The morning show lights burned my face from inside the laptop.
I sat at the kitchen table with my mug cupped between my palms, coffee long gone cold, and watched my own headshot spin into view under a glossy lower-third graphic: MOM PODCASTER VS. SMALL-TOWN SECRETS.
The laundromat beneath the apartment thumped a cycle of wet jeans, the rhythm surfacing through the floorboards like a second heartbeat. Outside the window, the sky over Crescent Bay hung low and pale, cliffs a shadowy bar beyond the rooftops. The bay smell crept in through the cracked frame, salt and exhaust and the faint chemical sweetness of someone’s hair spray from the salon on the corner.
“She calls her show ‘Glass Roses,’” the host said, teeth perfectly white around the name. “But has this mom gone too far in picking at old wounds?”
There I was on the screen: a still from my first episode trailer, headset on, hand on my mic, eyes caught mid-blink. They’d chosen a frame where I looked both earnest and vaguely unhinged. Efficient.
The panel laughed lightly. Not cruel, not kind. That tight, practiced chuckle morning hosts mastered in the same way regatta wives here mastered sympathetic head-tilts during PTA wars.
“You might have heard of her,” the co-host chimed in. “Mara Lane, single mom, small-town girl turned true-crime podcaster. Her investigation into the 1997 prom-night death of Juliet Reeves is captivating the nation—and dividing Crescent Bay.”
They rolled B-roll over her voice: drone shots of our postcard cliffs, sun catching on the treacherous rock shelf beneath like wet teeth; a slow pan across the old gym during Prom Throwback, adults in retro 90s prom dresses swaying under paper lanterns; then a quick cut to a photo from the regatta gala with Elliot shaking hands with the mayor, all cufflinks and charm.
My shoulders climbed toward my ears. I kept my hands locked around the mug to keep from closing the laptop and hurling it across the room.
“Some call her courageous,” the host continued. “Others call her reckless, exploiting tragedy for clicks.” She turned back to camera with a sympathetic crease between her brows. “And now a local teacher has suffered a medical emergency after being identified by fans of the show.”
A blurred shot of Mr. Cooke’s house flickered by, his mailbox number smudged out. They didn’t show the glass rose on his dashboard. That part belonged only to the people actually living this, not to the breakfast audience.
“Joining us,” the male host said, “Juliet’s sister, Katie Reeves, and Crescent Bay civic leader and media entrepreneur, Elliot Harrow, who knew Juliet back then and has been outspoken on responsible storytelling in the digital age.”
I had turned down the producer’s invitation two days ago. The email had been polite, full of phrases like “balance” and “your side of the story,” but every fiber in my body read trap. I’d told them my unedited episode already existed. They had thanked me and booked the people with more to lose saying no.
The camera cut to the remote guests. Two boxes.
On the left, Katie sat in what looked like her living room, perched on the edge of a gray sofa. Her hair was pulled back too tight, stretching the skin near her temples. A framed photo of Juliet—in the blue prom dress, glass roses glittering in the background—rested on the side table next to a lamp. Katie’s hands twisted in her lap, knuckles white.
On the right, Elliot broadcast from his office at Harrow Media, all glass wall and neatly arranged books. The Crescent Bay waterfront stretched behind him in a tasteful blur. He wore a navy sweater over a white shirt, no tie, sleeves pushed up just enough to read approachable. The makeup made his skin look smooth, youthful, like the prom king hadn’t aged a day.
My stomach clenched so hard I tasted metal. I set the mug down before I cracked it.
“Katie, first of all, thank you for being here,” the woman host said, leaning toward the camera. “How are you holding up, watching your sister’s story resurface in such a public way?”
Katie licked her lips. Her voice came out thin but steady. “I just… I want people to remember Juliet was a person,” she said. “Not only a case.”
My throat tightened. That part sounded true.
“And do you feel Mara’s podcast honors that?” the host asked. “We’ve heard she’s been in touch with you.”
The edit cut. I knew it because Katie’s shoulders jumped slightly, the way people do when someone has just finished speaking and another question hits. They had probably trimmed whatever bridge sentence she’d used, any nuance.
“I think Mara cares,” Katie said. “She’s the first person in a long time who actually asked me what I remember, not what I think about everybody else. But there’s also… a lot of noise now. People online using Juliet for theories. That part scares me.”
The panel nodded in unison, like bobbleheads in expensive blazers.
“Elliot, you’ve been vocal about the podcast’s impact,” the male host said, pivoting. “You’ve said you support transparency but worry about armchair detectives taking things too far. What’s your reaction to everything that’s happening?”
Elliot lowered his gaze before looking back up, a move he’d perfected in high school whenever a teacher called on him about something serious. “First, I want to say to Katie… I am so sorry you have to relive this, yet again,” he said. “And to Mara, if you’re watching, I don’t doubt your heart. I understand the hunger for answers.”
