By the third day, my thumb has worn a literal tacky spot on my phone screen.
Headline after headline flashes past the smudges: MOM PODCASTER TAKES DOWN PROM KING. CRESCENT BAY HERO OR RECKLESS AMATEUR?. GLASS ROSES HOST CAUGHT IN HER OWN STORY. Every outlet uses a different photo—me with my mouth mid-sentence at the gym, me walking out behind Luz on the dock, me from some ancient PTA meeting where I’m holding a bake sale flyer and trying not to look terrified.
The dryer downstairs drones through the floorboards, a low, constant rumble under the bright, frantic buzz of my notifications. The apartment smells like warmed detergent, coffee gone sour in the mug beside me, and the faint salt that sneaks in through the loose window frame from the bay.
“You have to stop doom-scrolling,” Sadie says from the opposite end of my couch. Her own phone screen is seizure-bright. “I say this as someone who once read the entire comment history of a guy who left a single downvote.”
“I’m not doom-scrolling,” I say, even though my thumb keeps moving. “I’m…media monitoring.”
She snorts. “That’s the same thing with a blazer on.”
A push notification pops up over a paused clip of Elliot being loaded into a cruiser: State AG Announces Investigation into Crescent Bay Institutions.
I tap it so fast my nail clicks against the glass. The clip expands, sound filling our little living room. A woman in a navy blazer stands at a lectern in front of a seal I recognize from a thousand stolen screenshots of official documents.
“—in addition to the charges of manslaughter and multiple counts of sexual assault and facilitation of assault against Elliot Harrow,” she says, “our office is opening a wider inquiry into potential misconduct and complicity by Crescent Bay law enforcement, school officials, and other public servants in the handling of the Juliet Reeves case and related incidents.”
My chest pulls tight. I lean forward, elbows on my knees.
“She said manslaughter,” I whisper.
Sadie shifts, the couch springs squeaking. “That’s their opening move,” she says. “They’re starting where they’re sure they can land something. They can escalate.”
The camera cuts to B-roll: the cliffs shot from a drone, shining postcard-blue in the afternoon sun, the roped-off overlook perched above the pale scar of the rock shelf where kids used to sneak cigarettes and dare each other to spit over the edge. I watch the waves slam against the shelf in rhythmic bursts, white spray at the base of the town’s favorite scenic overlook.
“They’re using the cliffs shot again,” I say. My voice comes out flat. “They love that one.”
“It tests well,” Sadie mutters. Then she grimaces. “Sorry. That was gross. I just meant… it’s the image people know.”
I drag my gaze away and look at the lower third. HARROW CHARGED: PODCAST SPARKS JUSTICE OR FRENZY?
“Justice or frenzy,” I repeat. “They always make it a coin flip.”
“You pushed this boulder,” she says. “They’re just rolling after it. That doesn’t make what you did wrong.”
“Tell that to the Reddit thread calling me a car crash with a microphone,” I say.
“They’re wrong,” she shoots back. “Or at least…not the whole story.” Her shoulders slump. “Okay, some of them have points about how we behaved, but—”
“We?” I cut in, glancing at her. “That ‘we’ includes you, you know.”
Her mouth pulls to one side. “I know,” she says quietly. “My boss watched the live stream.” She huffs out a humorless laugh. “He asked if I’d like to channel my ‘investigative flair’ into more billable hours.”
I let the clip loop. Elliot’s blurred-around-the-edges mugshot appears next, his expression pinched, hair mussed from the night on the dock. He does not look like a man who built a podcast empire on “responsible storytelling.”
“You’re in half these think pieces too,” I say. “The obsessive fan. The subreddit ring leader. The cautionary tale.”
Sadie picks at a loose thread on my throw pillow until a tiny puff of stuffing pokes through. Her jaw works.
“Guess we’re both content now,” she says. “Congratulations to us.”
The dryer downstairs slams its cycle to an end, cutting the hum. For a second, the apartment goes very quiet. I hear only the faint bass from a boat party drifting in through the window—someone celebrating a regatta win, probably, clinking champagne on polished decks while our town’s donor list gets read into subpoenas.
My phone buzzes again. A DM preview from someone I don’t know: you ARE a hero. don’t let them make you doubt it. #TeamMara.
Right under it, a tweet: Lane lit a match in a room full of gasoline and calls herself a journalist.
My eyes begin to ache from the back-and-forth.
“I need to see Katie,” I say abruptly. “I can’t keep reading strangers grading my morality from their couches in Ohio.”
