The blanket the officer hands me scratches my throat when I pull it tighter, rough wool rubbing against the skin just above my collar. I tuck my chin down into it, breathing through the mix of detergent and engine exhaust as the police launch hums out of the harbor.
Crescent Bay shrinks behind us in muted lights and stacked silhouettes. I pick out the country club roofline, the school’s brick bulk, the distant cliffs where the town pretends postcard perfection and hides a rock shelf that has swallowed more than just Juliet. The water smells like metal and salt, cold enough that my lips go numb in the wind.
Katie sits on the bench opposite me, her own blanket wrapped tightly around shoulders that never quite relaxed, not when we were teenagers and not now. Her fingers curl around a plain metal urn set carefully between her knees. A zippered canvas bag rests at her feet; red petals peek out from a plastic sleeve inside.
Beside her, the woman who once spoke into a voice changer on my show stares straight ahead. Today, there’s no filter between her and the world, only a knitted hat pulled low and the blanket she grips with both hands. In my head I still label her “Anonymous,” the way I did in the edit file. Out here she is just another woman whose life collided with Juliet’s on a night this water remembers.
“Everyone warm enough?” the officer at the wheel calls back, voice carrying over the engine. His uniform jacket creaks when he shifts, but he keeps his eyes on the dark shape of Harrow Island.
“We’re fine,” Katie answers before I can. Her voice cuts through the morning air, flat and clear. “Thank you for doing this.”
“Judge signed off,” he says. “And Detective Navarro made her feelings known.”
My mouth pulls into a small, involuntary smile under the blanket. Luz had handed me a folded note last week with the judge’s order clipped inside, her handwriting along the bottom: Official purpose: victim closure. Unofficial purpose: truth catching up to geography. She had tapped the paper once with her finger, then looked me dead in the eye and said, “No recording. I want you to actually be there.”
I touch the inside pocket of my jacket now, feeling the rectangle of my phone turned fully off. No backup recorder in my bag, no mic in my hand. The weight missing from my usual kit throws off my balance in small, disorienting ways. I wrap my fingers tight around the bench instead.
The survivor’s voice comes out low, almost lost to the engine. “I haven’t been back on the water since that night,” she says. “I thought I’d throw up as soon as we left shore.”
“Do you want to go back?” I ask.
She shakes her head once, hard. “No,” she says. “I want to see it. Then I want to get off this island and never dream about boats again.”
Katie’s thumbs move over the urn’s lid, tracing circles without looking down. “Juliet loved the regattas,” she says. “Did you know that? She didn’t care about the stupid trophies. She just liked when the wind was strong enough that the rich kids’ perfect hair blew into their lip gloss.”
I huff out a breath that could almost pass for a laugh. The wind stings the corners of my eyes; I blink the wetness away.
“She once told me she’d rather sit on the rock shelf and eat french fries than go to Prom Throwback,” I say. “I think she knew the cliffs told the truth about this town better than the ballroom.”
“The rock shelf would have been safer than the island,” the survivor says, eyes still on the dark bulk ahead. Her jaw works tight. “She tried to get me to leave that night. I thought she was being dramatic. I didn’t know she’d already seen him grab someone else.”
The boat bumps over a low wave. Spray hits my cheeks, cold and briny. Somewhere behind us, the muffled bass from a waterfront bar that never quite closes leaks over the water, so faint I can only catch it when the engine noise dips. Crescent Bay’s sensory soundtrack, still playing while we head toward the quietest place in its mythology.
The officer slows the engine as we round the rocky tip of Harrow Island. The dock slides into view: long, weather-beaten, planks silvered by decades of salt. My chest tightens around the memory of stumbling along it in the dark with Luz, the carved glass rose embedded near the end, glittering under her phone light.
Now, dawn light washes over everything, softening edges without erasing them. The carved rose still catches what brightness there is, a single frozen shimmer in the boards.
“Hold on,” the officer calls. He eases the launch alongside the dock, ropes creaking, hands sure on the line as he ties us off. “You’ve got an hour before the next boat’s due,” he says. “Radio’s here if you need anything. I’ll stay with the vessel.”
Katie rises first, clutching the urn in one hand, using the other to grab the dock rail as she steps up. Her sneakers land on the boards with a hollow thud. The survivor follows, her blanket flapping open for a second to reveal jeans, boots, a sweatshirt with a college logo. She regains her grip on the fabric fast, packing herself back into the cocoon.
