I choose the table with the lake at my back so Theo can face the door if he wants to run. The shop smells like percolated church coffee wearing a hipster cologne—cinnamon, oat steam, a sugar crust singeing on the espresso wand. A barista wrestles the grinder, and the pitch vibrates the cup in front of me until the latte heart trembles and reforms into something less sure. I slide the recorder between us and place the felt square beside it, a little stage for the brass locket I don’t take out yet.
“We’re rolling,” I say. “Only with your consent, and you can end it any time. No names on tape unless you say them yourself.”
Theo scratches the shoreline of foam on his paper lid with a thumbnail. He has the caution of someone who knows what a bell rope does to palms. The old varsity crew jacket hangs off him like a borrowed past, collar frayed, Crane House pennant patch ghosted from too many washes. He nods once.
“I’m Theo,” he says, and his voice lands on the recorder like it doesn’t trust the furniture. “You already know my uncle had the tower key on Thursdays.”
Ruth picks a seat a few steps away where she can pretend to scroll a weather app while actually watching the door. She stirs a black coffee she won’t drink, the spoon motionless in the whirlpool, an old cop telling a clock how to behave.
“Ground rules,” I say, because rules can soften the room. “You can pass on anything. If you give me a fact, I’ll verify it without exposing you unless you okay it later. I’m here to record—not to put you on the swaps page.”
He huffs, almost a laugh. “Those ladies would sell me for parts if I said Everett’s name with the wrong temperature.”
I don’t smile. I let the lake light lay a gray ribbon across the table while the dock lines outside ping softly—seiche working the knots. The sound lifts my skin like a warning and a welcome both.
“Walk me back,” I say. “Regatta, two-thousand-eight. What did the tower mean then?”
“High ground,” he says. “No booze on paper. Plenty in pockets. You could watch the fireworks reflections without the crowd, and sometimes—” He glances at Ruth, then at the bell slit that’s a rumor in the mist. “Sometimes you could make your own.”
“Your own,” I echo.
He worries the paper seam. “Ever hear it count? Not tolls—count. Like you’re on a game show that belonged to somebody’s dad.”
The milk foam in my cup has collapsed to a map. I see the maze of the tower steps in it. “Tell me about the rules.”
He looks at the recorder like it’s a tightrope. “We called it the countdown. You get the rope and you’re king. You set the number—five, three, whatever—and you pull quick, staccato. The game is who can stand under the bell slit at the last number without flinching.” He swallows. “Girls got dared more.”
Ruth’s spoon makes one small clink and stops, a metronome calling in sick.
“Who’s ‘we’?” I ask, and I lower my voice so the ask feels like a blanket, not a hook.
He snorts into his cup. “You want initials or the names you already know?”
I don’t move. “Give me the names you would use if you were looking at the photo wall at Crane House.”
He leans in. “Blue Jacket. He wore a windbreaker year-round with the club crest, even in July. Left-handed coxswain with a foul mouth and a trust fund.” He taps his temple where a cap brim would sit, invisible—placing the uniform only certain families learn. “Numbers. He could count money faster than any of us could count strokes. He kept the bets in a notebook nobody saw twice. Mace—you know him. Quick hands, slow apologies. And ‘E,’ which is what everybody called Everett when he didn’t want to be the headline.”
The air in the café changes one degree cooler. A couple at the far table laugh a little too loudly, and the laugh dies fast like it recognized itself. I don’t write anything. I keep my eyes on him.
“You were there,” I say.
He swallows again. “I was running stairs, not running the rope. My uncle showed me where the spare key got tucked when he got too tired to climb the last fifteen. He said I could lock up after the midnight ring if the sexton called in sick. He didn’t say don’t let rich boys play, because we didn’t call them that then. We called them donors.”
“What about girls?”
He looks at the lid so long the cardboard could combust. “There was one that night. Not the only one I ever saw, but the one my brain kept.” He presses a thumb to the rim and rotates the cup until the seam faces me, like a compass. “She had a locket. Brass. Heart. When the lightning hit so far away it just flexed the horizon, the metal flashed like a blink. I remember the blink.”
