“Your mom told Mrs. Talbot you’re at a private recovery facility,” Sarah said casually.
Emma looked over. “Of course she did.”
“She implied it was for your own comfort, because stairs and all that.”
Emma shook her head slowly. “A facility. Right.”
Sarah tore into a spring roll. “Alex told my dad you needed specialized care the family couldn’t provide.”
“That part is technically true.”
“Sure,” Sarah said. “The missing detail is that instead of helping you get it, they bagged your books like contaminated evidence.”
Emma’s smile thinned. “Let them have their version. It won’t survive contact with the next three months.”
Sarah leaned forward. “You’re really doing this, aren’t you?”
Emma turned the laptop so Sarah could see the proposal deck. Adaptive climbing rigs. Modified harness specs. Trail design standards. Partnerships with rehab hospitals and trauma centers. Veteran outreach. Scholarship funds. Instructor certification modules. Insurance carve-outs. Pilot location budgets.
Sarah scanned the slides and then looked up, eyes wide. “Em.”
“Yeah.”
“This is enormous.”
“It has to be.”
“No, I mean really enormous. Like cover-story enormous.”
Emma’s mouth curved slowly. “That’s the plan.”
By week five, the first press strategy meeting took place in the apartment conference room Harbor Tower residents could reserve on the twelfth floor. Emma rolled in with a folder of notes and a thermal mug of coffee, shoulders still sore from therapy. The media team from Summit Horizon had expected someone inspirational. What they got was Emma Mitchell pointing at a draft press release and saying, “Delete every adjective that sounds like pity.”
