The Harrow driveway curled toward the water like a question mark, ending in a circle of stone big enough to park a regatta’s worth of SUVs. I pulled my battered hatchback into a sliver of shade, shoulder-length hedges clipped into obedient shapes on either side, the salt tang of the bay watered down by fertilizer and money. Beyond the glass-and-shingle house, the cliffs dropped into froth and rock shelf, that treacherous ledge the town pretended kids no longer jumped fences to reach.
I killed the engine and sat there for one long inhale, fingers wrapped around the steering wheel until my palms squeaked. Luz hadn’t said no when I told her about this meeting; she’d just reminded me twice not to come alone and then looked at my car like it was a sacrificial goat. I texted her a quick I’m here, stuck my phone in my back pocket, and stepped out into the kind of curated wind you only got on this side of Crescent Bay—cool enough to feel clean, never sharp enough to sting.
The front door opened before I hit the porch. Of course it did. Elliot’s timing lived somewhere between concierge service and surveillance.
“Mara,” he said, spreading his arms like we were old friends and not reluctant co-stars in a murder story. “Thanks for coming.”
“Your assistant made it sound optional,” I said, walking past him into the foyer. “My inbox disagreed.”
I meant to look unimpressed by everything, but the house made that hard work. The air smelled faintly of lemon polish and some expensive candle that tried to pass off tuberose as “sea breeze.” Light poured through a wall of glass, hitting the centerpiece of the room: a sculptural table beneath the staircase, covered in glass roses.
Not one or two as a nod to the brand that had made my life unmanageable. Dozens.
Some were fist-sized, clear with razor-fine stems; others sat in smoky black glass vases, petals tinted blood-red or champagne. A few had gilded edges, catching the light in metallic flickers that made them look aflame. Under the table, the polished stone reflected them in a ghostly second bouquet.
“A little on the nose,” I said before I could stop myself.
Elliot followed my gaze and smiled, soft and mournful, like the arrangement had just appeared in his life by tragic coincidence. “These were made by a local artist years ago,” he said. “After… everything. People donate them to the Prom Throwback auction every spring, and somehow they end up back here. Recycling grief, I suppose.”
I watched my warped reflection in one of the petals, my features stretched thin and long. “You bought Juliet’s centerpieces,” I said. “Over and over.”
“We fund scholarships,” he said. “The roses are just part of that tradition now.”
Tradition. That word again, a thin napkin over blood.
I tore my attention away from the display before I started cataloguing which shard would cut deepest and followed him down a hall lined with framed photos. Regatta trophies. Ribbon-cuttings. PTA smiling beside police chiefs and school board members, the same surnames repeating under every brass plaque. The town’s real yearbook.
He led me into a study that looked like a set for “Responsible Tech CEO at Home.” Built-in shelves, more glass facing the water, a tasteful amount of mess on the desk that I suspected lived in a drawer when cameras weren’t around. A faint bass thump bled in from far off—some waterfront party tuning soundcheck for the weekend.
He closed the door with a soft click. “Can I get you water? Coffee? Wine?” he asked.
“Just the point,” I said, sitting on the edge of an armchair like it had teeth. “You said you wanted to clarify ‘misconceptions.’”
“I did,” he said, taking the seat opposite, no desk between us today. “First, I want to acknowledge your work. I don’t think anyone can argue that you’ve given Juliet a voice. People are listening, engaging, talking about safety and consent in ways they didn’t in ’97.”
Compliments as bubble wrap. I dug my nails into my palm and kept my face neutral. “There’s a ‘but’ coming,” I said.
He chuckled. “Of course there is. We’re both storytellers; we live for contrast.” He steepled his fingers, studying me like I was a focus group. “I’ve heard—unofficially—that you encountered a piece of audio recently. From Harrow Island. Very upsetting content. I’m so sorry you had to experience that without context.”
My heart spiked against my ribs. I heard Juliet’s scream in the back of my skull, the splash that had stolen air from that tiny cassette and turned it into evidence. Luz had logged the tape, locked it in a cabinet that did belong to the grown-ups in charge—but apparently not a cabinet they controlled completely.
“You have very talkative ‘unofficial’ sources,” I said.
“In a town this size?” He spread his hands. “You know how it works. A detective mentions something to a spouse, a teacher overhears something at the station, somebody’s cousin works records. Whispers travel. Right now they’re saying Mara Lane has gotten her hands on a misinterpreted relic from a very dark night.”
Misinterpreted. Relic. My skin prickled. “Is that what you call Juliet’s voice?” I asked. “A relic?”
“I call it heartbreaking,” he said quietly. “I call it proof of how fragile she was at that time. We failed her. The adults. The system. Even me.” His eyes shone, not with tears, but with the precise level of moisture that played well on daytime TV. “Which is why I wanted to talk before this goes wider than either of us can control.”
I leaned back, crossing one ankle over my knee to hide the slight tremor. “You seem very confident about what I will or won’t release.”