My throat tightens against the instinct to fill the silence with a picture of Celia’s practice plates, the jig Mr. Del Toro kept like a relic. I do not say her name first. The latte heart remembers itself in the cup, then forgets.
“Where was she?” I ask.
“Half-landing below the bells,” he says. “Just where the hatch lets you see out if you lean dangerous.”
The grinding stops behind us; the shop goes quiet enough that the dock ropes outside write their tiny songs on the glass. I think of impulse responses and partials and all the ways a room keeps secrets for men with donor plaques.
“Tell me the sequence,” I say.
Theo exhales, and the breath the café has been holding finally moves. “We lit the staircase with phones. No flash because Father used to watch the face of the clock; he said it reflected light like a snitch. Blue Jacket sets the count at five. He tells E to pull on three because E liked the middle. E asks Numbers what the bet is, and Numbers says bragging rights. Mace leans on the hatch, real casual, like the door belonged to him.” He crumples the cup lid and sets it flat, a makeshift drum skin under his fingers. “At two, she’s still there. At one, she steps forward to prove something none of us deserved to have proven for us.”
“And the locket?”
“It hit the wood rail once—this tiny chime under a bigger world noise. I remember that because the real bell overwhelmed everything after, and the small sound lived in the crack where you could feel trouble and tell yourself it was fun.”
I look at Ruth. She has stopped watching the door. She has started watching me, which means she hears the word I didn’t say: Celia.
“Did you know her?” I ask, still not offering the name.
Theo’s jaw works. “Brighton. I didn’t know her know her. She worked the checkout table at the rummage with my aunt one year. She corrected my change when my brain was all rope and summer. She smiled like somebody who had a real plan and wouldn’t sell it for clout.”
The word rummage touches the part of me that’s been storing CH-3 like flint waiting for steel. I keep my face calm.
“You said E pulled on three,” I prompt.
He nods. “He liked the middle. He said the middle is where you catch people off guard because they think life goes by fives.” His mouth twists. “Then he looked at her—and she did not look away.”
“What happened next?”
He drums the cup lid: tap, tap—tap. “Three. Two. One.” He stops. “On three there’s a picture in my head. E’s hand on the rope. Numbers with his notebook, even though there was nothing to write. Mace keeping door, not because he wanted to protect anyone, but because he liked being the frame something pretty had to climb through.” He lifts his eyes to mine. “I heard a word under the ring. I can’t prove it’s a word. I can’t even tell you if it belonged to her. But I hear it at night when the lake is loud, and it’s not a prayer.”
Micro-hook: The grinder kicks back on, and the latte heart in my cup breaks.
“Why talk to me?” I ask softly. “This town rewards quiet with discounts and access.”
He smiles with half a mouth. “You think I get invited to dinners? I left, Mara. I tried a county with different bells. Didn’t matter. The sound followed me in my ear like a coin I forgot to return. And then your teaser—that hiss—made the hairs on my wrists stand up like I was back under the rope watching numbers walk down.”
“People will tell you I exploit grief,” I say, because the accusation hangs like a banner between us. “They’re not wrong to worry. That’s why I brought this.” I slide the felt square forward but don’t open the locket. “I only open it with permission and purpose. Not for ratings.”
He studies the square like it could bite. “That volunteer code you posted about,” he says. “CH-3. You think it’s Craneways Three or Crane House Three?”
I don’t blink. “I think it’s a person who deserves a question in private, and the answer recorded only if they choose.”
He nods, a slow surrender. “Then record this: I saw her in the tower that night. I didn’t see her leave. I saw Blue Jacket take a photo of E with the rope, no flash, long exposure—his cuff lit by somebody’s stupid phone. I saw Mace thumb the hatch shut when a real adult footstep came up the stair. And I saw the locket blink again on the way down when the room forgot who it belonged to.”
