The title might as well have been a subpoena.
[MEGATHREAD] Is Mara Sitting on a Bombshell Tape to Milk the Story?
I stared at it on my laptop screen, the words haloed in the blue glow of Reddit’s header, the rest of my apartment swallowed in late-afternoon dim. The laundromat downstairs hummed on a low spin cycle, the rhythmic thuds syncing up with my pulse. My untouched coffee sat beside the trackpad, skin of milk cooling on top, tasting stale and bitter when I finally took a shaky sip.
I clicked.
The post was already hundreds of comments deep. The OP had written a breathless wall of text about “patterns” and “delays” and “strategic vagueness,” circling one claim: I had some kind of explosive new evidence from Harrow Island and I was hoarding it to maximize downloads, just like “the cops hoarded files to control the narrative.”
They’d even bolded that last part.
I scrolled, stomach tightening.
Look at the timeline.
She literally disappears for days, hints at a “game-changing lead,” then… nothing.
This is classic scarcity marketing.
Another comment replied:
Or classic COVER-UP.
She’s cozy with that detective now. Don’t forget cops love “ongoing investigation” as an excuse to sit on info.
Replies nested under that like fungus. Someone dropped a reaction meme of a glass rose cracking down the middle. Someone else wrote, “When did mara become Calder with better audio?” A few defenders pushed back, talking about ethics and witnesses and not doxxing anyone again, but they got downvoted into gray.
The fandom smelled blood.
My chest felt tight, hot. I had expected some blowback when I stopped feeding them every breadcrumb, but watching the crowd that once called me “our girl” pivot into suspicion felt like stepping onto the treacherous rock shelf beneath the cliffs—no railing, just slick stone and other people’s opinions pulling like the tide.
I kept scrolling. People were splitting into camps, giving themselves names like they were sports teams.
#TeamTransparency checking in. The whole point of this podcast was crowdsourced justice. If she’s gatekeeping now, what are we doing here?
Underneath it:
#TeamEthics. Maybe don’t pressure a single mom in a custody fight to leak homicide evidence on demand?
That turned into its own subargument. The phrase “Harrow shill” appeared. So did “plant,” lobbed at anyone who suggested not releasing unverified names.
I swallowed another mouthful of cold coffee, the burnt taste cutting through a rising buzz in my ears. None of these strangers knew about Elliot’s offer at Harrow House, about his glass roses and the contract dangling over my head, and yet their language pressed on the same bruise: control the narrative, milk the story, pick a side.
Then I saw it.
Halfway down the thread, someone claimed they’d gotten a DM “from someone close to the pod” confirming that I had “bombshell audio from the dock” and was “dragging my heels.”
Dock.
I froze. I had never used that word publicly. I’d said “island,” “after-party,” “new lead.” I hadn’t said anything about docks or boats or the way the water sounded boxed-in on the tape. I couldn’t. Luz would have my head.
My fingers went clumsy on the trackpad. I clicked the comment.
The user had added a screenshot—cropped, usernames blurred, but the message content intact.
she DEFINITELY has something big from harrow island, like an audio thing.
i can’t share details but it’s from THE DOCK and it proves the official story is bullshit.
she’s “waiting for the right time” but imo that’s what cops say while evidence disappears.
My stomach dropped through the floor.
I zoomed in on the blurred sender name, even though the mods had done a decent job. The first letter was visible: a curving capital S, the tail of it familiar.
More familiar was the lowercase style in the message—the run-on sentences, the way “imo” elbowed up against “evidence.” It read like a dozen late-night texts I’d gotten over the last few months. My brain supplied the missing letters before I consciously registered them.
GlassRosesMod1.
Sadie.
I yanked my hand away from the trackpad like it had burned me and stood up so fast my chair squeaked against the worn floor. The movement made the laptop wobble, pages of Theo’s math homework slithering off the table and fanning across the linoleum. My breath came shallow, loud over the hiss of the radiator.
I wanted to not believe it. I wanted some alternate universe where a different mod had slipped, where Oracle had found a way to impersonate her. But once I let myself connect the dots, they flashed like a police board.
