The conference room hums with the fluorescent buzz I always hear through my teeth first. Coffee burps from a carafe in the corner, hospital-strong and church-warm, and the paper cups nest like a chorus of empty bells. I touch the brass locket chain at my collarbone to ground myself, then slide my fingers to my pocket where the copper blank sits, cool as a coin waiting for a stamp.
Everett takes his chair two minutes late and places one palm flat on the table, the other smoothing an invisible wrinkle from his navy sleeve. He smells faintly of bay-rum cologne and the leather of a steering wheel warmed by a private garage. The court reporter adjusts her stenotype and looks at me like a metronome: steady, impartial, unforgiving.
“On the record,” she says, her cadence the clack of halyards on masts in light wind.
My pro bono attorney—sharp suit, softer voice—leans in without menace. “Mr. Crane, please state your full name for the record.”
“Everett James Crane.” His vowels park in the center of the room and refuse to move.
“Mr. Crane,” she continues, “have you ever possessed a key to the bell tower at St. Brigid’s?”
Everett sets his jaw in that charitable patience face he wears at regatta fundraisers. “No.”
The word lands like a stone dropped into shallow water: splash, then muck. My throat tightens. I keep my eyes on the notepad where I’ve drawn the bell’s partial overtones like a puzzle.
“Never at any point?” my attorney asks. “Not a spare, not temporarily, not in your vehicle?”
“I do not recall being in possession of any such key,” he says, careful as a surgeon. “And certainly not in my vehicle.”
Hedges sprout. I see them in his shoulders before I hear them in his syntax. The court reporter’s keys keep time. I breathe in the room: felt-tip pens, warm plastic, copied paper baked by office sunlight.
“You don’t recall,” my attorney repeats. “Is that a no?”
He tilts his head. “It is my testimony that I did not have a key.”
Micro-hook: If he keeps it this clean, the judge could sweep my best leverage into the lake before it learns how to swim.
We mark exhibits. Photos: the breaker panel on his boat, the ribbon-wrapped hook, the seized key bagged and tagged—chain-of-custody neat as Ruth’s milk-crate labels. Everett looks at none of it. He watches my hands instead, measuring whether I’ll twitch.
“Mr. Crane,” my attorney says, moving from pictures to words, “do you remember meeting with Ms. Keane at the Crane House Marina Club on the evening of the twentieth?”
“I remember Ms. Keane demanded a meeting,” he says, a slight smile at his counsel. “I obliged in the spirit of community.”
I can taste the room’s heat rising—electrical, dry, stale. I sip lukewarm coffee that tastes like regret, then set the cup down exactly on the ring I already made.
“At that meeting,” my attorney continues, “did you propose a ‘partnership’ with Ms. Keane regarding her reporting?”
Everett’s lawyer leans forward. “Objection to form. Vague.”
“I can clarify,” my attorney says. “Did you, in the lounge of the Marina Club, say, quote, ‘We can make this right together. Access solves tempers. I can keep the key safe so nothing—’”
“Counsel,” Everett’s lawyer says, sharper now. “Foundation. Also, privileged settlement communications.”
My attorney doesn’t blink. “Not a settlement meeting. No terms exchanged. This goes to knowledge and control.” She turns to me. “Ms. Keane, do you have the device?”
I slide the small player from my bag. Its weight is negligible; its gravity isn’t. I place it on the table where the court reporter can see it, then look at Everett. He doesn’t look at the device. He looks at my mouth.
“We’ll mark this as Exhibit 14,” my attorney says. “Ms. Keane, please identify.”
“A recording I made of Mr. Crane’s statements in the Marina Club lounge,” I say. My voice shakes once, then levels. I remember Lydia telling me to eat before cutting; I ate. I’m cuttable and calm.
Everett’s lawyer exhales through his nose. “We object to any playing of a clandestine recording. We demand an instruction not to answer and reserve all rights.”
