Corbeau notices that S is awake and pours him a cup of tea. She gives him a pair of boots and new set of clothes to wear to replace his torn and raggedy outfit. S. is thankful for the boots since he plans on walking as “long as it takes him to scour the city and find Sola.”

Another mystery in Jen and Eric’s lives arises when Eric tells Jen the story of how he was invited by Desjardins to an exclusive dinner with Straka scholars. Eric discloses, “one of DJ’s students slipped me a piece of paper with an address on it when we shook hands at the service.”  While at the dinner, Eric seemed to think it was an inner-circle meeting,” full of “people talking about continuing DJ’s work and his commitment to ethical scholarship, sharing findings, etc.” thus stirring confusion about why he was invited since he is barely in DJ’s outer-circle.

Several reasons for this invitation can be inferred. Just as the Serin Institute discovered Eric’s speech in Libson, Desjardins may have stumbled upon Eric’s research on Straka and his work. Desjardins may have invited him because he suspected that he may have information useful to him. Another hypothesis is that Moody’s relationship with Eric may have caught Desjardins’s eye and caused him to wonder why there is tension between them.