I had told Sadie there was new audio, yes—but I’d been careful. “We got something from the island,” I’d said on a call, pacing this same kitchen. “Early days, can’t say more, I need to do this one on the record with Luz.” Sadie had pressed, bitter about “cop timelines,” and I’d tried to soothe her with generalities.
The word “dock” had never left my mouth.
My phone buzzed on the table, making me jump. Another notification from Reddit. Another from Discord, where her mod tag sparkled next to her username like a little crown.
I picked up the phone, thumb hovering over her contact. My screen showed our last messages: a flurry of check-ins from her, my single “Been swamped, will call,” sitting unread like a lie.
I could text her: Did you leak this? I could unleash every swear I had and throw my phone at the wall.
Instead, my thumb typed: We need to talk. In person. Cliffside Diner in an hour?
The dots appeared almost instantly.
yes ofc. i was literally about to call u.
are you ok??
I stared at the question and tasted something sour in the back of my throat. I didn’t answer. I grabbed my jacket, shoved my notebook and keys into my bag, and headed down the narrow stairs, the scent of detergent and hot metal rising up to meet me.
Outside, the air tasted cleaner, salted by the bay. Somewhere down by the waterfront, bass thudded from a soundcheck, muffled and distant, the way it used to drift up to the cliffs when kids snuck cigarettes after dances. I used to watch them from my mom’s car, jealous and relieved to be on the outside of all that danger.
I didn’t feel outside anymore.
The Cliffside Diner perched above the main road like a ship that had run aground and decided to stay. Its neon sign buzzed in the window—OPEN 24 HOURS—though everyone knew that really meant “open until the bartenders from the marina stop coming in for fries.” Regatta posters papered one wall; a faded flyer for this year’s Prom Throwback fundraiser curled on the bulletin board beside it, glossy adults in 90s gowns grinning above bright text.
Inside, the air smelled like fry oil, coffee, and the citrusy hairspray that clung to the waitresses’ ponytails. The vinyl booth squeaked when I slid in, my jeans sticking slightly where someone hadn’t wiped properly. Outside the big front windows, I could see the dark line of the cliffs in the distance, postcard-perfect against a pinking sky, hiding the rock shelf like a secret.
Sadie rushed in ten minutes later, cheeks flushed from the wind. She spotted me immediately and lifted a hand, a hopeful half-wave that landed in my chest like a stone. She wore a Glass Roses hoodie—one of the early merch runs, before I understood how big things would get—and her hair was twisted into a messy knot, a chewed pen tucked behind her ear.
“Hey,” she said, sliding into the opposite side of the booth. The table rattled when she bumped it, silverware clinking. “I was so worried, you’ve been MIA, I thought maybe—”
“Did you DM someone about the tape?” I cut in.
The words came out flatter than I intended. No hello, no warm-up. Just the knife.
She blinked. Her hand dropped from the pen to the sugar dispenser, fingers wrapping around the glass like it might steady her. “Wow, okay,” she said, forcing a laugh that didn’t land. “I mean, it’s nice to see you too.”
I didn’t smile. “Sadie,” I said. “Did you tell anyone I have ‘bombshell audio from the dock’?”
Her cheeks lost color under the diner lights. For a second, she didn’t answer—her throat worked, her gaze darting toward the window, the door, the laminated menu. Then she leaned in, lowering her voice.
“Who told you that?” she asked. “Did Luz—”
“Reddit told me,” I said. “In a thread with ten thousand upvotes. There’s a screenshot of your DM. They blurred your handle, but I know how you type.”
She sagged back against the booth. The sugar dispenser wobbled; she caught it automatically, then set it down with slow precision.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “They said they wouldn’t post it. They promised they’d keep it vague.”
“They did keep it vague,” I said. “They blurred your name. They didn’t blur mine.”
A waitress slid up with water and a coffee refill, the pot steaming between us. I waited until she left, the scent of fresh grounds settling over the table.
Sadie stared at her reflection in the stainless steel napkin holder. Her eyes shone, lashes clumped from old mascara. “I just—” she started, then stopped, exhaling hard. “Okay. Yes. I told someone. But you need to understand why.”