I climb up last, the dock rocking gently under my weight. The wood gives off the damp smell of algae and old fish, layered over with something sharper that lives only in my head: the phantom tang of adrenaline and blood.
“You good?” I ask Katie quietly.
She nods without looking at me. Her face is turned toward the end of the dock, where the water darkens into a deeper blue-black. “Let’s just go,” she says.
We walk in single file. My sneakers squeak on patches of slick moss. A gull cries overhead, the sound thin in the open air. Below, waves slap the pilings in an irregular rhythm, like a heartbeat that never settled.
The carved glass rose waits where I remember, petals etched into the wood and filled in with translucent, sea-glass green. The survivor stops short when she reaches it.
“That’s it,” she whispers. “The mark from your episode.”
“The mark from what they did,” Katie says. She steps right over the rose without looking down, placing the urn on the last solid plank before the drop into water.
I watch her feet land inches from the carving. For years she had only the prom photo roses and the ones that showed up unwanted on her porch. Now she stands on the version someone carved into a dock to mark a girl they let drown.
The survivor comes to stand on Katie’s left. I take the right, leaving a small space between us that fills up with shared breath and the cold wind threading our blankets together.
Katie opens the canvas bag, pulling out the bouquet of real roses. Their scent cuts through the brine: rich, sweet, dense. She strips off the plastic, the crinkling sound oddly loud out here, and starts to pluck petals one by one, tucking them into the front pocket of her jacket.
“The funeral at the church was for them,” she says, glancing back toward town. “For the school board, for the donors, for everyone who needed a neat narrative and a closed casket.” Her fingers tremble as she unseals the urn. “This is for her.”
The survivor nods slowly. Her voice is rough when she speaks. “She pulled me out of the room when they started passing that bottle around,” she says. “Said, ‘You don’t owe them your body for a ride on a boat.’ I laughed at her. Told her she sounded like my guidance counselor.” She swallows. “She kept standing between them and other girls all night. I never said thank you.”
Katie sets the urn on the edge of the dock, both hands braced on the cool metal. The wind lifts strands of hair off her face, slapping them against her cheeks. “You can say it now,” she says.
The words hang there, simple and enormous.
The survivor steps forward until her toes touch the lip of the dock. She curls her fingers into fists, then opens them again, shaking once. “Thank you, Juliet,” she says, voice barely above the water’s hush. “I’m sorry we all let you stand alone.”
The officer looks studiously away, gaze fixed on a point somewhere past the rocks. I tuck my hands deeper into my blanket, resisting the urge to reach for a recording device that isn’t there.
Katie lifts the urn. “Okay,” she murmurs. “Okay.”
She tilts it slowly, letting the ashes pour out in a pale stream that catches the light for the briefest second before the wind claims it. Some of the powder drifts back toward us, dusting the dock, our shoes. The rest falls to the water below, dissolving into the foam swirling around the pilings.
The smell of roses intensifies as she scatters the petals, bright red against the gray wood. They tumble over the edge one by one, landing on the water’s skin and riding the small waves. A few catch on the rock shelf’s teeth before being pulled free.
“She was supposed to come home and yell at me for stealing her lipstick,” Katie says. Her voice shakes but never breaks. “She was supposed to get sick of this town and move somewhere that didn’t care about regattas.”
I step closer, enough that my shoulder touches hers, blanket against blanket. “She changed this town anyway,” I say. “Just not on the timeline anyone wanted.”
She exhales hard, almost a laugh, almost a sob. “You start quoting your podcast at me and I’m pushing you in,” she says.
I smile, small and real. “No podcast today,” I say. “Just us.”
The survivor wipes at her cheeks with the back of her hand, leaving a faint streak of salt and mascara. “You really left the recorder at home?” she asks.
I nod. “Phone’s off,” I say, tapping my pocket. “No hidden backups. Harbor Light would revoke my funding if I turned this into an episode. Theo would revoke my motherhood.”
Katie looks over at me, eyes red-rimmed but sharp. “Good,” she says. “This doesn’t belong to Glass Roses.”
For a second, the words prick. The show has been my primary language for grief so long that part of me still reaches for it like a reflex. But the relief that follows is heavier and deeper than the sting.
“It belongs to you,” I say. “And to her. I’m here to witness, not to own.”
