By dawn the conservation lab had become an evidence room. Naila logged access at the door, Amani mounted an overhead camera, and Reuben Kariuki arrived with two pairs of glasses around his neck and the expression of a man summoned before tea. Malkia had already sent three messages asking for an answer before nine. Naila replied once: observations, not a forced conclusion.
Under ultraviolet light, the varnish revealed repairs from different periods. The NAILA inscription lay beneath a coating older than the most recent restoration. Raking light and macro imaging showed no cut from above. Whatever the lettering was, it predated the cured surface over it.
Reuben recognized the frame joint. Kariuki Frames had used that double dovetail and corner pin from the 1960s through the 1980s. His family’s surviving ledgers might still contain repair records, though many clients had preferred initials to full names.
They turned the object to examine its backing without dismantling it. Amani proposed opening the inner assembly, but Naila refused. Mystery did not give them permission to alter an object before the owner dispute was resolved. Non-invasive imaging instead showed patches of metal leaf near the lower rail and repeated plate replacements. There was no concealed battery or display. The mirror was still, materially, a mirror.
When they stood it upright again, they tested ordinary reflections: a mannequin, a camera, a secondary mirror board. Nothing unusual happened. Naila stepped closer. Her reflection again lagged by a fraction. Then new letters appeared along the lower edge.
SALMA.
Amani did not ask the obvious personal question. He asked whether she wanted to stop. Naila appreciated that. “Continue documentation. No interpretation.”
Reuben recognized the name Salma Mbarouk and admitted he remembered seeing her long ago, but not clearly enough to offer a story as fact. Naila asked for something traceable instead. He named the old workshop and a period when Vero founders brought frames for night repairs.
Below SALMA, numbers darkened: 2004–2010.
Those were the six years in her mother’s life that had always felt blurred. Salma never called it amnesia. She said only that those years were mixed together—school fees paid, houses changed, work abandoned, but too many days without edges.
Naila told Malkia about the workshop link, not the private memory gap. She then placed a possible-family-link note in the confidential case log. She did not recuse herself yet because the connection had not been established, but she marked the point at which neutrality might later require a boundary.
While samples dried, Reuben showed them a conservation notebook from the 1990s. It contained sketches of the same joint and a strange notation: Vero black frame—do not replace inner backing without witness. He could not remember why. The note turned the workshop from an old man’s recollection into a source of records that could be checked.
Naila also asked that the next stage use the surviving ledgers rather than guesses about the glass. If they could identify dates, dimensions and plate orders, the case could move forward without depending on what only a direct observer seemed to see.
Reuben paused at the door before leaving. “If you ask your mother about this, do not take the mirror with you.”
“Why?”
“I do not have evidence for that. It is advice.”
Naila disliked unsourced advice, but she wrote it in the margin, not in the report.
Amani printed the ultraviolet image. Beneath Salma’s name, the dates had become darker.
Reuben’s notebook added one more practical lead. A sketch of the same frame joint carried an old instruction not to replace the inner backing without a witness. He could no longer remember the reason. Rather than treating the warning as mystical evidence, Naila used it to define the next research step: locate the workshop ledgers and compare repair dates, plate dimensions and client initials. Amani also found metal-leaf traces around the lower rail that matched repeated nameplate work. None of it explained the delayed reflection. It did, however, show that the frame had been altered many times in ways a paper provenance record should have captured. If the paper trail did not match the physical history, that mismatch would remain important even if every supernatural impression turned out to be stress or optics.
The lab log also recorded every object position and lighting change, giving later experts a way to separate optical conditions from personal recollection.
2004–2010.
The first number was exactly the year Salma’s missing time began.
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