I realize I’m late when I hit the first red light by the harbor and every other car is already angled toward the high school, turn signals blinking like an impatient flotilla.
“This is why normal parents leave on time,” Theo says from the passenger seat, hugging his folder to his chest. Glitter from his social studies project dusts the edges of his sleeves.
“Normal parents don’t run independent media empires,” I say, flicking my blinker on. “We’re fashionably late.”
“It’s the PTA, not the Met Gala,” he mutters, but there’s a tiny smile at the edge of his mouth.
We pull into the Crescent Bay High lot, wedged between SUVs sporting regatta decals and bumper stickers listing colleges in serif fonts. The smell of salt air drifts up from the cliffs below the campus, cut with exhaust and the distant thump of bass from some waterfront party already starting down by the marina.
Inside, the hallway smells like floor polish and someone’s floral hair spray. Theo peels off toward the cafeteria where the kids’ “movie night” is happening, lured by the promise of pizza and a projected superhero sequel.
“Text me if they try to make you watch anything in the Fast and Furious franchise,” I say, straightening his collar.
“I’m not a baby,” he protests, then leans in so the other kids won’t see. “You’ll come get me? If it gets boring?”
“I’ll be in prime boring central,” I promise. “You’re safer than me.”
He nods, then disappears into a swirl of backpacks and PTA volunteers with name tags. I follow the murmur of adult voices toward the auditorium, smoothing my thrift-store blazer with one hand and checking for lipstick smudges in my phone camera with the other.
I slip in through the back doors, hit full-body with the smell of brewed coffee and dry-erase markers. Metal chairs line the floor, parents packed elbow to elbow. Onstage, a woman in a navy shift dress is talking into a microphone about silent auction donations, her voice bouncing off the acoustic panels. I start down the aisle, trying to look like I’ve been here the whole time, not like I just sprinted up the stairs from my car.
Then I see the screen.
The slide behind the speaker clicks over with a soft hum. A new title appears in big block letters: COMMUNITY CONCERNS.
Underneath, taking up a third of the screen, is my podcast art.
The glass rose icon glows in high resolution, stem twining over a dark background that, under the auditorium lights, echoes more morgue slab than romantic prom memory. My stomach drops so hard I miss a step and bump into the woman in front of me.
“Sorry,” I whisper.
She turns. I recognize her from drop-off—perfect highlighted bob, blazer that probably cost more than my rent. Her gaze flicks from my face to the tote bag on my shoulder, where the same glass rose peeks from a pile of printed show notes.
“Of course,” she says. Her lips press into a line that doesn’t resemble a smile. “Mara, right? We were just getting to you.”
The air around me feels charged, like the moment before a microphone screeches.
I sink into the nearest empty chair as the navy-dress woman clears her throat.
“And,” she says, tapping the slide clicker, “finally, under community concerns, we’ve had several parents reach out about the… renewed attention on the Juliet Reeves tragedy through the Glass Roses podcast.”
A low ripple moves through the room. I hear my show’s title whispered in different registers—curious, disapproving, thrilled.
“I—” I start, but my voice comes out too low for anyone but my own shame to hear.
The woman onstage—Heather, I think, PTA chair, last name on three different donor plaques in the lobby—continues. “We all want our children to grow up in a safe, supportive community. Crescent Bay has worked hard, especially since the nineteen–ninety–seven prom incident, to promote a positive image.”
Prom incident. Like Juliet tripped and spilled punch.
“Now we have a national—or potentially international—audience tuning in to graphic descriptions of a student’s death at our own cliffs, narrated by a parent in this very room.”
Dozens of heads turn. I feel the attention like heat on my cheeks. My fingers grip the edge of my chair until the cold metal bites into my skin.
Heather smiles in my direction, the kind of smile people use when they talk about neighborhood watch or leash laws. “Mara, thank you for being here tonight. Perhaps you’d like to say a few words?”
Every instinct I have honed behind a microphone screams to stay silent. Control the edit. But Theo’s Kermit-green backpack hangs from a chair in my peripheral vision, abandoned when he ran to join his friends. I stand.
“Hi,” I say, my voice thin at first, then steadier. “I didn’t realize I was on the agenda.”
A few parents chuckle; more do not.
“You’re very popular on the parent group thread,” someone calls from the other side of the aisle. Laughter blooms there, sharper this time.
“I know Juliet’s story is painful for this town,” I say. “For me, too. I grew up here. I was a freshman that year. I’m not trying to sensationalize her death. I’m trying to talk about what happened, because pretending it didn’t hasn’t brought anyone peace.”
A blond woman in a striped boat-neck top lifts her hand and doesn’t wait to be called on. “My daughter is in Theo’s class,” she says. “She came home from the bus stop talking about ‘the prom queen in the bay’ and whether Juliet’s bones are still under the rock shelf. Is that what you want our third graders discussing?”