I repeat his lines back in smaller words for the tape. The barista wipes the counter with a squeak that sounds like chalk on a donor wall. The smell of wet rope walks in on a customer’s pea coat as he leans into a hug. Theo’s body tightens, then lets go when it’s just a reunion and not a message.
“Were there photos saved?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Blue Jacket had a habit of dropping phones into the lake when they held evidence or got boring. Tradition, he called it. The Marina Club has a whole drawer of rice just to make people feel better about what can’t be undone.”
Ruth speaks for the first time, voice low enough to be the underside of a boat. “Give me anything I can serve with a records request, Theo. The tower is church property. The timing matters. The names matter.”
He glances at her hands, at the bite marks life left in the knuckles. “You’re Ruth,” he says. “You promised a Brighton once.”
“I keep the ones I can,” she says.
Theo closes his eyes and breathes through his nose. His cup lid creaks. “Midnight ring got pulled at 12:02, not exactly twelve. The countdowns beforehand started at 11:49. E pulled at 11:51. I know because Numbers said we were early for fireworks and late for God.”
Ruth’s spoon makes another tiny sound—approval, or grief, or both. I jot the times in my head, then say them on tape because tape is the head I can hold up in court.
“One more thing,” Theo says, voice paper-thin. “The priest kept a ledger of key checkouts, but the margin is where the real notes went. My uncle marked a dot when he handed the spare to anybody not supposed to have it. That week had two dots. He made them with a red pen that bled through.”
I let that sink in. The lake pushes against the glass like a polite shoulder.
“Will you go on record later?” I ask. “Blurred if you need. After I verify and after I talk to Lydia.”
He stares at his hands. “If Lydia wants it told, I’ll stand next to the telling. If she doesn’t, I’ll write it down for you and set it on fire after you memorize it.”
Micro-hook: A brass clink from the table behind us turns my head before I can school it.
At the next table, a man in a navy blazer twirls a keychain shaped like a tiny bell clapper. He chats with a woman about silent auctions and sponsorship tiers. He laughs in the polite rich way that avoids consonants. When he sees me see the clapper, he stops twirling and pockets it, then checks the window where the church spire points at the part of the sky that still pretends to be blue.
Theo’s eyes flick there too. Color drains from his mouth. “Numbers’ brother,” he whispers. “Different job, same math.”
I click the recorder off and on again, a legal habit, and thank Theo with my palm open on the table, empty. “You did right,” I say. “We’ll handle the rest on paper.”
He stands like he might fall. Ruth steps into the aisle, a friendly wall. “We walk you to your car,” she says, no question in it.
Outside, the air has the bite of wet rope and the promise of rain rehearsing its lines. The seiche has settled for now; sound travels farther. I hear a gull complain like a hinge. I also hear the tiny bell of a cyclist’s handlebar and think of countdowns, of numbers that pretend to be games until they aren’t.
Theo points at the spire. “Three,” he says to the sky, a private exorcism. “I hate that number.”
“I don’t,” I answer, and Ruth raises an eyebrow because she knows I love a middle. “Three is where we put facts between names and a room.”
We reach the curb. Theo thanks us without saying the word. He folds himself into a dented sedan and leaves with his blinker on for too long, as if signal could save you.
I slide the recorder into my pocket and feel the press of the locket’s felt—cool faith against my thigh. “We need that ledger,” I say. “And we need the donor wall.”
Ruth nods. “Donor wall first. People confess where they’ve already carved their initials.”
Behind me, a laughter pops from the café like a champagne cork with a conscience. When I turn, the man with the clapper keychain is gone. On the table sits a receipt with a drawn bell next to the tip line and a flourish where a name should be.
I take a photo for my log, and the latte heart in my belly reforms into resolve.
Then the church bell gives one off-time ring—flat, distant, and wrong—and a gull lifts, and I ask the question the town hopes I never finish: who marked those two red dots, and what did they buy with the silence between them?