“I’ll drive,” Sadie offers instantly.
“You’ll stay here,” I counter, softer than I could have. “For both our sakes.”
Her face falls, but she nods. “Text me when you get there,” she says. “And when you’re coming back. And if you see anyone with a telephoto lens.”
I pull on my jacket, slip my recorder into my bag out of habit, and head down the narrow stairs. The blast of laundromat steam greets me at the bottom, hot and perfumed with floral detergent, wrapping around the cold bite that waits outside. Through the glass door, the bay glitters at the end of the street, cliffs rising beyond town like a story I haven’t learned to tell without hurting someone new.
On the walk to my car, kids on bikes weave around me, their voices bright, their parents’ surnames etched into half the plaques lining the school lawn. Some glance over, eyes catching recognition, but no one stops me. The town is very good at pretending not to stare.
Katie’s house looks smaller than I remember, or maybe everything else in Crescent Bay has grown around it—cliffside glass mansions, expanded school wings, Harrow-sponsored boathouses. The front steps still flake white paint. Someone has replaced the porch light with a brighter bulb that throws a harsh circle on the welcome mat.
I knock, knuckles grazing the glass pane, and press my spare hand into my pocket to hide its shake. The door opens after a beat. Katie stands there in leggings and an oversized Crescent Bay Regatta hoodie, hair pulled into a loose knot that’s already collapsing. Her eyes are ringed with the kind of purple that comes from watching breaking news instead of sleeping.
Neither of us says anything at first. She just steps back to let me in.
Inside, the living room smells like old carpet, lemon cleaner, and a ghost of hair spray, all of it layered over the briny sting that slips through the cracked window facing the bay. The television glows silently, captions marching across the bottom of some anchor’s smooth face.
On the coffee table sits one of the original glass rose centerpieces. Its petals catch the blue light, throwing tiny reflections on Katie’s fingers where they wrap around the base.
“They gave them back,” she says, catching my look. “From evidence. The box showed up yesterday. No note. Just…a box of prom night.”
I lower myself onto the couch beside her. The cushions sigh under our combined weight. I tuck one foot under my leg and lean my shoulder into the corner, leaving space between us for the rose.
On the screen, B-roll rolls again: the cliffs, the gym facade, the Harrow house gleaming above the overlook like a lighthouse aimed the wrong direction.
“Do you want the TV on?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she answers. “I keep turning it off and then turning it back on like I’m going to miss something and also like I’m trying to outrun it.”
The anchor’s voice fills the room. “—formal charges include one count of manslaughter in the death of Juliet Reeves, and eight counts of sexual assault or facilitation of assault, related to multiple alleged victims from gatherings on Harrow Island and associated events—”
Katie’s fingers tighten around the glass stem. I hear the faint creak of tension through it.
“Eight,” she says under her breath. “That’s just the ones they found already.”
“More will come forward,” I say. “Or they won’t, and they’ll still know it wasn’t their fault.”
She shifts her gaze to me. “Is it weird that I’m angrier at the people in suits than I am at him right now?” she asks. “The ones who knew pieces and folded them into PTA minutes and alumni newsletters instead of reports?”
“It’s not weird,” I say. “They’re part of the same story.”
The anchor shifts to a new angle. “In response to mounting pressure, the Attorney General’s office confirmed an investigation into Crescent Bay Police Department, the school board, and retired officials, including former Chief Raymond Calder, regarding potential cover-up and misconduct—”
“You did that,” Katie says quietly.
“We did that,” I correct.
She stares at the tiny fractures in the rose where one petal chipped years ago. “Juliet did that,” she says after a moment. “She kept shouting she was going to tell. You’re just louder, and you have a better mic.”
My throat closes. I reach for the rose, then stop myself and let my hand fall back to my knee.
“I wish I could bring her something instead of headlines,” I say. “Anything that isn’t another clip of her being discussed.”
Katie’s shoulders hitch once. “You brought me proof I wasn’t crazy,” she says. “For twenty-eight years, people tried to talk me out of trusting what I knew about my own sister. That counts.”
We sit there, two women flanked by a glass rose and a television screen, watching Crescent Bay’s institutions get named out loud for the first time. The cliffs flash again, then the gym, then a shot of my own apartment building—courtesy of some local freelancer with a good vantage point and a lousy sense of boundaries.
“They’re saying your name in the same breath as his,” Katie says. “Hero, menace, click-bait witch, investigative saint. Do you have a favorite?”
