I balance the tray like it’s an oath I can’t afford to spill. The hallway hums with vents and distant beeps, a mechanical tide that climbs and falls in little seiche surges through the ductwork. The elevator had breathed out diesel and floor cleaner; my tongue still holds the bitter of it. I nudge the door with my hip and find Lydia awake, propped against pillows that swallow her shoulders. Someone taped a paper sun to the window—child’s marker rays—so the room keeps summer on a day that feels like late April.
“I brought tea,” I say, and my voice pitches too bright. I set the tray on the rolling table and the cups rattle. “Mint and black. Hospital cafeteria keeps both like a religion.”
“Mint for me,” she says. Her fingers float, tremble, then land. “Black for courage for you.”
I pass the cup and sit in the chair that complains one screw short. The locket chain touches my collarbone, cool and certain. I cup my tea with both hands to stop the tremor. The room smells like percolated church coffee even though there’s none here—somehow that scent finds me everywhere in this town—threaded with antiseptic and the faintest hint of lake iron drifting through the vents.
“You came fast,” she says, watching the steam blow sideways in the air current. “Your text said urgent. Did something break or mend?”
“Both,” I say. “And I need to ask something I promised I’d never rush.”
She lifts one eyebrow the way teachers keep a rowdy class honest. “You already know how this works, Mara. Hands first.”
I place my cup on the tray and offer my hands. Lydia’s fingers slide into mine, papery and warm. Her knuckles carry the same little valleys Celia’s hammer once gave to practice plates. We sit like that, palms pressed, until my pulse climbs down the ladder it brought to the room.
“Tell me the truth in the fewest words you can,” she says.
“We have a new witness,” I say. “Former choir girl. She heard a voice under the bell on regatta week. She tasted cloves and diesel. She named Mason’s habit without knowing him.”
Lydia’s mouth tightens, then softens. “I always hated that church coffee after midnight. It kept me awake for grief I didn’t want to carry alone.” She releases one hand and reaches for her cup. “And the other words?”
“The roomprint aligns,” I say. “We recreated the tower impulse response with sweeps and claps, matched the bell overtones, mapped the edit seams. The original scream is 2008. An insert came later to hide timing. We measured dock bruise spacing against Boat 17’s berth. The lake level surge that night could have shoved a body into the piling. The chain between tower and dock holds.”
She nods once and looks at our joined hands. “And the ask you brought here.”
“Permission,” I say. “To name Celia. To say on-air that the locket holds a voice recorded in St. Brigid’s that week. To say a girl carried sound and the town tried to bury the echo.”
Lydia studies my face like she’s reading a waveform for the noise floor. “You came with your own answer too, I think.”
“I came with a desire,” I say. The word scratches going out. “I want the truth to carry. I want downloads to equal pressure so the next girl doesn’t get baptized with bell rope. I want the edit button in this town to move to us. And I know wanting those things tangles with wanting a breakout season.” I stare at the steam to keep the rest steady. “I don’t trust my hunger unless you fence it.”
Lydia leans back into the pillow, eyes on the ceiling tile hairline cracks, the map of tiny white rivers that all run nowhere. “You learned to ask for fences,” she says. “Good. You’ll keep asking. Boundaries don’t install once.”
She lets go of my second hand and lifts both palms, a conductor calling a quieter chorus. “Here are my terms.”
I hold still. The monitor ticks green to green. The vents swallow and release.
“You don’t air her—my girl’s—sound to thrill,” she says. “You air it to teach. I want the first minute of your episode to be receipts, not a hook. Put the hot mic from council up front. Put your chain-of-custody with dates and signatures before any tears. Make the roomprint the protagonist, not you.”
I nod, breath caught midway like a song I’m not sure I can hit. “Yes.”
“Second,” she says, “you share the platform. Celia’s not the only bell in this town. Other girls were counted. Some are women now with kids who go to that church carnival. If I say yes, you say plural. You call what you’re doing a series and you invite them to choose how to be present—voice, transcript, statement read by someone else, or not at all. You don’t chase anyone.”