Every time someone said that in this town, another secret got a fresh coat of polish. I wrapped my hands around the coffee mug, letting the heat bite my palms.
“Start with who,” I said. “Who did you tell?”
“A user I’ve known for years,” she said quickly. “From before Glass Roses. They’re like, an OG in true-crime communities, they’ve done incredible work on cold cases. They reached out, said the silence was making people antsy, that rumor fills voids. I thought if I gave them something controlled, they could calm everyone down.”
I let out a short, humorless breath. “By announcing that I have a tape I’m supposedly sitting on?”
“I didn’t say you were sitting on it,” she protested. Her voice rose; she caught herself and lowered it again. “I said you were waiting for the right time, which is what you told me.”
“I told you I needed to handle it with the police,” I said. “I told you it was sensitive. I did not tell you to go whisper it into the ear of Reddit’s resident kingmaker.”
She flinched at the word whisper. Her fingers twisted the paper napkin into a tight rope. “They’re not a kingmaker,” she muttered. “They’re a survivor. They care about accountability. They said keeping the existence of evidence secret is how cops control cases, and I just—”
“You agreed,” I said. “You decided I was controlling the narrative like the cops.”
She looked up, guilt and defiance wrestling across her face. “You have to admit, it’s weird,” she said. “The whole point of Glass Roses was dragging this case out of the filing cabinet. Letting sunlight in. Then suddenly there’s this huge thing and you go radio silent, you start talking about ‘ethical timing’ and ‘strategic release.’ That’s what PR people say. That’s what Harrow’s people say.”
“I had a witness land in the hospital after the last time we let the crowd run with half-facts,” I said. “I had my kid wandering down to the cliffs because he’d absorbed more than I realized. I am allowed to pump the brakes.”
“I know,” she said quickly. “I know Mr. Cooke was awful, and Theo— God, I think about him all the time, I swear I do. But transparency isn’t the enemy here. Secrecy is how they won in ’97. Secrecy is why we still don’t have justice.”
“We don’t have justice because someone with money pushed a girl into the water and everyone closed ranks,” I said. “Not because a podcaster failed to give Reddit live updates on her evidence log.”
The words came out sharper than I planned. Sadie flinched again; her eyes glossed, and for a second I saw the woman who’d sent me homemade cookies after my first death threat, the one who’d stayed up all night on Discord moderating when the sub turned feral.
“I’m not your enemy,” she said. Her voice wobbled, but she held my gaze. “I’m trying to help. If people know a tape exists, it’ll be harder for the cops to make it disappear. For Elliot to spin it. You know how fast PR can rewrite reality. You told me yourself.”
I thought of the Harrow foyer, those glass roses glinting under curated light, an entire town’s grief domesticated into centerpieces. I thought of Elliot saying, We’ll be ready, whatever you decide.
“You don’t get to leak my hand because you’re afraid I might fold,” I said.
Tears spilled over now, sliding down her cheeks. She brushed them away impatiently, like they were sweat. “You weren’t talking to me,” she said. “You used to DM me every theory, every voicemail. Then all of a sudden you’re ‘busy’ and ‘can’t share yet.’ You tell Luz things before you tell me. You go meet Elliot without even mentioning it until after.”
My spine went rigid. “How do you know about that?”
She hesitated. “The morning show account follows his assistant,” she said, words rushing now. “She posted a story with your car in the driveway. People screenshotted it. There’s a thread.”
Of course there was.
“I felt shut out,” Sadie went on. “Like I was being benched in a game I helped start. I know that’s selfish, but… this is my life too now. I moderate twelve hours a day. I catalog every scrap of the case. I get the same threats you do. I’ve lost friends over ‘being obsessed with dead girls.’ If you leave me in the dark, what am I supposed to do? Just trust that you’ll do the right thing when every institution in Crescent Bay has proven it won’t?”
I pressed my tongue hard against my teeth so I wouldn’t say something I’d regret. Her words hit a nerve; I knew the feeling of being left outside the door while decisions were made in rooms with better lighting and cleaner floors. My mother had lived that contrast every prom night, fixing rich girls’ hair while the PTA drank champagne in the gym.