“The one where they mispronounce it and move on,” I say.
She huffs a small laugh. “You wanted this, right? Not…this, but…attention.”
“I wanted the case reopened,” I say. “I wanted someone to listen to Juliet all the way to the end of the tape. I didn’t think about what happens when they start listening to me more than her.”
Katie turns the volume down until the anchor becomes a murmur. The rose gleams between us.
“Then maybe you stop giving them more of you for a while,” she says. “Let the story be theirs to deal with.”
Her words settle into the room like dust. I feel them in my chest, heavy and oddly clean.
Before I leave, she presses the rose into my hands. “Borrow it,” she says. “Not for your cover art. For you. For when you forget why you started.”
It weighs more than it looks. The stem digs a little into my palm, just short of drawing blood.
By the time I get back to my apartment, the sky has darkened to a deep navy, the bay dotted with party lights and the faint echo of muffled bass. The laundromat has gone quiet. My windows vibrate with the memory of the chant from the gym, the roar when Luz snapped the cuffs, Elliot’s voice saying she went into the water.
Sadie has left a note taped to my door in purple pen: Brought you dumplings. Left them in the fridge. Please eat at least three. Text me. – S
I text her a heart and a photo of the glass rose on my kitchen counter. Then I set it down beside my mic, where it catches the light from my laptop screen and refracts it in shard-like beams across the wall.
The table looks the same as every other recording night—quilt over the wood, mic on its scuffed stand, headphones coiled like a sleeping snake, laptop open to my audio software. A new project file blinks on the screen: GR_FinalThoughts.wav.
I lower myself into the chair and put the headphones on. They hug my ears, familiar weight pressing me into the moment. My own breath fills the cups, loud and uneven.
“Alright,” I tell the empty room. “Let’s do this.”
I hit record. The red bar crawls forward. Static settles on the line like snow waiting for a story.
“This is Mara Lane,” I say. My voice sounds thin in my ears. “And this was supposed to be the part where I wrap everything up in a way that makes you feel like the past has a beginning, middle, and end…”
My throat tightens on the word “end.” I swallow, try again.
“I could tell you about the charges,” I say. “How manslaughter doesn’t sound big enough when you’ve seen the file photos. How eight counts of assault doesn’t sound high enough when you’ve counted the anonymous DMs in your inbox. I could tell you about the investigation into the police department and the school board, and how watching certain last names leave certain plaques feels better than I expected.”
My voice shakes on the last sentence. I hear it in my own headphones, the wobble magnified.
“I could tell you…” I start, and then the words evaporate. What rushes into their place is an image: Juliet laughing on the yearbook tape, asking someone to rewind her favorite song. Juliet’s body on a steel table in grainy black-and-white. Juliet’s name being chopped into headlines next to mine and Elliot’s, turned into SEO.
Tears hit my upper lip before I register that my eyes have flooded. I sniff; the sound booms in my ears.
“I can’t—” I say.
The rest dissolves. A sob tears out of me, raw and loud, peaking into the red on the software. I clap a hand over my mouth, but the mic catches the shaky drag of breath through my fingers. The glass rose blurs on the table, its fractured petal smearing into a streak of light.
I slam the space bar.
Silence snaps into place. The red bar freezes at forty-three seconds.
I sit there, headphones still on, listening to the nothing I just created. My chest heaves. My cheeks burn. The tiny clip blinks at me from the screen, labeled with the default name: Take 1.
For once, I don’t reach for the mouse. I don’t replay my own breakdown. I don’t mark it as raw tape to be cut around later. I just breathe, loud and unsteady, and stare at the still waveform.
My phone buzzes on the table. A text from Sadie: How’s the finale going? Do you need me to pull any receipts for the institutional stuff? People are already spinning it.
I rest my fingers on the keyboard, then pull them back.
I look at the glass rose, at the mic, at the tiny frozen sliver of my voice on the screen. I think of Katie’s words, of Juliet’s threat to tell everything, of Theo’s quiet recordings into my old phone.
“I don’t know how to end this,” I whisper to the empty room.
The software doesn’t care. It blinks its steady cursor at the edge of Take 1, waiting for me to decide whether the world gets this version of the story or a more polished one or none at all.
I close the laptop without saving, leaving the waveform suspended in the dark like a question I’m not ready to answer, and wonder what I’m going to say—to my listeners, to a judge, to my son—when the world keeps asking me to explain a story I’m still learning how to survive.