The day after lunch at the country club, I spend the afternoon trying to scrub Calder’s voice out of my ears with editing.
The laundromat hums beneath the floor, a constant low churn that blends with the whirr of my laptop fan. Warm detergent air sneaks up through the vents, fighting the lingering ghost of lemon polish that clung to my blazer from the club. On my screen, Juliet’s name moves across the waveform in little peaks of sound that I can cut and rearrange but never silence.
I’m halfway through trimming an interview when the front door bangs so hard the frame rattles.
“Hey, gentle on the—” I start.
“I hate them,” Theo shouts.
The word hits harder than the door. He kicks his sneakers off, not in the usual scatter-shot way, but in two violent jerks that send one shoe skidding under the table. His backpack slides from his shoulder and thuds against the wall, zipper teeth scraping the paint.
I close the laptop without saving. “Who do you hate?” I ask.
Theo stands frozen in the middle of the tiny living room, cheeks blotchy and damp. His hair sticks to his forehead where sweat darkened it on the walk home. Outside the window, the late afternoon light throws stripes across his face through the blinds, cutting him into pale and shadowed slices.
“The big kids,” he says. His voice scrapes in his throat. “Fifth graders. They’re stupid.”
I set the laptop on the coffee table and stand slowly, in case every move is a match and the room is already full of gasoline. “What happened?”
He drags his sleeve across his nose, then his eyes. “Nothing.”
“Theo.”
He kicks the strap of his backpack. “They were at the fence by the playground, okay? They had a phone, and they were laughing, and then one of them went, ‘Hey, Theo, this is your mom’s girlfriend.’”
Ice slides down my spine. “Girlfriend?”
“Dead girlfriend.” The word catches on his teeth. “They were looking at a picture of a girl in a dress on the rocks. Like, on the rocks under the cliff. The cliffs. They zoomed in, and she… her face looked wrong.”
My hands find the back of the chair and clamp down. The treacherous rock shelf under Crescent Bay’s postcard cliffs shows up in my episodes like a character, but I haven’t shown Theo any images of Juliet there. He’s supposed to know it only as the place you stay away from.
“Which cliffs?” I ask, even though I know damn well.
“By the big house. Where the rich people live.” He juts his chin toward the window, toward where Harrow House sits invisible on the hill, pretending gravity isn’t real. “They said she fell. Then they said you talk about her all the time for money.”
My stomach twists. That photo could have come from an ancient news clipping or from the subreddit where someone unearthed a blurry crime scene shot months ago, the one I begged Sadie to remove from the pinned posts. Either way, it rode to the elementary school on a rectangle of glass.
“Did a teacher see?” I ask.
“Mrs. Chang told them to put the phone away.” He shrugs, shoulders jerking too fast. “They said they were just showing me my mom’s work.”
I step closer. He flinches, just a tiny shift back on his heels, then holds his ground. “Come here,” I say, softer.
He doesn’t move until I open my arms. Then he walks forward and lets his forehead press into my chest. His backpack strap digs into my hip. I breathe in the smell of crayons and sweat and the cafeteria’s mystery sauce that always clings to his hoodie.
“I’m sorry they did that,” I say into his hair. “You didn’t deserve that.”
His voice comes out muffled. “One of them said you’re gross.”
My arms tighten. “Kids say awful things to look powerful,” I say. “That doesn’t make them true.”
He pushes away suddenly, eyes bright and angry. “Then why are you doing it?”
I blink. “Doing what?”
“Liking dead girls.”
The question lands in the room like a dropped plate. For a second, all I hear is the spin cycle downstairs and the faint bass from some waterfront party starting up early, a low boom that sneaks up the street with the salt air.
“Excuse me?” My voice comes out smaller than I intend.
“Owen said it,” Theo says. His jaw wobbles, then locks. “He said, ‘Your mom just likes dead girls. That’s why she talks about them all the time on the internet.’” His gaze flicks to my laptop on the table, then back to me. “Do you?”
My hand goes uselessly to my throat. I want to say no loud enough to rattle the windows. I want to say I like justice, truth, control, the feeling of doing something with my fear. I want to say I miss one girl in particular more than I have a vocabulary for.
None of those answers fit in a third grader’s head.
“Sit,” I say. I sound like a flight attendant announcing turbulence. I try again. “Can we sit on the couch and talk about it?”
He hesitates, then climbs onto the cushions, tucking himself into the far corner, knees pulled up. The springs complain under his weight. I sit opposite him, leaving a gulf of faded upholstery between us. Outside, a gull screeches, and a gust of sea air pushes a thin hint of salt through the open top of the window.
“I don’t like dead girls,” I say. “I cared about one girl who died. Juliet. I talk about her because she mattered. Because people forgot her in ways they shouldn’t have.”