On my screen, his image looked warm, edges soft. On my table, my hands had curled into fists.
“Back in ’97, we were kids,” he continued. “We trusted the adults to protect us, to investigate. And we trusted the narrative they gave. Clearly, that narrative had holes. I support bringing truth to light. But not at the expense of more vulnerable people ending up harmed.”
“Like Mr. Cooke,” the co-host supplied.
“Like any number of people who get caught in the crossfire of a Reddit thread,” Elliot said, giving a rueful half-smile. “Or a livestream that gets hijacked. We live in an age where a microphone and a Wi-Fi connection can change someone’s life overnight. I built my company to empower independent voices. I also know that with that power comes responsibility.”
My jaw ached; I realized I had been grinding my teeth. The word responsibility, from his mouth, landed like a joke told at a funeral.
“You knew Juliet personally,” the host said gently. “The way Mara talks about her, she was this luminous, untouchable prom queen. What was she really like?”
Elliot’s eyes seemed to go somewhere over the camera, toward a place he could control inside his own head. “She was luminous,” he said quietly. “And complicated. I’ve heard her painted as a saint and a villain. Neither is true. She was a teenage girl under huge pressure. From this town, from herself.”
He sighed on cue. “We tried to pull her back from some self-destructive choices,” he said. “I wish we’d done more. I wish we could have saved Juliet from herself.”
There it was. The pivot. The frame I’d been afraid national TV would give him: the good man too gentle to stop the doomed girl. The tragedy of boys who “tried.”
I pushed my chair back, the legs screeching against the floor. My heart slammed so loud I could hear it over the show’s soft background piano.
Onscreen, one of the hosts nodded sympathetically. “And what about Mara?” she asked. “Do you think she’s helping, or hurting?”
Elliot smiled with just the right amount of sadness. “I think Mara tapped into something real,” he said. “People in Crescent Bay have been living with unanswered questions for decades. People across the country are hungry to see institutions held accountable. I applaud that. I just worry that in chasing downloads, some podcasters forget these are real people, not characters. Real parents who have to send their kids to school after an episode drops.”
Warm chuckle from the panel. I stood so fast the mug wobbled. Theo’s empty cereal bowl still sat in the sink from yesterday’s panic morning, spoon crusted with milk.
My fingers drummed on the back of my chair. Stop watching, I told myself. Shut it; you know how they’re going to spin this.
“We reached out to Mara for comment,” the host said, walking toward the big screen behind the couch, “but she declined to appear today. She did, however, recently release an unedited episode addressing some of these concerns.”
They played a snippet of my confession episode, my voice thinner through their filters. “I have made mistakes,” I heard myself say. “I have prioritized story over safety. I am trying to do better.”
Cut back to studio. One host frowned sympathetically. “Honest,” she said. “But is it enough?”
The next panelist, some media ethicist with rimless glasses, shook his head. “Intention isn’t the only thing that matters,” he said. “When you brand yourself with a murdered girl’s prom centerpieces and invite thousands of strangers to gamify her last night, you bear responsibility for what happens. Accusations, harassment—it all flows from that.”
My fingers dug crescents into the wood. The glass rose on the shelf above the microwave—my original prop, now a piece of evidence in my own kitchen—caught a shard of light and shot it into my eyes.
“We have to talk about the other victims here,” another panelist added. “Mr. Cooke. The teacher doxxed earlier in the season. Even the kids at that school now, including Mara’s son. They didn’t sign up for this.”
They were right. That might have been the worst part. They were right, in the broad strokes, and they were using that to wash the details clean.
“We’ll come back to those questions,” the host said, “but first we want to dive deeper into Juliet herself. The golden girl at the center of all this.”
My breath caught.
“Katie, there’s been a narrative for years that Juliet was head-over-heels for Noah, her working-class boyfriend from the wrong side of town,” the co-host said. “That their love story was part of what made this so compelling. But is that the whole picture?”
Katie’s eyes flicked off-screen, probably to a producer’s note. Her fingers twisted the hem of her sweater. “Juliet and Noah were… important to each other,” she said. “But people forget she had her own life. Other friends. Other… things she didn’t talk about publicly.”
“Other relationships?” the host prompted.
“She dated,” Katie said after a beat. “Before Noah.”
The show broke for a commercial, then returned with a flourish of music. They teased an “exclusive look” at prom photos provided by an anonymous classmate. My gut clenched.
“These images have never aired on television before,” the host said, standing in front of the big screen. “But they might change the way you think about Juliet—and her small-town prince.”
The first pictures were familiar: Juliet laughing with friends at the punch bowl, her dress a streak of blue among a sea of satin; glass rose centerpieces lined up on tables, tiny lights wrapped around their stems; a shot of the rock shelf taken from the gym window, kids smoking near the fence outside.
