When I finally slam my apartment door behind me, my jeans still cling damply to my calves and my hands won’t stop shaking.
I kicked my shoes off on the landing, left a trail of sand across the linoleum, and tossed my salt-stiff jacket over a chair. The laundromat’s hum pushes up through the floor in slow waves, mixing with the faint thud of bass from a waterfront party across town and the whir of our fridge. Crescent Bay’s nighttime soundtrack: washers, bass, and the ocean breathing through badly sealed windows.
My phone buzzes on the kitchen table where my laptop glows with the Glass Roses cover art—Juliet’s face haloed by the glass rose, the same shape I just traced in splintered wood on Harrow’s dock. A notification banner slides up over her smile.
SadieQuinn93: omg you up????? I think I have something HUGE
I drop into my usual recording chair, springs squeaking. My thumb hovers, phantom sensation of that other hover still on my skin—phone on the dock, Luz’s voice in my ear, the engine getting louder. On the island, I chose darkness over flash. No photo. No proof. Just the fiber tucked in Luz’s evidence bag and the carved rose carved into my ribs.
I open Sadie’s DM.
SADIE: okay so don’t freak out but I messaged that guy from the Harrow alumni FB, remember the one who tagged himself at “Prom Throwback After-After Party ;)” like five yrs ago??
Another ping.
SADIE: he RESPONDED. he listens to the show. said he “remembers the original night well” but “doesn’t do podcasts lol”
I rub at the ache between my eyebrows. “You can’t even not do podcasts correctly,” I mutter.
ME: Please tell me you didn’t tell him you work with me.
Little dots appear, disappear, appear.
SADIE: I said I’m part of the community / research team 😇 SADIE: look he agreed to meet. casual. bar in Norwalk. I told him it’s a fan meetup re: “1997 nostalgia” so he doesn’t freak
I picture Sadie’s apartment—yellow lamplight, stacks of case binders, my logo on her laptop wallpaper. She loves the phrase “research team.” It makes her sound official when she only has proximity, which, in Crescent Bay, is its own currency.
The dryers downstairs shift cycles with a deep mechanical sigh. I hear Theo roll over in his room, the rustle of superhero sheets. Court papers sit in a neat stack by the microwave, their black ink ready to judge me on my “choices and associations.”
I type fast.
ME: Sadie. No. You can’t do that. ME: I’m on hiatus. No new reporting. No fan stunts. I JUST told a judge my listeners aren’t harassing people anymore. ME: What’s his name?
I pace while I wait, bare feet picking up grit off the peeling linoleum. My brain tracks two timelines at once: Juliet on that island dock and me on a courthouse bench while Eric’s lawyer recites “patterns of behavior.” Both timelines pulse with one word: reckless.
The reply pings.
SADIE: Ryan Feld?? SADIE: he was at the island party. class of ‘98, rowed varsity. I checked him on like three different alumni blogs, he’s in all the boat pics. he SAID “oh yeah that night got out of hand” 🙃 SADIE: meeting him in an hour. waterfront bar, very public. I’ll be fine
The surname hits me behind the ribs. Feld is on half the donor plaques at the high school. One Feld cousin prints the town’s regatta programs. Another sits on the hospital board. Being an idiot twenty years ago doesn’t erase that, and men like that don’t like feeling cornered by paralegals with fan Discords.
I stab at the keyboard.
ME: Cancel. ME: I’m serious. This can blow back on me legally. On you too. ME: If he wants to talk, we loop Luz in. We do it above board. You do NOT record him on your own.
No answer.
I send another.
ME: Sadie I am NOT kidding. This is exactly how people say I “sic” listeners on targets.
Downstairs, someone loads coins into a washer; the machine clanks to life. My phone stays stubbornly blank. I open the Discord out of habit, scroll past Oracle spec threads I’m supposed to be ignoring, past photos of the cliffs at sunset, their postcard cliffs hiding the teeth of the rock shelf below.
Ten minutes pass. Fifteen. The clock on the stove clicks over.
Finally:
SADIE: already on the train sryyy SADIE: I’ll be careful. I won’t DOXX or anything. Just talk. fans do this all the time. this is how we crowdsource, right? SADIE: I know what I’m doing
My chest tightens. I jab each word in one-handed.
ME: Turn around. ME: I mean it. You’re not my producer. You’re not my investigator. If you do this, you’re on your own.