“Yes,” I say, throat tight. “I’ll build it that way.”
“Third,” she says, “you let survivors veto your edit. Not the facts—that’s physics and paper—but the shape. If your cut makes a wound worse, you don’t press publish that day.”
“I agree,” I say, and my chest loosens in a painful relief I didn’t know I wanted. “You get final listen. A committee of them does.”
Lydia smiles like someone remembering a punchline she paid for. “Committee,” she says. “Good word. You were a little tyrant when we met. A kind one, but still. The locket flattered your ambition. I worried it would eat you.”
“It did,” I say. “I just learned to chew back.”
She laughs, then coughs, then waits for her body to settle. I pour a drip of cold water into her cup from the plastic pitcher so the mint stops burning her tongue. She sips and closes her eyes.
“There’s weight in naming her,” she says. “People will buy shirts and candles and write posts about being ‘Celia strong’ while they keep donating to the marina boys. You can’t stop that. You can starve it. You’ll starve it by handing the mic to the girls the town pretends aren’t their problem.”
“Yes,” I say. “I’ll write a resource slate instead of ad midroll. I’ll link to counseling and legal funds. I’ll make the credits the call to action.”
“You’ll make the credits quiet,” she says. “No triumphant music over grief.”
“Silence where people imagine a coda,” I say, hearing the shape take form. “A room tone of the tower measured honestly. Then a bell single strike for consent.”
Lydia lowers her cup and gestures at the tray with a crooked finger. “You brought a pen?”
I pat my pockets and find the pen and a napkin the cafeteria worker shoved at me with a pity smile. I flatten the napkin on the tray’s lip and draw a header: Victims-First Episode Plan.
“Let’s draft it,” I say. “You say the lines and I’ll catch them.”
She stares out the window at the slice of water the blinds leave free, where the lake flashes a dull pewter under low cloud. “Intro: council hot mic, thirty seconds. Then you say, ‘We’re not starting with the scream because we’re not starting with pain.’ Then chain-of-custody: dates, who held the locket, who scanned it, when you reenacted the tower.”
I write, hand moving faster than my mind. The napkin buckles and drinks the ink; I steady it with my wrist. “Segment two: tower roomprint,” I add, my voice keeping time.
“Segment three,” Lydia says, “girls’ statements. No probing. You ask them what boundaries sound like in their mouths and you leave those words in. Between each, you breathe. You make sure no one has to compete with a bell to be heard.”
I underline no probing until the napkin gives up spot by spot. I write breathing breaks—silence kept.
“Then,” she says, “you play only the portion of the locket that proves place and time. Not the whole of it. Not yet. You show why physics creates ethics—how overtones and edits tell a story people can’t argue with. And you put a content note before it read by someone who isn’t you.”
“Ruth can read that,” I say. “Or one of the committee, if they want it.”
Lydia nods. “Finally, resources. Not a pity list. A map. You include who to call if your boss is the reason you didn’t come forward. You include what to tell the counselor when you don’t know where to begin. You include how to document, privately, for later.”
“I will,” I say, and the promise tastes like something real in my mouth, not PR, not posture.
“And you don’t run ads,” she says, spearing me with a look. “Not on this one. You can’t afford it; do it anyway. You’ll gain something money doesn’t buy.”
“I’m paused already,” I say. “The leak scared sponsors. We’ll make a Patreon stretch goal for the resource fund. And I’ll publish the budget so the town sees where everything goes.”
Lydia squeezes my wrist where the locket chain disappears under my sleeve. “Transparency buys you protection the family can’t bribe,” she says.
We sit then, the plan wet and crinkled on the tray, tea cooling into the taste of old spoon. The vents cough and a low clang from outside lands inside the ductwork—a construction bell on a crane at the hospital addition, not St. Brigid’s, but my body still reads it and fills with salt.
