I don’t mean to find it.
I just want a backup recorder.
The morning after appreciation night, my laptop fan wheezes in protest every time I scrub back through Oracle’s call. The audio analysis software keeps freezing, and my main phone is clogged with voice memos and CPS voicemails I’m not ready to delete. I need something that works, something I can take on walks or stakeouts or whatever comes next.
So I dig through the kitchen junk drawer. The smell of rubber bands and old batteries wafts up, metallic and stale under the lemon cleaner from last night. I push past takeout menus, a half-melted crayon, an Allen wrench that belongs to furniture I no longer own.
My hand closes around the cracked rectangle of my old phone.
The case still has the sticky outline where a listener once mailed me a custom glass rose sticker and Theo insisted on putting it on my stuff, not his. The power button sticks under my thumb, but the screen lights up anyway, casting my chipped countertop in cold gray.
No service, no SIM, just Wi-Fi and ghosts.
I clear a space on the table between my notebook and the bowl holding the dead Harrow bug. The laundromat dryers below thump and whine, filling the room with warm, damp air and the faint scent of detergent. Outside, the muffled bass from some late-morning waterfront sound check vibrates through the glass; Crescent Bay gearing up for another regatta weekend like nothing is wrong.
I unlock the phone. Old notifications blink and vanish. I thumb to the voice memo app, intending to wipe it clean.
The list scrolls up: Glass Roses raw tape, Juliet interview alt intro, Court rant (do not use), a dozen other fragments that belong to earlier, messier versions of me.
And then, nestled between two of my own files, I see a folder with a lock icon.
Theo’s Show DO NOT LISTEN.
For a second, I think I’m hallucinating, that my brain is so marinated in content it’s generating fake titles. But the file icon is solid; the letters are his, capitalized where my own are lazy. Theo’s Show. Not Theo’s Homework or Theo’s Music. Show.
I should stop here.
My thumb hovers above the screen. The dryers downstairs spin and spin. In the hallway, someone’s hairspray drifts in from the neighbor getting ready for a mid-day shift, chemical-sweet over the salt air leaking through the window.
I tap the folder.
A list opens.
Episode 1 - Pilot (for me only)
Ep 2 - Cliffs Day
Ep 3 - The Car (don’t freak out)
Ep 4 - Dark Car Returns
Ep 5 - Secret Listener
My own podcast naming habits, distorted through a twelve-year-old’s brain. The little cloud icons show they’re stored locally. Five episodes. Five chances to respect his privacy and back away.
I press on Episode 1 - Pilot (for me only) anyway.
The waveform fills the screen. The time stamp reads three weeks ago, right after the CPS visit, when I cried into my pillow and told myself kids are resilient.
I hit play.
Static whispers out of the tiny speaker, then a careful throat-clear.
“Um. Okay.” Theo’s voice arrives low and close, like he’s under a blanket. “Welcome to Theo’s Show. This is not going on the internet, so everyone calm down. This is just… in case I forget how this felt later.”
My chair scrapes when I jerk back. I drag it closer, pulse firing in my ears, and hunch over the phone.
“Today at school,” he continues, “everyone kept asking if my mom is gonna get me taken away because of the dead prom girl podcast. That’s not what it’s called, but I’m not saying the real name because then this would turn into an ad and that’s dumb.”
A shaky laugh slips out of him on the recording. I grip the edge of the table until my knuckles blanch.
“Mom says stories help people not feel alone,” he says. “So this is my story. I had grilled cheese for lunch. The cheese was weird. Also, I am not getting taken away. Probably. That’s the pilot.”
The recording clicks off.
My thumb hovers over the next file. Part of me wants to throw the phone into the trash, straight onto the layer of old receipts and stale crumbs. Another part of me is already in producer-brain, scanning the titles for structure, for escalation.
Ep 2 - Cliffs Day.
I hit play.
“Hi, this is Theo’s Show, episode two,” he says, a little more confident. “Trigger warning for moms who hate cliffs.”
I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Today I went to the cliffs by school again,” he narrates. “I know that’s bad, but I wanted to see what everyone always talks about. They say it’s a place where stories fall out of the world. Like, you get your picture on a plaque if you donate enough for the regattas and charity balls, but if you fall off the rocks, you just get whispers.”
I hear wind rush across the mic, the faint roar of water smashing against the rock shelf below, the same sound that’s under Juliet’s case in my head all the time.
“I saw some kids smoking down there,” he continues. “They said their parents used to sneak cigarettes here after dances. That’s gross. Also kind of cool. There’s this one rock that looks like a giant glass rose if the light hits it right—don’t tell Mom I said that, she’ll make it cover art.”
My lungs forget how to work. I shut off the recording with a sharp tap.
The glass rose on my notebook catches the light. The Harrow bug watches from its bowl.