She reads it. Leaves it on “seen.” No reply.
Another ping, seconds later. A photo this time: a blurry shot through what looks like a train window, dark water and bar lights streaked along a different stretch of coast. She adds a caption.
SADIE: he picked the place. says he “hates Crescent Bay cliffs now” 👀
Micro-hook lodges under my skin. A Feld kid who hates the cliffs. A Feld kid who still wants drinks by water.
I stare at the screen, the cursor blinking in the empty reply box, and make the quiet decision to believe she’s bluffing about how far she’ll push him.
I don’t hear from her until my phone vibrates itself nearly off the table two hours later.
The screen glows with a barrage of missed texts and one file transfer notification.
SadieQuinn93 has sent you a file: feld_meetup_audio.m4a
My pulse kicks hard enough to make my vision jump. I sink into the chair and swipe open the texts first.
SADIE: he got weird SADIE: like REALLY weird SADIE: I think I messed up SADIE: can you listen?? SADIE: PLEASE listen before you freak at me
“I’m already there,” I tell the empty apartment, then tap the audio.
White noise floods my earbuds first: bar chatter, clinking glass, a low line of music like a heartbeat under everything else. Somewhere near the mic, Sadie breathes, quick and shallow.
“Hi, I’m Sadie,” she says on the recording, voice higher than usual. “We talked online?”
A man answers, his words blurred with distance. Luz taught me to listen for stress; it lives in Ryan’s throat. “Yeah. Sorry, the trains are a nightmare tonight. I grabbed us a table—by the window, like you asked.”
I picture the place without seeing it: waterfront bar in a neighboring town, maybe Norwalk or Westport. Salt air sneaking in each time the door opens. Regatta photos on the walls, shiny sailboats frozen on flat blue water while night slaps dark waves against the pilings outside.
“Thanks,” Sadie says. “I, um, love these old race photos. Crescent Bay’s regattas look insane.”
He laughs once, short. “That’s the point. It’s supposed to look insane. Donors eat that up.”
There’s a drag of chair legs, a soft rustle of fabric. Ice cubes clink. I hear the bar door whoosh open and shut, a burst of outside noise—bass from some dock party, the muffled shriek of someone drunk and happy—and then the bar swallows it, returning to its low roar.
“So you’re a fan?” Ryan asks. “Like, of the podcast. My girlfriend listens. I’m more of a sports guy.”
“Huge fan,” Sadie says. “But, like, not in a creepy way.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Why would you say that,” I whisper to my stove.
“I just want to understand that night better,” she adds quickly. “From people who were actually there. Mara’s doing this… I don’t know, public service? And it feels unfair that the only voices in the story are the Harrows and the cops.”
Ryan snorts. “Public service,” he repeats. Glass touches down a little too hard on the table. “That’s one word for it.”
“What would you call it?” Sadie asks. Her voice steadies. She smells blood in the water. That hunger curls through her like caffeine; I’ve heard it during late-night brainstorming calls.
He exhales. “Brand-building,” he says. “Career rehab. Vengeance porn. Take your pick.”
On the recording, Sadie lets the silence stretch. It’s a trick I taught her without meaning to, in voice chats dissecting interviews: let people fill their own silence.
“We were kids,” he says finally. “Drunk kids at an after-party. Someone died. It was tragic. I gave a statement. I moved on. I have kids now. I don’t need some podcast dragging me back into that.”
“So you did see her,” Sadie says.
Another clink, sharper this time. “Who?”
“Juliet,” she answers. The name hangs over the bar sounds like a glass rose suspended in the gym rafters. “You wrote that you still ‘hear her scream’ in your alumni post. I read that. Did you mean from the dock? Or when she—”
“Jesus,” he cuts in. His chair scrapes. “That was a figure of speech.”
The lie is a flat note even through the shitty bar acoustics. His breathing thickens, presses against the mic.
“Were you on the island dock?” Sadie pushes. “Did you see the chain being used? The carved rose—”
Something hits the table. Maybe his hand. Maybe his glass. “Where the hell did you hear about a chain?” Ryan demands. “That’s not in any episode.”
My skin goes cold.
The bar sounds narrow around his voice. I can hear the muscle in his jaw in the way he shapes his consonants. He knows something. Or at least enough to recognize what’s supposed to be buried.
