where the data had shifted unexpectedly.

 She was already tracking new patterns, building fresh grids. “Dr. Mueller came one last time after the fire, not to examine Emma, but to warn Henrich. She is remarkable,” he said quietly in the garden. “But she is also in danger. People will not forgive what they cannot understand. And there are things in her journal.

 If she has truly recorded what I suspect that could make powerful men act. The doctor’s gaze flicked to the closed shutters of the kitchen. If she has begun to track the wrong patterns, he stopped as if the words themselves might draw notice. Watch her closely. Henrich thought of the pages he had glimpsed, the names, the routes, the times, and of the possibility that Emma was seeing beyond affairs and accidents, that her calculations might be reaching into the heart of the quarters industry itself.

The journal, he realized, was no longer just a record. It was a weapon, and Emma, without knowing it, might be pointing it at the most dangerous targets in Milwaukee. The last week of April brought a false spring to Milwaukee. Sunlight warmed the red brick of the breweries, melting the last dirty snow from the gutters, but the thaw did nothing to ease the chill between the richtors and their neighbors.

 In fact, the warmth seemed to make the tension more visible. Men lingering in tight groups that stopped talking when Henrich passed. Women at the pump whispering with their eyes fixed on the ground. Inside the RTOR house, Emma’s journal had grown into something monstrous in scope. She now tracked not only individual routines, but how those routines intersected.

 She mapped the streets like arteries, charting the flow of people and goods, noting every change in pace, every unexplained absence, every object moved from one place to another. Henrich noticed that her maps increasingly centered on the breweries, their yards, their delivery routes, their storage sheds.

 It was on the first day of May that she called him to the table. “Papa,” she said without preamble. “My calculations have revealed a pattern that explains everything.” “Henrich sat, the pit in his stomach widening.” Emma opened the journal to a spread of charts and diagrams so precise they might have been the work of a surveyor.

 For 26 months, I have recorded the movements of 43 adults in our community. I have identified seven men who meet secretly every Wednesday at midnight in the basement of Kelner’s Brewery. Her small finger touched a map where seven names were marked. Wilhelm Weber, France Kelner, Hans Zimmerman, Otto Steinberg, Klaus Brennan, Gustav Wolf, Herman Krueger.

 They tell their families they are working late or visiting relatives, but their routes converge here. She tapped the brewery’s rear alley, always avoiding the main streets. Henrich stared at the names. He knew them all, men whose hands he had shaken, whose tables he had sat at for Sunday dinners. Emma turned a page. I compared brewery production records to my own calculations based on observed deliveries, ingredients purchased, and waste disposal.

 There is a consistent discrepancy over 26 months. This difference amounts to approximately $47,000 worth of product. The number hit him like a blow. That much money could buy a man’s freedom or his death. And you think I calculate with 96% probability that they are stealing from the breweries and selling the goods elsewhere.

 Emma said the pattern of their personal spending supports this conclusion. Mr. Weber purchased new furniture worth $300. Mr. Steinberg sent large parcels to Germany. Mr. Wolf bought a horse above his station. She flipped another page. The operation requires inside knowledge of security and accounts. That points to Ernst Kelner as the organizer.

 Henrich’s breath shortened. Kelner, who had beenslowly pushing him out of company events since the Weber affair, whose nose had been broken in that same scandal, now stood at the center of a theft ring. If Emma was right, and her record said she usually was, then she had uncovered something that could ruin them all.

 Papa Emma continued, “Three weeks ago, Mr. Kelner came to our house twice at night and stood outside for 17 minutes each time. He suspects I know the probability they will act against us within 72 hours is 84%.” Henrich felt the old brewery air tighten in his lungs. The scent of hops and damp would now overlaid with the copper taste of fear.

 It wasn’t just that Emma had uncovered their crimes. She had done it without ever leaving the street. She had made herself the most dangerous witness in Milwaukee. We will say nothing until the hour comes. The plan took shape in whispers over the next day. Greta was told only enough to pack quickly. Warm clothes, a few family things, the little money they had saved.

 Emma was told nothing, only that they would travel. On the night of May 1st, Mueller arrived with his wagon. The streets were quiet, the lamps low as Henrich loaded the last of their belongings. Emma stood on the step, the journal hugged tight to her chest. “Papa,” she said, her voice low but certain.

 “In 6 months, the theft operation will be discovered by other means. Mr. Kelner will face justice, but three of the seven men will die. That is the probable outcome.” Henri’s hands tightened on her shoulders. He didn’t ask if she was sure. She always was. They climbed into the wagon and Mueller flicked the res.

 The wheels rolled over cobblestone, then onto the smoother dirt beyond. Behind them, the German quarter slept, its chimneys smoking gently in the night. They would be gone before the city woke, and if Emma’s numbers were right, they would be alive. The wagon moved quietly through the sleeping streets, the iron rims of its wheels softened by the damp spring earth.

