The sunroom smelled of fresh glazing putty and lemon verbena tea.
The shattered hurricane-proof panels—the ones Sarah had smashed with a sculpture to save their lives—had been replaced only yesterday. The contractors had been efficient, sweeping away the shards of glass and the soot from Elias’s fire, scrubbing the floor until the slate tiles looked new again.
But Maya knew the room would never really be new. It held the memory of the heat. It held the echo of Elias’s manifesto. And it held the ghost of the woman who had died there thirty years ago.
Maya sat on the floor, her back resting against the sofa. She held a mug of tea in both hands, letting the warmth seep into her palms.
Around her, the Club sat in a similar state of decompression.
It had been three days since the raid. Three days since the FBI had swarmed the cul-de-sac, dragging Rick Vance out in cuffs and seizing the HOA’s servers. Three days since Bittersweet Court had gone from a zip code to a headline.
The silence in the neighborhood was different now. It wasn’t the heavy, curated silence of secrets. It was the hollow, echoing silence of a crater. The news vans had finally moved on to the next tragedy, leaving the residents to stare at their plummeting Zestimates and their broken fences.
“I listed the Escalade this morning,” Chloe said.
She was lying on the rug, staring up at the ceiling fan. She wasn’t wearing her beige aesthetic. She was wearing a pair of grey sweatpants that were too long for her and a t-shirt with a bleach stain on the hem. Her face was scrubbed clean, her skin pale and dusted with freckles that Maya had never seen before.
“Did you?” Maya asked softly.
“CarMax offered me forty thousand,” Chloe said. “It barely covers the negative equity, but it’s a start. I sold the ring, too. And the Peloton.”
“What about the house?” Elena asked. She was sitting in the armchair, her legs tucked under her. She looked tired, the deep lines around her eyes visible without her usual concealer, but her shoulders had dropped three inches. The tension of hiding her off-book pharmacy was gone, replaced by the dull ache of the medical board inquiry she was now facing.
“The bank is taking the house,” Chloe said, her voice devoid of its usual high-pitched influencer chirp. It was deeper, raspy. “Rick leveraged it to the hilt to pay for the laundering front. It’s gone. We have thirty days to vacate.”
“Where will you go?” Sarah asked.
Sarah sat by the window, looking out at the wetlands. She held her tea but didn’t drink it. She looked older than she had a week ago, but lighter. The frantic energy was gone. The armor of the matriarch had dissolved.
“My mom’s in Ohio,” Chloe said. “She has a basement. It’s not soundproofed. It smells like cat litter. But it’s free.”
She sat up, pulling her knees to her chest.
“I deleted the account,” she added.
Maya looked at her. “Your Instagram?”
“Everything. TikTok. YouTube. The blog.” Chloe picked up her phone. It was a black rectangle, silent and dark. “I posted one last video. No ring light. No filter. I just said… I said I was a liar. I said the perfect life cost me my soul. And then I hit delete.”
“How did it feel?” Maya asked.
“Like throwing up,” Chloe admitted, a small, genuine smile touching her lips. “And then… like breathing.”
She looked around the room. “I don’t know who I am if I’m not performing, Maya. I don’t know how to be a person without an audience.”
“You’re doing it right now,” Elena said. “And honestly? I like this version better. She’s less exhausting.”
Chloe laughed, a wet, choked sound. “Thanks. I think.”
“You’re not alone,” Maya said. “You’re not going to Ohio alone. We’ll help you pack. We’ll help you move.”
“You guys are staying?” Chloe asked. “After everything?”
Maya looked at the glass walls. She looked at the view of the Sinks—the reeds swaying in the wind, the water reflecting the blue sky. It was the same view Juniper Black had died looking at. It was the same view Elias had watched from his birdhouse.
“I’m not running this time,” Maya said. “I ran from Chicago because I was ashamed. I’m not ashamed of this. We stopped him. We stopped them all.”
“Property values are down forty percent,” Elena noted dryly. “We couldn’t sell if we wanted to. We’re stuck here.”
“We’re not stuck,” Sarah said. She turned from the window. “We’re grounded.”
Sarah placed her mug on the coaster—a reflex she couldn’t quite break.
“I went to the station this morning,” Sarah said. “To give my official statement. About 1994. About Tom.”
The room went still. This was the wound that had festered for three decades.
“Did you see him?” Maya asked.
“Garrett?” Sarah shook her head. “He’s in custody. They denied bail. I spoke to the State Attorney.”
She looked at her hands. They were bare. Her wedding ring was gone. Her husband hadn’t been arrested—he had been complicit in the silence, but not the laundering—but he had left the night of the raid, unable to handle the shattering of his reputation.
“I told them everything,” Sarah said. “I told them I was awake. I told them I saw the blue suit. I told them I saw the violence.”
“You could be charged,” Elena warned gently. “Obstruction. Failure to report.”
“I know,” Sarah said. “I don’t care. I sat in that room, and I said her name. Juniper Black. I said it out loud.”
Tears welled in her eyes, but they weren’t the panicked tears of the last few weeks. They were cleansing.
“For thirty years, I thought I was protecting myself,” Sarah whispered. “I thought I was protecting the life I built. But I wasn’t living. I was just… maintaining. I was a curator of a museum built on a grave.”
She looked at Maya.
“You were right, Maya. The truth destroyed us. But it was the only way to save us.”
Maya reached out and took Sarah’s hand. Elena reached for Chloe’s. They formed a chain, a circuit of broken women who had welded themselves back together.
“I forgive her,” Sarah said, her voice cracking.
“Who?” Chloe asked. “Juniper?”
“No,” Sarah said. “Me. The girl I was in 1994. She was scared. She was weak. She made a terrible choice. But I’m not her anymore.”
“No,” Maya said firmly. “You’re not.”
The sun dipped lower, painting the room in shades of amber and gold. It was beautiful. It was the golden hour—the time of day influencers chased for the perfect photo. But no one reached for a phone.
“So what now?” Chloe asked, breaking the heavy moment. “The podcast is over. The mystery is solved. The bad guys are in jail. Do we go back to… what? Book club?”
Elena snorted. “I don’t think I can read another historical romance without analyzing the toxicity of the male lead.”
“We don’t go back,” Maya said. “We go forward. We rebuild the neighborhood. But this time, we build it right. No secrets. No inner circles. No Blue Suits.”
“Bittersweet Court 2.0,” Chloe mused. “Transparency. Accountability. And maybe we let the grass grow a little longer.”
“Let’s not go crazy,” Sarah said, a hint of her old dryness returning. “We still have standards.”
They laughed. It was a real sound, unforced and messy.
Maya looked out at the backyard. The birdhouse was gone—taken into evidence by the FBI. The woods were just woods. The threat was gone.
But the connection remained.
She squeezed Sarah’s hand.
“We’re not the Cold Case Club anymore,” Maya said.
“What are we?” Elena asked.
Maya looked at them. The ex-influencer. The ex-matriarch. The doctor. The journalist.
“We’re neighbors,” Maya said. “Real ones.”
It sounded simple. It sounded boring.
It sounded perfect.
“I’ll drink to that,” Chloe said, raising her mug of tea.
They clinked the mismatched ceramics together. The sound was dull, solid, and grounding.
Outside, a blue jay landed on the fence—the fence that used to look like teeth, but now just looked like wood and paint. It chirped once, a sharp, clear note, and flew away into the wetlands.
Maya watched it go. She took a sip of tea. It was warm. It was sweet. And for the first time in months, it didn’t taste like poison.