Sadie rushes in. “People talk,” she says. “Online. In DMs. You posted about ‘seeing Juliet last on the dock.’ Everyone saw that.”
He swears under his breath. “I was drunk,” he says. “Everyone was drunk. There were a dozen girls in sparkly dresses that night. You people act like we were holding some ritual sacrifice.”
“We?” she repeats. That one syllable carries her entire theory spreadsheet.
“Enough.” His voice climbs, then drops when he remembers they’re in public. “Look. I did my civic duty twenty years ago. I talked to Calder. I told him what I knew. The town raised money, they put her on a plaque, there’s a stupid glass rose in the school lobby. What more do you people want?”
Justice, I think. Accountability. Something besides a centerpiece under glass and a PTA fundraiser where they spray their hair stiff and dance over a crime scene in rented shoes.
On the recording, Sadie lowers her voice. “Mara doesn’t want to ruin your life,” she says. “She just wants the truth. If you know what really happened on that dock, you could clear an innocent guy’s name.”
“Nope,” he says immediately. “No way. I’m not saying anything that can be cut into some dramatic montage so strangers can argue about my teenage mistakes on Reddit. I have a career.”
Another chair scrapes. The audio jostles wildly; Sadie must have shifted, bringing her bag—the phone—closer. Ryan’s voice jumps in volume.
“What are you doing?” he snaps. “Are you recording me?”
The bar noise drops for a beat, like everyone within two tables turned to look.
“No,” Sadie says too quickly. I can hear the panic in the pitch of it. “I just—my phone—”
“You’re one of those fans,” he says. The word fans lands like an accusation, powdery and bitter. “Jesus. The crazy ones.”
A thump; he’s on his feet. Fabric drags; the mic scrapes. There’s a yelp from Sadie, a muffled “Ow, let go,” and then the crackling rustle of a bag being yanked.
“Stop it!” she barks. “You’re hurting me!”
“You’re recording,” he says. “You think you can bait me into saying something so your little podcast cult can dox me next? No. Not happening.”
“I didn’t dox anyone,” she fires back. “That was—”
“Tell Mara Lane I said this,” he says, voice close and sharp enough to cut my ear through the buds. “If she sends more of you freaks after me, I’ll have her in court so fast she won’t have time to hit record.”
The bar’s soundtrack swallows his footsteps as he storms away. The door thuds. Bass from the docks pulses once, twice, then fades as the recording continues with shaky breaths and the clink of glass on glass.
Sadie mutters into the mic, “Shit, shit, shit.”
The file ends.
I sit at my table, floor humming beneath me, and stare at the wall. My hand has left a damp print on the wood where it gripped the phone.
He knew about the chain. He flinched at the dock. He’s terrified of being linked, and he’s right about one thing: this is exactly the kind of stunt my enemies want to hang around my neck.
A new notification blinks over my lockscreen.
SadieQuinn93 forwarded you an email.
I open it.
The subject line hits me first: Harassment/Intimidation Complaint re: “Glass Roses” podcast – Feld.
The sender is a law firm with a name that has shown up on half the regatta sponsor lists and the school board minutes since the nineties. The same surnames, different font.
The email is addressed to the Crescent Bay PD community relations inbox, cc’d to the town’s risk management office, the school district’s general counsel, and one more address that turns my mouth dry: legal@harrowmedia.com.
Down the page, buried in the legalese, sits my name.
…pattern of online harassment, incitement of fans, and orchestrated attempts by Ms. Mara Lane and her associate Ms. Sadie Quinn to compel statements regarding the events of May 1997…
Associate. The word feels sticky, welded to my skin.
My phone buzzes again. A call this time. Sadie.
I let it ring twice, three times, then swipe to answer.
“Okay, before you say anything,” she blurts, voice thick and high, “I know, I know, I know. I messed up. He grabbed my bag. He pushed me. The bartender gave me ice, I have a bruise, I can send pictures—”
“Sadie.” My voice comes out flatter than I intend. Theo is asleep in the next room; my throat automatically goes quiet when he’s home. “You forwarded me the complaint.”
She sucks in a breath. “I didn’t know he’d— I thought he was just bluffing. People say ‘I’ll call my lawyer’ all the time. I didn’t think he’d actually—”
“You recorded him,” I say. “After I told you not to meet him at all.”