“You told America you want to be responsible,” he said. “You don’t want to repeat the mob justice that hurt Mr. Cooke, or spur more kids to skip school for cliff pilgrimages. That’s what you said on that unedited episode, isn’t it? No more collateral damage.”
I hated that he’d listened. I hated that part of me had wanted him to.
“Get to your context,” I said. “What do you think I’m hearing wrong?”
He nodded, like I’d passed some maturity test. “Fine,” he said. “What you have—assuming it’s the same tape we’re talking about—is a fragment from an emotionally charged moment. Kids drinking on a dock. Harsh words. A girl who had been under immense pressure for weeks losing her footing.”
I heard his voice from the tape in my head: You’ll ruin families. My hands curled into fists on my knees.
“She didn’t lose her footing,” I said. “She went into the water near a boat. After being grabbed.”
“Did you see that?” he asked gently. “Or are you extrapolating? Old cassettes distort. Sound bounces. Memory fills in gaps. I was there, Mara. I have lived twenty-eight years replaying that night in my head, and I’m telling you: Juliet was spiraling. She’d been drinking on top of medication. She picked a fight with people who cared about her. And then she ran. Toward the edge.”
“You keep saying ‘toward,’” I said. “Not ‘over.’”
His jaw flexed. For a second, the polished layer cracked, and I saw the boy on the tape, furious about ruined families. “We argued,” he said. “Consensually. Nobody assaulted her. Nobody pushed her. What happened after… it was a tragic accident. A confluence of bad decisions and slippery rocks, not some premeditated plot.”
“So the part where she says she’s starting the truth and you say she’ll ruin people—” I started.
“Is exactly the kind of line that gets clipped and turned into something it wasn’t,” he cut in. “I know how this works. A soundbite stripped of tone and history becomes a weapon. And I am very aware that Harrow equals clicks for you right now.”
I flinched, heat jumping to my face. He wasn’t wrong, and that was the worst part. Some nights my download graphs had looked dangerously close to an EKG of my conscience.
“Juliet left a tape,” I said. “She wanted someone to hear.”
“And someone has,” he said. “You. The detective. That’s two more than she ever should’ve needed. The question now is what you do with it. Whether you let it become another piece of content for strangers to chew up, or you let it guide you toward something more constructive.”
There it was—the pivot point, the gentle hand on my elbow steering me toward the future Elliot wanted. I sat very still, because if I moved, I wasn’t sure if I’d walk out or throw something breakable.
“Constructive,” I repeated. “You have a definition ready.”
“I do,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of thinking, my team and I. About Glass Roses. About the cultural moment. About what people clearly crave from your work.”
“You have a team thinking about my podcast,” I said. “That’s not creepy at all.”
He smiled. “We run a platform with thousands of shows, Mara. We study what resonates. You’ve tapped into something powerful: mothers, daughters, communities grappling with old wounds. But right now, your narrative is skewed toward blame. Toward villains and conspiracies. That’s great for virality; it’s terrible for healing.”
“Healing for who?” I asked. “Because Juliet’s not getting a TED Talk out of this.”
He let that barb float between us. “What if,” he said, “Glass Roses became something bigger than one case? What if we helped you build a franchise about forgiveness, restorative justice, communities learning to live with what they’ve done? Multi-season, multi-story. You and our PR and legal teams crafting thoughtful, responsible narratives together.”
My body went very cold and very hot at the same time. “You’re offering me a show,” I said.
“I’m offering you security,” he corrected. “A multi-year deal. Salary plus production budget, health insurance, legal coverage if anyone gets litigious. We position the Juliet season as a starting point—a case that teaches us how dangerous it is when we rush to judgment without all the facts. We lean into the accident framing, the lack of clear evidence of foul play. Less ‘murder mystery,’ more ‘community tragedy.’ Then we move on to other stories with those lessons learned.”
Words like salary and health insurance slid into my ears and coiled around the part of my brain that stayed up nights calculating rent versus braces versus the custody lawyer’s next bill. I pictured my kitchen table without the stack of overdue notices, Theo’s face when I said yes to a school trip instead of “maybe later.” The temptation hit with the sting of a strong drink.
“In exchange for what?” I asked, voice rough.
Elliot watched me closely. “In exchange for agreeing not to publish anything that suggests criminal intent where there is none,” he said. “You keep your editorial voice—we don’t script you—but we align on guardrails. No accusations without convictions. No naming people in ways that invite harassment. You let our PR apparatus handle the messaging around Juliet so the town can stabilize.”
“Your PR apparatus,” I said. “The crisis firm that writes your apologies. The one that coached you for that morning show.”
He shrugged lightly. “Same folks who keep corporate sponsors from pulling out when internet mobs get loud. They’re very good at turning heat into light.”
I thought of Sadie’s server, the subreddit, the Discord threads where listeners chewed on every fragment I released. I thought of Mr. Cooke in a hospital bed, my son at the cliff fence, Katie Reeves with glass roses on her porch. Heat into light, or heat into ratings?