Heat prickles under my collar. “I don’t let Theo listen to the show,” I say. “I make that clear on every episode. This is adult content—”
“The internet doesn’t care about content ratings,” another woman cuts in. Her perfume hits me a second later, heavy and expensive. “You can say ‘adult’ all you want, but clips circulate. Teenagers share. Jessica asked me at dinner if I ever snuck out to smoke on the rocks under the overlook like they did in ninety-seven. I don’t know where she picked up that detail.”
I do. I said it into a mic at midnight, with salt air blowing through my window and the picture of Juliet in green pinned above my laptop.
“The rock shelf is dangerous,” a man in a fleece vest adds. “My son already pushes boundaries. He doesn’t need audio tutorials.”
“It’s not a tutorial, it’s context,” I say, too fast.
“Context that reopened wounds for people who still live here,” Heather says smoothly, reclaiming the mic. “Katie Reeves, for example.”
The name hits me like a sudden drop.
“Katie?” I repeat. “She’s still—”
“She’s an English teacher now,” the blond woman says. “Tenth grade. Her classroom is three doors down from the guidance office. She shouldn’t have to walk past students whispering about your podcast cover art. She shouldn’t have to worry that her sister’s worst night is trending on TikTok.”
The auditorium folds a little around me. In my mind, Katie is still the quiet sophomore trailing behind Juliet, clutching a spiral notebook and watching everything. I pictured her gone, out of orbit, away from this place.
“I haven’t used Katie’s name on the show,” I say. “On purpose. I’m thinking about her, I swear I am.”
“Are you thinking about the donors?” the boat-neck woman says lightly. “We host the Prom Throwback every year to raise money for this school. People dress up, recreate their nineties looks, drink too much chardonnay, bid on sailboat outings. Are they going to want to keep posing under a disco ball when your listeners start showing up to photograph their glass rose centerpieces?”
The phrase lands with an odd weight. Their glass rose centerpieces. My glass rose logo. Juliet’s glass rose night.
“What exactly are you asking me to do?” I say.
Heather’s gaze sharpens. “We’re asking you to consider the impact of your content on the children in this district and on families like the Reeves. To refrain from graphic descriptions of Juliet’s body, of the cliffs, of that rock shelf. To remember that for you this is… an enterprise, and for others, it is grief.”
The word enterprise hits a bruise I didn’t know I had. I hear Sadie’s excited typing in my head, the Discord spinning theories long after I log off. I hear Oracle’s filtered voice saying She didn’t die on the rocks. Not yet.
“It’s not just an enterprise,” I say, fingers shaking at my sides. “It’s about accountability. About what was missed in the investigation. Missing tapes. Witnesses who never gave statements. I’m not inventing this.”
“But you are amplifying it,” the perfume woman says. “And amplification has consequences.”
My mouth tastes like burnt coffee. The murmur in the room edges toward a buzz, rising and overlapping, words blurring—true crime, kids, trauma, liability.
Then a new voice cuts through, calm and amplified, not through outrage but through access.
“I think we can all agree,” the voice says, “that we want what’s best for our kids and for this community.”
The mic has moved. A man stands near the podium now, hand resting casually on the edge. He wears a blazer with no tie, just an open-collared shirt; the kind of tan you get from yacht decks, not lifeguard stands. His hair is a little shorter than in the yearbook photos still living in my mother’s boxes, but the jawline, the posture, the practiced half-smile—that all stayed the same.
Elliot Harrow.
My pulse kicks up. I remember him from the prom photo spreads, arm around Juliet’s waist, crown slightly askew on glossy hair. The Harrow name is carved into the brass plaque by the auditorium door, listed twice on the library donor wall, etched into the memory of every kid who grew up on the wrong street.
“Mara, right?” he says, looking directly at me. His gaze is steady, friendly, calibrated. “Elliot Harrow. I chair the school board now.”
“I know,” I say before I can stop myself.
A few parents laugh; he gives them a soft grin, letting the tension bleed just enough before continuing.
“I’ll admit,” he says, “when I first heard about Glass Roses, I had concerns. None of us want Crescent Bay defined only by its worst night. But I listened. And I heard a mother, a neighbor, trying to make sense of something this town never fully processed.”
The room quiets around his words, bending toward them.
“That said,” he adds, “our kids are hearing about this whether we want them to or not. We can’t stuff the story back in a box. So the question becomes: how do we engage with it responsibly?”
Responsible. Healing. The words slot neatly into the spaces left by Heather’s “enterprise,” filling them with something smoother, easier to swallow.
He gestures toward me. “Mara, you have a platform. You’re clearly talented. Your audio work is… frankly, better than some of the big-budget shows my company hosts.”
A flicker of pride flares under my ribs before I can stomp it out.
“I’d hate to see this turn into a witch hunt against a parent,” he says, turning back to the crowd. “That doesn’t model healthy discourse for our kids either. Maybe instead of demanding she stop, we talk about guardrails. Trauma-informed storytelling. Ways the district can support mental health resources while she does her work.”