I should stop. I already know too much about the ways this story has touched him. I’ve sat on his bed and tried to explain murder and justice in PG-13 language. I dragged him into this town’s past the day I moved us here.
But episode three is called The Car (don’t freak out), and that title cracks open a new layer of dread I can’t ignore.
I press play.
The noise floor is lower on this one, like he’s closer to the mic, maybe in his room with the door shut.
“Okay,” he whispers. “Theo’s Show, episode three. I am not freaking out. That’s the title.”
A faint rumble rolls underneath his voice—cars on the street, maybe, or the dryers downstairs. My own air conditioning hums in answer, a weird echo of past and present.
“There’s a car outside again,” he says. “Dark one. I’m not good at types but it’s like those long ones the rich kids’ parents drive to PTA meetings.”
My stomach drops.
“It’s been there three nights this week,” he goes on. “In the same spot under the broken streetlamp. The windows are tinted and the engine is off, so it’s just sitting. Mom doesn’t see because she’s editing or on Discord or on the phone with Sadie or crying in the bathroom.”
My vision blurs for a second. I blink hard, forcing the room back into focus.
“I can’t see the guy inside,” he says. “But the first night, when I was pretending to sleep, I went to the window and the light from the liquor store sign reflected on the windshield, and I swear I saw somebody move. Like they were leaning back when I got close.”
The word swear lands heavy. He knows I hate that word in his mouth.
“If I tell Mom, she’ll go full podcast on it,” he says. “She’ll talk about it into the mic and then CPS will come and my dad will say it’s her fault and… yeah.”
A soft rustle—maybe his blanket, maybe his sleeve—fills the pause.
“So this is for future Theo who wants to remember he wasn’t scared,” he whispers. “I watched the car until midnight and then I fell asleep anyway. The end.”
The episode ends with a tiny exhale.
I realize my own hands are shaking so hard I can hear my bracelets clink.
Three nights.
I swipe to Ep 4 - Dark Car Returns with shaking fingers and press play.
“Theo’s Show, episode four,” he says, a little more rushed. “The car is back. Same spot. Same not-turning-the-engine-on. Mom took a shower and I looked out and the plate has a C and a B in it. I’m not reading the numbers because this isn’t doxxing, okay? I’ve heard that word.”
My throat tightens so fast I cough.
“There’s this smell when the headlights from other cars go past,” he continues. “Like the ocean and the laundromat and gas mixed together. I think that’s what scared Juliet, too. Like everything clean and everything dirty all mixed up. Anyway. If I die, hi, detectives. Check the guy in the dark car first.”
I jab pause like I’m shocking the phone back to life.
The humming little apartment is suddenly too loud, too full. Waves of detergent and sidewalk exhaust and frying oil from the corner place press in on me, everything Theo mentioned in miniature. Outside, a gull cries somewhere above the street, caught between the cliffs and the parking lot.
Episode five is the newest, time-stamped just two days ago.
I don’t listen to that one.
Not yet.
I lock the phone with a sharp slide and push my chair back so hard it bumps the wall. My heart is pounding in my throat, in my ears, in the old water stain above the light fixture. I grab the phone, still warm from my hand, and walk down the hall.
Theo’s bedroom door is cracked. Light from his desk lamp bleeds into the hallway, yellow and soft, edging around the posters on his wall—superheroes, a regatta photo from a school field trip, a Glass Roses logo sticker he swore he didn’t steal.
I knock on the frame.
“Yeah?” he calls.
I step inside.
He sits at his desk in pajama pants, pencil in hand, a math worksheet spread in front of him. The room smells like graphite and that body spray he begged for because “everyone” has it, layered over the constant salt that gets into everything in Crescent Bay.
“You have a sec?” I ask.
“For fans, I’m booked,” he says without looking up. “But for Mom, I can squeeze you in.”
The joke lands in my chest like a blade wrapped in bubble wrap.
I sit on the floor, leaning my back against his bed. I hold up the old phone.
“I was looking for a backup recorder,” I say. “In the junk drawer. I found this.”
He glances over, then does a double take when he recognizes the case.
“Oh,” he says. His shoulders go tight. “You turned it on?”
“Yeah.”
“Did it work?”
My throat constricts around the answer.
“It works,” I say. “Theo, I saw a folder labeled ‘Theo’s Show DO NOT LISTEN.’”
His face drains. He drops the pencil; it rolls toward my foot.
“You opened it,” he says.
Not a question.
I curl my fingers around the phone until the edges dig into my palm.
“I did,” I say. “I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”
He stares at the worksheet, eyes shiny.
“How many?” he asks quietly. “How many episodes?”
“Four,” I say. “Well. Part of four.”
He sucks in a breath and exhales fast.
“You’re supposed to ask before recording someone,” he mutters. “You say that all the time on the show.”
“You’re right,” I say. “I broke my own rule.”
