Chapter 13: The Robe
Tristan had the master keys.
Not because he was trusted.
Because no one thought he needed to be watched.
He was the summer intern. The tour guide with the gentle voice and shaggy hair. He spoke well, smiled often, and didn’t ask too many questions in front of donors.
But when the estate closed to the public, and the golf carts went silent, and the desert wind began to murmur through the fan palms like a half-remembered song, Tristan wandered.
He called it research.
It was closer to pilgrimage.
—————
The wardrobe archive was tucked into the back corner of a climate-controlled storage facility, behind shelves of vintage chairs and boxed tableware used for presidential visits. No one visited this part of Sunnylands unless they were curating an exhibit or laundering the history.
Tristan swiped his badge. The door clicked open.
Inside, it smelled like cedar and paper. The air was unnaturally still, as if time had paused when the last archivist retired.
He moved quickly, instinctively. He knew what he was looking for now.
The robe.
He had seen it once in a blurred inventory photo—labeled as “WA robe.” It had no accession number. Just a handwritten note in the margin:
“See also: Inwood Room documents (refused digitization).”
That alone had been enough to convince Tristan he was on the right trail.
He found the box at the back of a low shelf, unassuming. Inside: a simple linen garment, off-white and gently folded in layers like a sleeping animal. It was heavier than it looked. Not silk, not cotton—something in between. A weave that shimmered slightly under the fluorescents, but only at the edges.
He laid it out on a padded table.
It didn’t look like much.
No gold trim. No religious symbols. No hemline embroidery.
Just fabric.
Until he turned the collar.
—————
Inside, stitched so finely it was almost invisible, was a line of thread in a color not quite blue, not quite violet. It looped through itself in spirals—geometrically perfect but non-repeating. Tristan leaned in.
It wasn’t decorative.
It looked functional.
A waveform.
He thought he recognized the shape—something he’d seen in a physics book. It didn’t make sense for it to be here—stitched into a diplomatic leisure suit worn by a billionaire in between golf games.
But here it was.
And just beside it, an inscription in a strange shorthand—some characters Latin, others that looked like Sanskrit. It looked like the fever dream of a linguist trying to describe something they hadn’t yet lived through.
He traced the pattern with one finger.
And for a split second, he felt… dizzy.
Not spinning. Not vertigo.
Just unmoored.
As if something had shifted under his perception—like a glass lens rotating into focus, showing the image wasn’t where he thought it was.
He pulled his hand back.
The dizziness faded.
—————
He took a photo, then thought better of it—and deleted it immediately.
Some things didn’t want to be documented.
Instead, he packed the robe carefully back into its box, replacing the tissue paper just as he’d found it.
Before closing the lid, he paused.
He whispered, “You were trying to be found, weren’t you?”
The robe, of course, said nothing.
But Tristan smiled anyway.
—————
That night, he sat alone in his studio apartment on the estate, cross-legged on the floor, sketching. No music. No wine. Just the silence of the desert breathing outside.
He drew the waveform again from memory.
Then overlaid it on the Inwood Room’s floor plan.
It fit.
Not perfectly.
But harmonically.
Like a song echoing inside an architectural instrument.
He sat back.
Something buzzed inside him—not electricity, but anticipation. He’d felt it only once before, years ago, reading the Bhagavad Gita in a college library at 3 a.m. The sense that myth wasn’t metaphor, but memory.
He opened his phone.
Sent a message.
Chris – I think you might be onto something. Can we meet?