“He admitted things,” she insists. “You heard him. He knew about the chain. That’s not in any episode. He said the dock, that he talked to Calder. That’s huge.”
My fingers press so hard into the edge of the table my nails ache. “He admitted fear,” I say. “That’s different from admitting guilt. And now we have a documented complaint that says I sent you to harass him.”
“But you didn’t,” she says. “You told me not to. I have the DMs. I can show them if anyone asks. I’ll tell them it was my idea.”
“Do you think Elliot’s lawyers care whose idea it was?” I ask. “Do you think the judge cares that I typed ‘turn around’ if the headline is ‘Podcast host’s fan assaults witness’?”
She goes quiet. I hear her breathing, a little ragged, and in the background, the faint buzz of a fluorescent light. I imagine her hunched at her kitchen table, surrounded by printouts and highlighters, our Discord pinned open on one screen. This case gave her a purpose, and now it’s turning that purpose into evidence against me.
“I was just trying to help,” she says eventually. “You’re on hiatus. Oracle’s out there doing whatever. The town keeps having these Prom Throwback fundraisers and pretending everything’s fine. It feels like the cliffs swallowed her and the whole bay just decided to sell tickets to the view. I couldn’t sit on my hands.”
“Helping means not giving them ammo,” I say. My voice shakes, so I stand and move to the sink, run cold water, let it sting my fingers. “Helping means listening when I tell you the line between citizen journalism and harassment is not a gray area in a place where the PTA doubles as a weapons depot.”
“So what, you’re done with me?” she asks, and the crack in her voice shoves guilt under my ribs. “You’re just going to cut me out and go back to— what, trusting Luz’s bosses? Trusting the Harrows to be fair?”
Water rushes over my hands. Outside, a car passes, bass thudding faintly. Salt air pushes under the window, carrying hair spray from the salon downstairs where my mother spent prom nights shellacking curls for girls who danced over glass roses.
“I can’t have you doing this,” I say. “Not for me. Not in my name. If you can’t promise that, then… yeah. I have to step back. For Theo. For the case. For everything.”
A silence stretches over the line. For a second, I think she’s hung up.
Then she whispers, “They’re winning, you know.”
“Who?”
“The men who used that island,” she says. “The ones who pushed her into the dark and then turned the dock into a secret. They scared you into a hiatus. They scared me into being useless. Now they’re using lawyers instead of cliffs. That’s all that’s changed.”
My throat closes. I picture the carved rose under my knees, the rusted chain with its little tuft of fibers, and now a different chain linking my name to harassment in a neat, digital loop.
“You’re not useless,” I say. “You’re just… dangerous right now.”
“Dangerous for them,” she shoots back.
“Also dangerous for me,” I answer, and the truth of it hangs there, heavy and ugly.
Her breath hitches. “So what do I do?”
I look back at my laptop. The harassment complaint glows on the screen, that CC line screaming. legal@harrowmedia.com. Elliot’s people already have it, filing it under “leverage” somewhere between my courthouse clips and the morning show segment.
“For now?” I say. “You stop. No more solo meetups. No more recording anyone without counsel. You lock your accounts down. And if the police call, you get your own lawyer. Do not say my name.”
“Mara—”
“I mean it.”
After a long beat, she says, “Okay,” in a voice that sounds like someone stepping back from a cliff edge, not because the view isn’t worth it, but because the rocks below are lined with other people’s bones.
We hang up.
I stand alone in the yellow kitchen light, listening to my apartment breathe. Washer, fridge, distant bass, the ocean somewhere behind it all. The town hums with its usual mix of salt air and hair spray and muffled parties, the same old story looping: rich kids on docks, poor girls under water, plaques on walls, glass roses on tables.
On my screen, the cursor blinks beside my name in the complaint, waiting to be replaced by a lawyer’s response, a PR statement, or another silence that Elliot can fill for me.
A new email lands in my inbox with a soft chime.
From: legal@harrowmedia.com
Subject: Inquiry re: Glass Roses activities and recent allegations
My finger hovers over the trackpad, the echo of Luz’s voice in my head from the dock: “Choose.”
I don’t click yet.
I just stare at Elliot’s domain in my inbox and feel the story tightening around my throat again, wondering how many more of my own people I can bear to lose before I cut the microphone cord for good—or wrap it around the right neck.