“You talk about how she died,” he says. “You say where they found her body. You talk about the blood.”
My lungs forget their job. “How do you know that?” I ask.
His cheeks flush, two hot flags. He touches the hem of his hoodie, twisting it. “I heard it.”
“Heard what?” My voice is too sharp; his shoulders jump. I lower it. “You heard… an episode?”
He nods, quick and guilty. “You were doing dishes, and your phone was on the counter. It played the beginning of the one with the creepy voice. You know, the man who says he saw her fall.” His eyes dart to my face, gauging my reaction. “I listened with one earbud so I could pause if you came in.”
A wave of heat sweeps up my neck. I picture him in his pajamas, my cheap earbuds too big for his ears, the Glass Roses theme music in his head instead of whatever kids are supposed to hum right now.
“How many times?” I ask.
“I don’t know.” He shrugs, eyes on his fingers. “Some bits. I like when you sound regular, like when you tell the story of when you were a kid. I don’t like when you get quiet and then talk louder again.” He swallows. “I read the comments too.”
“Where?” My tongue feels coated in lint.
“On the website thing.” His mouth twists around the word. “There’s a little bubble that shows numbers and when you click it, people say what they think. One person said you’re their brave queen.” A tiny flicker of pride passes through his expression, then disappears. “Another person said you’re making Juliet into ‘content.’ And one said you should have your kid taken away so he doesn’t get murdered next.”
My heart punches my ribs so hard I feel it in my teeth. The laundry machines downstairs give a dull thud, like the building winced with me.
“Theo,” I say, reaching for him.
He scoots away a few inches, hugging his knees tighter. “Is that why Dad is mad?” he asks. “Because you like dead girls and I might get murdered?”
The word murdered tastes like metal in his mouth. He spits it out like it hurt.
I lean forward, elbows on my knees, hands clasped so I don’t try to grab him and hold on until we both bruise. “Your dad is mad because he doesn’t understand what I’m doing,” I say carefully. “He thinks any danger in my life is danger in yours. But I will never let anyone hurt you. That is not a thing that can happen without me fighting every single person in this town.”
His eyes flick to the window, to the little slice of Harbor visible over the liquor store sign, to the cliffs jagged in the distance where adults drink at Prom Throwback and pretend the past is a costume.
“You can’t fight everybody,” he says.
He’s right. I smile anyway, a crooked thing stretched over panic. “Watch me.”
He doesn’t laugh.
The sunlight shifts, going more gold, painting dust motes above the coffee table. The faint buzz of hair dryers drifts from the salon two doors down, mixing with the detergent smell and the sea. Crescent Bay’s signature scent, I think bitterly—salt, hair spray, and whatever gloss people spray over rot.
“Do you want to know why I keep talking about Juliet?” I ask.
He chews his lip, then nods.
I look at the blank TV screen for a second to gather words, seeing my reflection there, small and ghosted over the black. “When I was your age, Juliet treated me like I was somebody,” I say. “She was a senior. She wore sparkly lip gloss and had a car that smelled like coconut air freshener. Most older kids didn’t know my name. She did. She drove me home once when I got scared at school.”
“Scared of what?” he asks.
“Of everything,” I say truthfully. “Crowds. Noise. Being wrong. That day, Juliet found me in the bathroom and said, ‘Let’s get out of here. Windows down, music loud.’ She made the town feel big in a good way for twenty minutes. Then she died at those cliffs, and the people in charge decided the story they liked best was the one that made their lives easiest.”
“The accident story,” he says. He turns the words over with care. “The one where nobody did anything bad, just the cliff.”
I nod. “But there’s another story underneath. One where people made choices that hurt her. One where people who were supposed to protect her worried more about the town’s reputation, or about other kids’ futures, than about the girl who was gone.”
He stares at his socks. They don’t match. One has little sharks, the other tiny glassy triangles that always make me think of rose petals.
“So you’re telling the underneath story now,” he says.
“I’m trying,” I say. “So that people remember Juliet was a person, not a rumor. So the kids who get hurt now know they’re not invisible. So the people who broke things have to look at what they did. Not to get famous. Not because I like dead girls. Because I wish someone had done it for her sooner.”
He is quiet for a long stretch. Downstairs, a dryer buzzes. Across the street, someone laughs too loudly as the liquor store door chimes. The muffled bass from a boat party on the water pulses through the evening air, a heartbeat somewhere we can’t see.
“Will they hurt you for doing it?” he asks at last.
I reach across the couch slowly, giving him time to pull away. He doesn’t. My fingers curl around his ankle, warm through the thin cotton of his sock. “Some people say mean things online,” I say. “Some people send letters or write stupid comments because it makes them feel big. But there are also people—police, lawyers, friends—who care about keeping us safe. Luz cares. Sadie cares. I care more than anybody.”