Heather shifts, caught between territorial annoyance and the need to align with a Harrow in public. “We appreciate your perspective, Elliot,” she says. “Of course we don’t want a witch hunt. We just—”
“We want healing,” he finishes smoothly. “And part of healing is truth. Part of it is also timing, tone, and care for the living. Maybe there’s a middle path.”
He glances at me again, eyebrows lifting slightly, inviting me into his narrative.
“I’m open to that,” I say carefully. “To… learning. But I’m not going to bury Juliet’s story again because it makes people uncomfortable.”
“Nor should you,” he replies. “But maybe I can help you navigate what you air and when. There are legal considerations, reputational concerns—for the town, for your family. My company does media consulting; we’ve helped a lot of independent creators find that balance.”
The words hang in the air like a sponsored ad read.
Heather seizes the out. “Perhaps we table this for tonight, then,” she says briskly. “Trust that our board chair will be… in conversation with Ms. Lane about aligning our shared goals.”
Shared goals. My hands itch to reach for my phone, to record the phrase for later. The glass rose glows on the screen behind them, my logo caught between their curated concerns and my messy reality.
The meeting drifts away into budget line items and the regatta fundraiser, but my body stays locked in place. I hear lines about raffle baskets and Prom Throwback ticket sales as if they’re underwater. Parents doodle sailboats in the margins of agenda packets while my spine tries to remember how to uncurl.
Afterward, in the lobby, the air tastes like too many perfumes layered over institutional cleaner. Parents cluster under the gold-framed photos of past regatta winners, the same surnames repeating on every plaque: Harrow, Calder, Reeves, Kline. The cliffs beyond the windows look postcard-perfect in the twilight, no hint of the rock shelf waiting below.
I’m considering whether I can slip out unnoticed when Elliot appears at my elbow like he has a backstage pass to my personal space.
“You handled that well,” he says. “Could’ve turned into a feeding frenzy.”
I huff out a breath that might count as a laugh. “Is that the official school board term?”
“Unofficial,” he says. Up close, I can smell something clean and expensive on him, citrus overlaid with salt from the stroll he probably took across his deck before driving here. “They’re scared. They don’t have the language for what you’re doing, so they default to control.”
“And you?” I ask. “Do you have the language?”
“I deal in language,” he says easily. “Narratives. That’s what my company does—helps people tell their stories before someone uglier tells it for them.”
“You mean like a mom living above a laundromat talking into a microphone?” I ask.
His eyes flicker, maybe to mark that I said laundromat out loud, maybe to calculate distance between us. “I mean like a town,” he says. “Like this school. Like Juliet’s family. And yes, like you.”
He reaches into his inside pocket and pulls out a card, sleek and heavy, offering it between two fingers. The embossed logo glints under the fluorescent light: Harrow Media Group. Underneath: Elliot Harrow — Founder & CEO; Chair, Crescent Bay School Board.
“If you ever want to talk strategy,” he says, “about responsible storytelling, legal exposure, sponsor relationships—call me. I can help you avoid some landmines. No pressure.”
I take the card. The weight of it surprises me; the cardstock feels more solid than the floor under my feet. “And what do you get?” I ask. “Out of helping me avoid landmines?”
He smiles, that practiced, camera-ready curve. “A town that doesn’t implode. A school district that doesn’t panic. And a story that doesn’t spin completely out of control. That benefits all of us.”
“All of us who?” I ask quietly.
He studies me for a beat, something assessing behind the charm. “All of us who live here,” he says. “You came back, Mara. That means something. Let’s make sure this place is still livable when your season ends.”
A bell rings down the hall, signaling the end of movie night. Kids spill out of the cafeteria in a wave of chatter and popcorn smell. Theo spots me and jogs over, cheeks flushed, hair sticking up.
“You look weird,” he says immediately. “Did they make you be treasurer?”
“Worse,” I say. “They made me be controversial.”
He grins at that, not understanding the weight of the word yet. “Cool.”
Elliot glances between us, his smile softening into something that reads almost human. “Hi, Theo,” he says. “I’m Mr. Harrow. I’m on the school board.”
“Do you decide snow days?” Theo asks, all business.
“Not alone,” Elliot says, chuckling. “But I can advocate.”
“Then you’re cool,” Theo declares, verdict delivered.
Elliot touches two fingers to his forehead in a mock salute. “Good to know.”
As we walk toward the parking lot, the card burns a rectangle in my palm. In my bag, Luz’s plain white card with its police logo lies next to it. On my phone, Oracle’s last message sits pinned in the Discord: She didn’t die on the rocks. Not yet.
Three invitations to guidance from people I don’t trust: a detective, a golden boy with a media empire, and a ghost in my headphones.
The question nagging at me all the way home isn’t whether I’ll use Elliot’s number.
It’s which of them will cost me the most when I finally decide to call.