Then the next frame hit.
Juliet stood under the faded SPARTANS banner in the old gym, back lit by colored lights. Elliot stood in front of her, tie already loosened, one hand cupping her face. Their mouths were pressed together, unmistakable.
His other hand rested low on her back, fingers splayed across the fabric of her dress. The kiss wasn’t a quick peck caught by chance. It had weight. Familiarity. Every little detail screamed history, not a spur-of-the-moment stunt.
“Here we see Juliet with her close friend, Elliot Harrow,” the host narrated. “Sources tell us the two briefly dated before Juliet’s relationship with Noah. It adds nuance to a story many thought they already knew.”
My lungs forgot how to work. The kitchen blurred at the edges.
Elliot had told the world he had “tried to save her from herself.” He had never mentioned his own claim on her lips.
“We reached out to Elliot about these photos,” the male host said, voice, now voiceover over a shot of Elliot on the dock with his father, boats bobbing in the background. “He told us, quote: ‘Juliet and I were kids who cared about each other deeply. We tried dating. In the end, she loved Noah. I respected that and wanted her happiness.’”
I paused the video. The photo froze onscreen, pixels locking their mouths together.
Heat roared in my ears. That picture undermined decades of Crescent Bay’s official story: Juliet the loyal girlfriend, Noah the jealous outsider, Elliot the blameless friend. It hinted at jealousy, at triangles, at motive. And a national show had aired it casually between yogurt ads and a segment on organizing your pantry.
The laptop fan whined. Downstairs, the laundromat buzzed. In the distance, a bass line drifted from the waterfront—probably a soundcheck for tonight’s charity ball at the yacht club. Gwen Stefani or En Vogue, something the Prom Throwback committee liked to loop until nostalgia drowned out guilt.
My phone lit up beside the laptop, buzzing with notifications: Sadie’s texts blowing up in all caps, my mother’s name on the screen, a number I recognized from my lawyer. I couldn’t pick any of them up. My fingers were glued to the trackpad.
I hit play again, just long enough to hear the host’s closing line. “So is this about justice,” she asked, turning back to her panel, “or about a grieving town and a driven mom rebranding old scandals for a new audience? Tell us what you think using #GlassRosesDebate.”
My name and Juliet’s spun together in metallic letters. The segment ended on a slow-motion shot of the cliffs, the camera drifting over the fence toward the rock shelf below. The water foamed and crashed and retreated, patient.
I shut the laptop. The sudden silence in the kitchen hurt.
My hand shook as I reached for the glass rose on the shelf. The cool weight of it pressed into my palm, points biting my skin. A promotional trinket, once; then a symbol of Juliet; now a prop in a national argument about my motherhood.
The show had done what Elliot wanted: framed him as a regretful witness, me as a wild card, Juliet as a tragic girl with poor decisions. At the same time, they had handed me something he probably never meant to see light.
Juliet and Elliot kissing in the old gym, beneath the banner, inches from where those glass centerpieces once stood in neat rows.
“You’re not going to get away with this,” I told the rose, or the laptop, or the image burned into my brain. My voice sounded small in the messy kitchen, but it existed. It vibrated in the air. That counted for something.
The bay wind sighed against the window. For a second, I pictured the court hearing still looming on my calendar: my ex’s lawyer rolling clips like this, calling expert witnesses with rimless glasses to testify about the dangers of true crime on kids. Judges watched morning shows. Jurors scrolled hashtags. Policymakers paid attention when sanitized anchors told them which women were hysterical and which men were credible.
National media had decided I was the face of this case, whether I wanted that or not. That meant every misstep, every breath, every unslept night with my kid’s GPS location open on my phone, would be fed back through cameras I did not control.
I set the glass rose down carefully and opened the laptop again.
Twitter—fine, X now, but my brain refused to rebrand—pulled up in a blur of opinions. #GlassRosesDebate trended beside a clip of a cat riding a Roomba. Replies ranged from “Mara is a hero holding rich men accountable” to “Take that kid away before she gets him killed” to “Leave Juliet in peace, clout goblins.”
Katie’s name trended too. People debated whether she’d been “brainwashed by the town’s elites” or “finally seeing the harm Mara is doing.” No one talked about how her hands had shaken when she said Juliet’s name.
I closed the app.
A new email notification pinged in the corner of the screen. Subject line: I FAILED JULIET THAT NIGHT.
The sender: blocked-number relay through my website’s contact form. No name. Just “anonymous.”
My pulse kicked.
I hovered over it, laptop humming under my wrists, the taste of burnt coffee and salt and TV gloss thick on my tongue.
The morning show had fed the country a neat, consumable version of our story. This message promised something messier, more dangerous, and mine to record or refuse.
I clicked the trackpad with a single, steady finger and watched the screen shift, bracing myself for whatever new narrative I had just invited into my already crowded head.