“They sent a letter that said what bus I take,” he says quietly.
My throat tightens. “I know,” I say. “And we told the police, and the school, and we changed routines, remember? We walk together more. We check the street. That’s me protecting you. That’s me taking it seriously.”
He’s still holding his knees, but his shoulders have dropped a little. “The comment about taking me away,” he says. “Can they do that because of the podcast?”
“Your dad is trying,” I say, because I will not lie to him today. “He’s using the podcast to argue I make risky choices. But the judge doesn’t just read comments. The judge listens to real people and looks at what our life is like. The judge will see that we have routines and homework charts and that you know when to cross the street. That we eat too much microwave mac and cheese and still get your veggies in.”
“That you leave dishes in the sink,” he says.
“Objection,” I say, tapping his foot. “Irrelevant.”
He smiles, barely, then it fades. “What if the bad person is still here?” he whispers. “One of the big kids said the killer probably lives in Crescent Bay still and listens to your show and might get mad.”
My skin prickles. “Some people like to scare each other with stories,” I say. “They don’t know what they’re talking about.”
He looks up sharply. “But do you?”
I take a slow breath. I picture the rock shelf, the hidden after-party I haven’t proven yet, the way Elliot’s eyes tightened at the word after-party, Calder’s hand tightening on his cane. I think about the listening device I don’t know yet is coming, the PI in the car, all the ways attention leaks into threat.
“I know that if the person who hurt Juliet is still out there, they don’t like me asking questions,” I say. “That’s their problem. My job is to keep asking in a way that doesn’t put you in the middle.”
“I already am in the middle,” he says. He glances at my laptop again. “Everyone knows. The kids said you’re like a news person but only about one dead girl and the town.”
The description cuts. “Then I need to do a better job of where I draw the line,” I say.
“What line?” he asks.
I look at him—my kid, wedged into the corner of a couch in an apartment that smells like Tide and french fries and sea air, his world now big enough to include crime scene photos on some older boy’s phone.
“The line between telling a story that’s true and turning it into something that hurts people who are still alive,” I say. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Today more than ever.”
His brow furrows. “How?”
“I might start doing some parts differently,” I say. “Talking more to the people who were there before I post things. Being careful what I share with the internet army. Making sure the loud parts of the story don’t drown out the quiet ones.”
He tilts his head. “That sounds like homework.”
“It is,” I say. “Grown-up homework.”
“Can I have one rule?” he asks.
“You can try,” I say. “I reserve the right to negotiate.”
“No more pictures,” he says immediately. “No more pictures of Juliet dead. Not for the show. Not for anything.”
Relief thumps through my chest. “Done,” I say. “I never posted death photos, but I’ll make sure anything that looks like that gets taken down where I can reach it. And I’ll talk to Sadie about moderating the fan spaces more. That’s another kind of homework.”
He chews on that. “Okay,” he says. “And can you… tell me before the scary parts go out? Not all of them. Just, like, when something big is going to happen so I’m not surprised at school.”
“You want content warnings,” I say.
“What?”
“Never mind,” I say. “Yes. I can do that.”
He slides across the cushion until he’s close enough that his knee bumps mine. He leans against my arm, just a little, like he’s testing whether I’ll hold.
“Can I hear the nice parts?” he asks. “The parts where Juliet is in the salon or at the dance. Not the rocks.”
I nod, throat thick. “We can pick those out together,” I say. “I can even tell you some pieces I never put in the show. Private stories. Those belong to us.”
He yawns suddenly, like the tension burned through his energy and left him hollow. “I don’t like the cliff,” he mumbles. “I see it every day on the bus. It looks… hungry.”
My hand goes to his hair, smoothing it back. “The cliff is just rock,” I say. “The dangerous part is people pretending it’s not.”
His eyes droop. “Will we ever go there?” he asks. “To see where it happened?”
The question hangs between us. One day, he will cut school and answer it himself. I don’t know that yet, but some part of me feels the future tug.
“Not now,” I say. “Not while I’m still figuring out the underneath story. When I understand it better, we can decide together.”
He nods, already half-asleep against my shoulder. The laundromat below shifts into a quieter cycle. Out over the water, the bass from some boat party thumps under the cry of gulls, Crescent Bay soundtracking itself.
I stare at the blank TV, at our reflections layered over the dark glass—me, my son, a ghost outline of the laptop on the table with Juliet’s story paused mid-waveform.
I promised him I would keep us both safe.
The next question, the one I’m not ready to answer yet, presses at the back of my teeth: what do I have to stop putting on the record to keep that promise—and what do I risk if I don’t?