Henrich kept his eyes ahead, one hand resting on the bench beside him, the other on the leatherbound journal hidden under his coat. Greta sat stiffly, clutching a small bundle of clothes. Beside her, Emma’s pale face was unreadable in the dim light. She had said nothing since her prediction about Kelner’s fate.

 They passed the darkened bulk of Schlitz Brewery, its tall brick facade looming like a watchtowwer. A faint scent of malt drifted on the air, and for a moment, Henri felt the pang. This had been his life for more than a decade. But the image of Kelner standing outside their house for those 17 silent minutes returned to him, and the pang turned to resolve.

 Milwaukee was no longer theirs. By the time the first church bells called the quarter to morning prayer, the RTORs were miles away, heading northwest toward Minnesota. The city fell behind them, its smoke stacks thinning into the horizon. Dr. Mueller drove until the road narrowed to a strip between wet fields, then pulled off under the cover of a stand of pines.

 “From here, you go alone,” he said quietly. If anyone asks, you left for Bavaria to tend a family business. Henrich clasped the doctor’s hand, the gratitude between them too sharp for words. Greta murmured her thanks, her eyes glistening. Emma merely nodded as though noting the end of one sequence and the start of another.

 Newm was smaller than Milwaukee, its brewery modest but steady, its streets lined with tidy houses and the soft roll of prairie beyond. Here the German language still carried easily between shops. But the suspicion that it closed in on them back home was absent. To the people of Newm, the RTORs were just another immigrant family seeking a quieter life.

Henrich threw himself into work, brewing beer with the same precision he once admired in his daughter’s calculations. Greta began to plant a garden, small at first, then expanding as the weather warmed. And Emma, Emma remained Emma. She sat by the window in their new kitchen, her journal open, her pencil scratching steadily across the page.

 But now her gaze covered different streets, different people, different patterns. For a time, the world seemed still. Then in November, a letter arrived from Dr. Mueller. It came in the same neat script as his medical bills, but inside was a different kind of account. Kelner’s theft operation has been uncovered by federal investigators.

 The charges are embezzlement, fraud, and conspiracy. The loss is estimated at over $50,000. Kelner is under arrest. Three of the seven men, Weber, Steinberg, Krueger, are dead. The causes are recorded as suicide, accident, and sudden illness, respectively. I will let you decide whether those words are the truth. Emma’s prediction was exact.

 Henrich read the letter twice before passing it to Greta. Her face tightened with something between relief and dread. It’s over then,” she said, but her voice lacked conviction. Henrich glanced toward the kitchen where Emma sat bent over her journal. “For them? Maybe,” hesaid. “Not for her.” By the next spring, word from Milwaukee had faded to almost nothing. “The quarter,” Dr.

 Mueller wrote in his final letter, had begun to mend new families in old houses. The brewery works steady again. Emma’s name was no longer spoken openly, but the older residents kept her story in low-voiced warnings. Be careful what you show the RTOR girl. She’ll see more than you mean her to.

 The journal Henrich had given Mueller as evidence had been examined by the investigators. According to the doctor, they were both impressed and unsettled by the sophistication of Emma’s methods, behavioral patterns tracked over months, mapped with exact measurements, cross referenced with purchase records, and observed anomalies.

 It was, Mueller said, the kind of work seasoned detectives might envy. One agent had remarked that if she were older, they’d have recruited her. Mueller’s letter ended with a single line. I am grateful she is far from Milwaukee. Some knowledge is too dangerous for any community to possess. Emma’s last appearance in any official record came in 1875 in the new M college mathematics department log book.

 Professor Herman Weiss, another German immigrant, had noted a special pupil of remarkable ability in statistical analysis and prediction and mentioned that her family planned to relocate again for personal reasons. There was no forwarding address. After that, Emma Richtor vanished. Some in Newm whispered that the family had moved west, chasing the promise of land.

 Others thought they had returned to Germany. A few remembering the rumors from Milwaukee suggested darker ants that someone somewhere had decided Emma had seen too much once again. Henrich never spoke of it. Greta kept her eyes on the ground when asked. And Emma’s journal, one of them at least, remained hidden in a trunk long after she was gone.

 In Milwaukee, the legend of the pale girl with the counting eyes lingered. It shifted shape with each telling. Sometimes she was a saint, sometimes a witch, sometimes just a strange sad child. But always the story ended the same way with her seeing something no one else could and the world turning against her for it. And somewhere in some forgotten attic or library, perhaps one of her journals still waits.

 pages filled with numbers and lines and silent inevitable conclusions about the lives of those who thought they were unobserved. For if Emma Richtor’s story proved anything, it was this. In a world where we believe our secrets are safe, there may always be someone quietly watching, counting, and knowing exactly how and when the pattern will