Eli spoke first.
“One of the judges found an inconsistency in the calibration data.”
My stomach dropped.
“Is that bad?”
“It could have been.”
Owen held up a small flash drive.
“But we had the raw test logs. We showed them exactly where the discrepancy came from.”
“What did they say?”
Eli looked thoughtful.
“They asked whether we wanted to revise our prediction model.”
“And?”
“We told them no.”
I blinked.
“Why?”
“Because changing the model after seeing the evaluation data would have been dishonest.”
Mrs. Ramirez smiled slowly.
“That's my boys.”
Owen shrugged.
“If there's a weakness in our system, we need to know about it.”
I looked at them, suddenly overwhelmed.
When they were younger, I'd sometimes worried that raising them without Daniel would leave them feeling incomplete.
But standing there, listening to them explain why honesty mattered more than winning, I understood something.
They were becoming the kind of men I had once hoped their father would be.