“So you want my story about Juliet to become a case study in why we shouldn’t jump to blame,” I said. “You want me to help you rehabilitate the town’s reputation.”
“I want you to have a career beyond this one tragedy,” he said. “Right now, you’re a lightning rod. People admire you, sure, but they also see you as a destabilizing force. That’s dangerous when you’re in a custody fight.”
My stomach flipped. He saw it on my face, because of course he did.
“Judges watch morning shows,” he said gently. “They read op-eds. They google. Imagine walking into court with Harrow Media behind you, vouching for your responsibility, your commitment to ethical storytelling. Imagine having a legal team on retainer, not scrambling for pro bono every time some troll sends a threat.”
I pictured my ex’s lawyer holding up a printout of Elliot’s glowing quote about me. I pictured the same woman holding up the raw transcript from the dock tape, asking why I’d broadcast it to millions before the courts had touched it. The scale in my head tipped back and forth, metal groaning.
“And what happens to the tape in your scenario?” I asked. “I just… don’t use it?”
“You treat it as what it is: a painful artifact,” he said. “You let law enforcement decide its relevance. Off the record, where it belongs. You don’t feed it to an audience that treats victims and suspects alike as entertainment.”
The words stabbed in exactly the spot he’d aimed for. He’d listened to my confession episode; he knew the guilt I carried about turning people into content. He was offering me the chance to say I’d learned better—by accepting his version of restraint.
Juliet’s voice rose in my mind, cutting through his: If this goes wrong, at least someone will hear.
I swallowed hard. “Your ‘healing’ season,” I said. “Does it include the part where she told you she wasn’t your secret anymore? Or does that line get left on the cutting-room floor with the splash?”
For the first time, irritation flashed outright across his face. “You’re hearing what you want to hear,” he said. “You already decided I’m the villain in your narrative. You need me to be. It makes for a cleaner arc.”
“I don’t need you to be anything,” I said. “The tape speaks for itself.”
“No,” he said sharply. “You speak for it. That’s the problem. You control how millions of people interpret a dead girl’s last bad night, and you answer to no one. I’m offering you accountability, resources, and a way to do something other than burn us all down.”
Silence pressed in, punctuated by the distant muffled bass from some waterfront soundcheck. The cliffs outside his windows loomed in the corner of my eye, postcard perfect above the rock shelf that hid bodies and secrets alike.
“You really think I’ll sell Juliet out for a dental plan?” I asked, though the ugly truth was that part of me had already mentally paid off three credit cards with money that didn’t exist yet.
“I think you love your son,” he said, voice softening again. “I think you’re tired. I think you know that if you escalate this without ironclad proof, my family’s lawyers will fight back and yours can’t compete. No amount of Patreon pledges can cover that.”
Theo’s face flickered behind my eyes, the way he’d looked on the cliffs, sneakers planted inches from the worn-down warning sign. Fear pricked behind my ribs, hot and humiliating.
I stood up because staying seated felt too close to agreement. “I’ll need to see any contract in writing,” I said. “And I’ll need my own lawyer to review it.”
I hated myself for saying it the instant it left my mouth. His expression told me I’d just moved a step onto his dock.
“Of course,” he said smoothly, rising too. “I’d never expect you to decide today. Talk to whoever you need. Take a breath. Just… consider what story you want to tell ten years from now about this moment.”
He walked me back through the foyer. The glass roses watched from their pedestal, petals catching the light in bright, brittle flashes. I wanted to sweep my arm across the table, hear them shatter into a thousand glittering fragments on the polished stone, return them to the sharp things they were meant to be.
“Mara,” he said as I reached for the door handle. I paused, my reflection fragmented across the nearest rose.
“What?” I asked.
“Whatever you decide,” he said, “we’ll be ready. Our PR people are already modeling scenarios. I’d rather have you on the inside of those conversations than staring at them from your kitchen table.”
That landed in my gut like a promise and a threat braided together. I stepped out into the salt-bright air without answering, the crash of waves against the rock shelf louder out here, less muffled by curated walls.
In the car, I gripped the steering wheel and let my forehead rest against the leather for a beat. Images piled up: Juliet on the dock, the little green light on the recorder, Theo doing homework in our cramped apartment above the laundromat, Elliot’s offer curling through all of it like smoke.
I drove away from Harrow House with my stomach rolling, disgust spread evenly between Elliot and myself. Part of me wanted to call Luz and tell her every word; another part wanted to call my lawyer and ask how many zeros it took to make a judge forget the word “reckless.”
Instead, I thumbed my phone awake and stared at Sadie’s unanswered texts stacked near the top: any updates?? any new tape stuff?? you ok?
I didn’t open them. For the first time since the season started, I had something so big I couldn’t even trust my most devoted listener with it—not the tape, not Elliot’s offer, not the part of me that had wanted to say yes. And I had no idea how long I could keep all three from exploding in my face.