But there was a difference between wanting a seat at the table and setting the tablecloth on fire.
“You’re supposed to trust me,” I said finally. “Or at least ask before you take my choices away. You can’t weaponize my name to rally the crowd, Sadie. Not when we’re playing with actual lives.”
“I wasn’t weaponizing you,” she whispered. “I was defending you. People were already spinning conspiracy theories about your silence. I thought if they knew your heart was in the right place, they’d give you space.”
“You told them I’m dragging my heels,” I said. “You framed caution as cowardice.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again. The napkin in her hands had shredded into confetti. She stared down at it, shoulders shaking in small, contained tremors.
The waitress walked past with a tray of onion rings for another table; the smell hit my nose, grease and salt, and my stomach rolled. Outside, the sky had gone full dusk, the cliffs a darker smear against the horizon. Somewhere under them, waves smashed against rock, indifferent to who started which fight on the internet.
“So what now?” Sadie asked. Her voice came out raw. “You fire me from the sub? You cut me off? You tell your listeners I’m the new Oracle?”
The thought made my throat tighten. “I’m not going to blast you on air,” I said. “I’m not Elliot. But I can’t keep treating you like a confidante when you act like a press office. I need you to step back from anything involving live leads. No more hints, no more DMs, no more ‘trusted sources.’”
“You need me,” she said. There wasn’t arrogance in it, just tired certainty. “No one else will track threads the way I do. No one else cares enough to dig through old PTA minutes and yacht club newsletters and church bulletins. You said that. You called me your secret weapon.”
“You’re not a weapon,” I said quietly. “You’re a person. And right now, you’re hurting people in my name.”
Her face crumpled at that. She turned her head away, shoulders curling inward, like she was trying to hold herself together by sheer force. For a flicker of a second, I wanted to slide around the booth and put an arm around her, tell her we could fix this, that we just needed better rules.
Then I pictured the Reddit thread again, the accusations of profiteering, the way the word “bombshell” had detonated under my custody case without anyone there to sweep up the shrapnel.
“I’m not saying we’ll never work together again,” I said, forcing each word out carefully. “But I need space. I need to know I can make a decision about Juliet’s story without wondering who you’ve already told.”
Silence settled between us, thicker than the fryer smoke. Sadie stared at the ketchup bottle, at the tiny air bubble trapped near the top.
“So you’re choosing them over me,” she said finally. “The cops. The town. The sponsors. Elliot, even. At the end of the day, I’m just another listener you can mute.”
“I’m choosing Theo,” I said. “And Katie. And Juliet. And you, in a way, because I don’t want you to be the one they blame when this goes bad.”
She laughed then, a sharp, broken sound. “Newsflash,” she said. “They already blame me. The doxxing, remember? The hospital? I’m the crazy mod. The line’s already been drawn.”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
I left a twenty under the sweating water glass and slid out of the booth. Sadie didn’t move. Her hands stayed flat on the table, palms down, like she was bracing against an earthquake only she could feel.
“Take care of yourself,” I said, hating how formal it sounded.
She didn’t look up. “Yeah,” she murmured. “You too, boss.”
The word scraped. I walked out into the night anyway.
The air outside slapped my cheeks with cold. The bay below the road reflected the last light, a blurred strip of silver. I could hear faint music from a waterfront party—the muffled bass I’d grown up with, soundtrack to regattas and charity balls and all the glassed-in rooms where decisions about this town got made.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I fished it out, half expecting another string of messages from Sadie, another apology or accusation.
Instead, there was a new anonymous email notification, subject line short and precise.
Ask your mother about the money.
My fingers went numb around the phone. For a second, I swayed on the sidewalk, caught between the cliffs in the distance and the laundromat’s neon glow behind me, between the past and the next secret lining up to be told.
The thread about me, Sadie’s leak, Elliot’s offer—none of it felt contained anymore. The story was no longer just Juliet’s, or mine, or the fandom’s. It was in my family now, bleeding backward through time.
I opened the email with my thumb, pulse pounding, already knowing it wouldn’t be the last message to use my mother’s name as bait.