My fingers find the small zipper pocket inside my blanket where I tucked the one piece of gear I did bring: my first microphone. The cheap dynamic mic I bought secondhand in a city thrift store, back when Glass Roses was just a title scribbled in a notebook. Its metal casing is scuffed, the foam head a little dented from too many late nights and one memorable fall off the kitchen table.
I pull it out slowly, cold metal warming against my palm. Katie’s eyes widen.
“You brought a mic,” she says, suspicion flaring.
“Retired hardware,” I say quickly. “No batteries, no cable.” I hold it up so she can see the stripped wire dangling uselessly. “It hasn’t recorded anything since before I came back to Crescent Bay.”
The survivor tilts her head. “Ceremonial sacrifice?” she asks, a ghost of a smile touching her mouth.
I nod. “Something like that.”
I walk to the very edge of the dock, stopping just before my toes tip over. The wood feels damp under my soles, slick in a way that makes my muscles tense. The carved glass rose gleams just behind my heel, catching a sliver of new sunlight.
“Every time I stood in front of a mic with this story, I thought I could control it,” I say, more to the water than to them. “I thought if I edited hard enough, if I managed the comments and the Discord and the brand deals, I could keep it from hurting anyone else.”
The tide reaches for the rock shelf in slow, relentless pulls. The petals bob on the surface, red punctuation marks on the gray-green sea.
“You got us here,” the survivor says quietly. “And you scared the hell out of me. Both things can be true.”
“And both are,” Katie adds.
I close my fingers tighter around the microphone until my knuckles ache, then loosen my grip. The metal is cool and familiar, the weight of every interview, every late-night confession. The early episodes where I spoke about Juliet in the present tense, the later ones where I tried to claw back the harm we’d done.
“You don’t owe the bay a prop,” Katie says softly. “You don’t have to throw pieces of yourself in just because this town took hers.”
“I know,” I say. And for once, I do.
I turn the mic over in my hand, studying the scratches. Theo’s tiny sticker of a rocket ship still clings near the base, faded around the edges. I press my thumb over it in a small, private goodbye.
“This story doesn’t end because I drop this,” I say. “Elliot still goes to trial. Policies still need changing. But I can end one part of it. The part where I think a microphone is the only way I know how to love somebody who died.”
The survivor nods, eyes shining. “Then let it go,” she says.
I draw my arm back and release. The mic arcs out over the water, catching a shard of pale sun, then plunges into the bay with a small splash. The sound is softer than I expect, swallowed instantly by the ongoing rhythm of waves against wood.
Bubbles rise for a second, then vanish. The petals keep drifting.
I stand there, empty-handed, feeling the cold air bite my fingers. The absence of the mic’s weight makes my shoulders drop in a way I didn’t know they could. The story of Juliet Reeves still hums in the bones of this island, in the carved rose at my back, in the rock shelf teeth under the surface. But for the first time since I came home, I’m not holding a device between myself and the moment.
“Okay,” Katie whispers. “Okay.”
She reaches for my hand, and the survivor reaches for hers, completing the small, imperfect circuit between us. Three women who lived through the fallout of a night none of us attended in the same way, standing together where the town once insisted nothing really happened.
The wind lifts Juliet’s ashes and the scent of roses toward the cliffs, toward Crescent Bay’s polished houses and charity balls and PTA power summits. Somewhere up there, someone is already drafting talking points about “healing” for the next school board meeting.
Down here, at the edge of the dock, I choose not to draft anything.
The officer clears his throat gently behind us. “Take all the time you need,” he says.
“We’re done,” Katie replies, surprising me. She straightens her shoulders and turns away from the water. Her sneakers squeak as she steps back over the carved rose without looking down, leaving a faint dusting of ashes on the glass petals.
I glance once more at the spot where my first mic sank, then follow her, blanket wrapped tight, hands empty. The survivor walks at my other side, matching our pace.
As we make our way back toward the boat, the cliffs loom in my peripheral vision, the same cliffs where Theo once went looking for a story he didn’t yet understand. I think about the trailer scheduled in my hosting dashboard, about the final recording I haven’t made yet—a letter not for sponsors or detectives or listeners.
On the ride back to shore, I know exactly who that last, unbroadcast story belongs to, and I know I’ll have to sit down in my foam-lined corner and speak directly to her before I can finally hit “stop.”