Michael Mastriani

Michael Mastriani is Jessica Mastriani’s brother, a Harvard admit who deferred enrollment and later studied at Indiana University. During a summer in New York City, he works with computers and a think tank to track cyber-terrorists. His most consequential contribution to Jessica’s story is not technical: noticing that she has begun sleeping through the night, he challenges her assumption that her ability to find missing people is gone and prompts her to consider trying again.

Identity and Family

Michael is one of Jessica’s brothers. She describes him affectionately as not her favorite brother, a distinction she gives to Douglas Mastriani, but welcomes having him around for the summer. Douglas is back in Indiana, renting a studio apartment above a family restaurant rebuilt after a fire; Michael, by contrast, is staying with Jessica in New York City while working there for the summer. The contrast places the brothers at different points in their lives and in different settings, without diminishing the warmth Jessica expresses about having Michael nearby.

Michael’s education has involved a notable change of course. He deferred admission to Harvard and ended up at Indiana University after falling in love with Claire Lippman. She later left him for a man she met while doing summer stock in the Michigan dunes. The breakup remains a family-sensitive subject: Jessica says the household is no longer allowed to mention Claire’s name. The detail gives Michael a personal history beyond his academic and professional accomplishments, while the family’s rule shows that the disappointment has not become casual conversation.

Work and New York Life

In New York City, Michael has a summer job involving a think tank, computers, and tracking cyber-terrorists. Jessica compares the work to what she did during the war, when she helped locate people, but emphasizes the difference in their working conditions: Michael works from a cubicle on the Columbia campus, rather than a tent in a sandy desert. The parallel links their occupations through the search for threats or people, while the contrast separates his campus-based work from the dangerous setting of Jessica’s wartime service.

Michael shares Jessica’s apartment with Skip for the summer. Skip sleeps on the couch, which he claimed first, while Michael gets the floor. The arrangement is presented as a practical way for both men to stay in New York: Skip is saving the rent stipend paid by his internship, and Michael is also interning in the city. Their crowded domestic routine gives Jessica company, but it also means that her brothers and friends are close enough to notice changes in her sleep and behavior.

A Keen Observer

Michael’s attentiveness appears in an ordinary evening around the television. He and Skip call out answers to Jeopardy!, with Michael getting most of them right and Skip missing most. The scene establishes Michael as quick with information in a relaxed setting, a small but concrete counterpoint to his more serious work with computers. Jessica also notes that he sometimes talks about his job, although she and the others would rather he did not; his professional interests are part of the household even when they are not welcome dinner-table conversation.

His sharper insight comes when Jessica says she cannot find Rob Wilkins’s missing sister. Michael asks how she can be sure, pointing out that she has not tried to find anyone in about a year and has lately been sleeping through the night. The connection matters because Jessica’s ability depends on dreaming: she had lost the ability to find people when trauma and nightmares left her unable to sleep. Michael does not claim certainty or demonstrate that her power has returned. Instead, he notices a change in the condition that had prevented it and asks her to reconsider the conclusion she has drawn from a long period without testing her ability.

The exchange also exposes what the apartment’s occupants have chosen not to discuss. Jessica’s terror-filled screams regularly wake everyone, but the household has treated them as an unspoken fact. Michael’s observation brings the related evidence into the open: despite those frightening episodes, she has recently been sleeping through the night. His question therefore rests on a pattern visible in daily life, not on a sudden or unexplained declaration that she is well.

Trust and Narrative Role

Michael is present when Rob returns to Jessica’s apartment after having been absent from her life for a year. He has not yet seen the visitor when he crowds into the small hallway to ask what is holding things up; once Skip identifies Rob, Michael reacts with disbelief that Rob is there. His brief entrance places him among the people who witness the disruption of Rob’s return, even though the exchange gives him no further role in their reunion.

Later, when Jessica goes home, she conceals from her parents that she has come because of Rob and that her dream-based ability may be returning. She has already instructed Michael not to tell anyone about Rob’s visit or her renewed ability to dream. Jessica expects that he might eventually give in to pressure, particularly if he wants to remain in Ruth’s good graces, but believes he will keep the information private for a while. The account does not establish that he breaks his promise. His position is instead that of a trusted, if not entirely predictable, confidant: close enough to know the secret and to notice the clues behind it, but not the person making Jessica’s decision for her.

Michael’s part in the story is thus modest in scale but consequential in timing. He does not recover Jessica’s power for her, and the evidence does not show what her renewed ability will ultimately allow. He supplies the practical question she has avoided asking—whether she has actually tried—and grounds it in the observable change in her sleep. In a household where painful topics are sometimes left unspoken, that willingness to point out a relevant fact helps Jessica move from resignation toward a test of what may have changed.