“I have more evidence,” I say, careful. “You know most of it. The bruise spacing at Boat 17. The access ledger with E.C. The new witness who named cloves. I can aim this at Everett by name. I want to. I also know your yes isn’t a weapon.”
“Truth isn’t either,” she says. “It’s a mirror. The town’s donors don’t like mirrors unless they paid for their frames.”
“I want to put a mirror in the square,” I say, and hear ego jingle its tin cup. “I also want to be small enough to get out of the way.”
“Both can be true,” she says. “The trick is to measure yourself every day and cut your edits to fit.”
I breathe out. The anxious tightness that rode the elevator with me loosens into a humility that hurts in a better place. “Do you consent?” I ask, speaking each word like a bead on a string. “Do you consent to me naming Celia as the girl whose locket holds a roomprint from St. Brigid’s that week—to me airing the existence of that sound under your conditions, within a victims-first plan?”
Lydia turns her hands palms up and I put mine into them again. She closes her eyes and nods, tiny, like a prayer folded once.
“Yes,” she says. “On one condition more.”
“Name it,” I say, bracing.
“You share your platform with the girls before you share it with the country,” she says. “You hold a listening circle at the Annex or the church hall with the microphones turned toward them and nothing streaming. Bread and coffee. No cameras. You ask their permission to be heard by strangers. If they say wait, you wait. If they say cut that part where my voice sounds like someone else’s, you cut it. If they say don’t make me a symbol, you don’t. That’s the price of naming my daughter.”
I swallow the answer because the first one is pride—I already do that—and pride would lose me what matters. I take the quieter truth.
“I didn’t do that early enough,” I say. “I will do it now, and again after. I’ll give them the first cut.”
Lydia releases my hands and lifts her tea to breathe in the last of the mint. “Then you have my blessing,” she says. “Not my forgiveness for the town. That’s not mine to hand out. But my yes to carry Celia’s name where it can do something more than haunt.”
I sit with the lift and the weight at once. The lights above us flick—ballast warming—and a little thrum runs the length of the bed rail like a plucked string. Through the window, I can just see the top of St. Brigid’s spire sharpening the cloud into a point. Legacy crews will start their spring rows soon; someone will ring a bell for a freshman who doesn’t know what years live inside it.
“I’ll draft the plan into something readable,” I say, tapping the napkin. “I’ll bring it back to you and to the others for edits. We’ll name a committee. We’ll ask for a room. I’ll promise no recording until we all say go.”
“Good,” Lydia says. She reaches for the call button and nudges the tray back toward me. “And bring real tea next time. The mint here tastes like chapstick.”
I laugh, surprised by the sound of it. “Harbor Barn blend,” I say. “Traded for a RadioShack mic last year. Barter is our town’s second language.”
“Silence is the first,” she says. “You’re teaching them a third.”
I pack my pen and fold the napkin into my notebook like it’s more fragile than paper. I stand to go, then hesitate.
“One more thing,” I say. “If Everett’s people call with a settlement—money for a victims’ fund in exchange for some story truce—do I meet them or publish and let the mirror do the work?”
Lydia looks at the window where the lake color keeps moving even when the blinds pretend to hold it still. “You ask the girls,” she says. “You ask them first.”
The monitor hums and the vent gives me another little wash of lake air. I squeeze her shoulder—a press, not a clutch—then step into the hall where the noise grows, a public waveform always wanting to drown private sentences.
My phone buzzes before the elevator doors slide. A new email banner rides up the screen from a law firm with an elegant serif: Proposal for Restorative Dialogue. I don’t open it. I hold the locket through my shirt and feel the brass cool under my fingers, a tiny bell waiting for consent.
The elevator chimes, bright and church-clear. I ask the question that will decide my next steps, not into the phone, not into the recorder, but into the gap between floors where sound goes to change: will the girls give me the first cut—before the town, before the sponsors, before the club—and will I be brave enough to follow their answer even if it empties my season?