We sit in the thick, humming silence of his room. The bass from a waterfront sound check throbs faintly under everything, the town’s permanent background track.
“Why did you make them?” I ask. “The episodes.”
He spins his pencil between his fingers, the way I twirl a pen at the kitchen table when I’m stuck.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe I wanted my own podcast. Everyone at school has an opinion about yours. I thought… if I had one, it would make it less weird.”
I nod, even though my stomach is twisting.
“And the car?” I ask, soft. “The dark car.”
His fingers still. He doesn’t look at me.
“I knew you’d freak out,” he says. “You freak out about every email. You freak out about every comment where someone spells Juliet wrong. If I told you there was a car outside our house just sitting there, you’d… turn it into content. Or court evidence. Or both.”
His voice cracks on the last word. I swallow hard.
“So you took it to your own show instead,” I say.
He shrugs one shoulder.
“You always say talking into the mic makes the monsters smaller,” he says. “I thought, okay, I’ll talk. But I didn’t want a bunch of strangers downloading it.”
I feel something buckle inside me.
“How many nights has the car been there?” I ask. “Total.”
He chews his lip, thinking.
“More than five,” he says. “Less than fifteen.”
My breath catches.
“That’s not a helpful range,” I say gently.
“Yeah, well, I’m not an app,” he says. “At first I thought it was one of the regatta people lost or something. My friend’s dad always parks wrong after those yacht parties. But this guy never gets out. And he’s there on boring nights, too. Like Tuesday.”
“Have you ever seen him clearly?” I ask.
He nods slowly.
“Once,” he says. “He opened the door to stretch and the streetlight flickered just right. He had on a baseball cap. Dark jacket. I couldn’t see his face, but I saw his phone. He was holding it up toward our building.”
My skin crawls.
“Like he was filming?” I ask.
“Or taking pictures,” Theo says. “I got this feeling he was aiming at our windows. Not just… the street.”
I grip the phone so hard my hand aches.
“Why didn’t you come get me?” I ask.
“Because.” He finally looks at me, eyes bright and furious. “Because every time I tell you stuff, you act like it’s your fault. Then you stay up all night and fall asleep drooling on your keyboard and you get those headaches and court gets worse and Detective Navarro gets in trouble and our whole life turns into season content. I didn’t want to be another plot twist.”
The words slam into me one by one.
“You’re not content,” I say. My voice comes out rough. “You’re the only thing in this whole nightmare that isn’t content.”
He snorts, wiping at his eye with the back of his hand.
“Tell that to the morning show that used my baby pictures,” he says. “Or the kids who play your episodes at lunch like it’s a playlist.”
The image hits me so hard my vision goes white around the edges. I breathe through it, counting four in, four out, like Luz taught me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I am so, so sorry I made you feel like you had to handle this alone.”
He shrugs, but it’s not dismissive this time; it’s defensive.
“I wasn’t alone,” he says. “I had my show.”
I want to scream. I want to smash every microphone I own. I want to wrap him in bubble wrap and drive us inland until the smell of salt and hair spray and tar is a memory.
Instead, I put the old phone on the floor between us.
“From now on,” I say, “if you’re scared, you tell me. Before you tell the mic. We can record together if you want. Or not at all. But I need to know when there’s a man in a car outside our building.”
He stares at the phone, then at me.
“What are you going to do?” he asks.
I think of Luz, sidelined and furious. I think of the Harrow bug in my vent, of Oracle’s voice describing the tar on the dock, of the VPN node that pinged from the Harrow waterfront.
I think of my son, whispering into a dead phone about how detectives should check the dark car first if he dies.
“I’m going to end this,” I say.
The promise hangs in the room, bigger than both of us.
“How?” he asks.
I don’t answer.
Instead, I get up, cross to his window, and pull the blinds aside with two fingers. The street below glows orange under the broken lamp and the flickering liquor store sign. A few cars line the curb, plain and ordinary in the late afternoon light.
No dark sedan.
Not yet.
I let the blinds fall back into place.
“Finish your math,” I tell him. “I’m heating up dinner in a minute.”
In the kitchen, I set the old phone on the table, right next to the dead Harrow bug. Two pieces of evidence I never meant to collect, both of them proof that someone has been listening to my family from the dark.
The dryers downstairs thunder. Outside, the town’s bassline rises—boats honking near the marina, far-off music testing for tonight’s waterfront party, a spray of laughter from someone who will never know my kid recorded his fear like an episode.
I pick up my current phone and open a blank note. My thumbs hover over the keyboard.
Instead of typing, I flip to the camera, zoom in on the street through the streaked kitchen window, and hit record.
“Season log,” I whisper under my breath, not for the feed this time, just for me. “Waiting for the man in the car to come back.”
The red dot glows at the top of the screen.
I stand there in the salt-thick air of my apartment, watching the curb and knowing that the next time that car appears, I’m not going to stay behind the glass.