“We’re not asking your client to answer,” my attorney says. “We’re asking the stenographer to memorialize what’s audible.” She nods at the court reporter, who lifts her fingers, waiting for the first downbeat.
Everett folds his hands as if to pray and then doesn’t. He leans back the precise degree that says he owns the chair and the room it sits in.
“Proceed,” my attorney says to me, and I press play.
The lounge breathes back at us: low ice clinks, distant bell from St. Brigid’s drifting through the door like a secret that refuses to stay outside. Everett’s recorded voice arrives warm, softened by upholstery and his own velvet. We can make this right together. Partnership, not prosecution. Access calms things. I can keep the key safe so—
Everett’s counsel lifts his hand. “Stop.”
The court reporter’s fingers pause above the keys, muscles held like a tightrope between towers. The room smells briefly like hot dust, the way a bell rope smells after a long ring—fibers warmed by friction, invisible metal in the air.
“Keep going,” my attorney says. Her tone is not a dare. It’s a level.
I press play again. —so nothing embarrassing walks out of a locker. You and I both know how this town works. Donors keep doors from slamming. I can keep doors open. I have a key.
The sentence sits between us, undeniable, his. My skin prickles. The locket at my neck feels heavier, the copper blank in my pocket turns from coin to tiny anchor. The court reporter glances up and then, without asking anyone anything, resumes typing with the neat fury of someone recording a thing that will matter.
Everett’s lawyer whispers into his client’s ear. Everett doesn’t turn his head. His eyes stay on mine, wide and unblinking, all charm set aside like a coat on a hook.
“We’re going to instruct the witness not to respond to further questioning about the recording,” his lawyer says to the air. “We contest authenticity. We contest context. We contest lawfulness.”
“We’re not asking your witness to say anything,” my attorney says. “The witness already did. On tape.” She points to the exhibit sticker like a bell clapper aimed.
Micro-hook: If they force a fight on admissibility, we get a mini-trial inside the trial—dangerous terrain, but one where truth has overtones money can’t quite mute.
Everett finally speaks for himself. “The phrase ‘I have a key’ could refer to a metaphorical key,” he says, voice low, burned sugar. “There are many kinds of access, Ms. Keane. I facilitate introductions. That is not possession.”
My attorney keeps her face neutral, a lake on a windless morning. “Mr. Crane,” she says, “did you tell Ms. Keane you could ‘keep the key safe’?”
“I do not recall that precise phrasing,” he says, tasting the consonants before releasing them. “I recall offering to help defuse a circus.”
“And by ‘circus,’” I say before I can stop myself, “you mean a vigil where a bell rang for the dead.”
“Ms. Keane,” my attorney murmurs, a hand half raised: not a rebuke, a reminder. I pull the copper blank in my pocket between two fingers, its coolness persuading the heat in my chest to sit.
Everett’s lawyer scratches a note. The court reporter types the scratch into memory by virtue of typing everything. Outside the window, gulls cross the strip of gray lake sky, voiceless through the double glass but loud in my head: laughter at the breakwater, last night’s checkpoint lights flaring, a seiche you can’t see pushing sound sideways so truth arrives out of sync and then snaps into place.
“Let’s be clear,” my attorney says. “Your testimony today is that you never possessed a physical key to St. Brigid’s bell tower, despite your statement in Exhibit 14.”
“Correct,” Everett says. “I used a figure of speech.”
She nods like she’s hearing a familiar hymn and getting ready to change the arrangement. “Then we’ll need clarity on other figures. Who gave money to the church repair account in the 1990s?” She slides a different exhibit across the table—the council minutes we found, the donor-advised fund memo with the blue-loop signature. “Is that your father’s signature?”
“Irrelevant,” the lawyer says. “Beyond scope.”
“It’s within scope of knowledge and practice,” my attorney replies. “And it goes to motive for concealment.”
Everett inhales. “I was a teenager,” he says. “I attended regattas. I carried banners. I don’t account for my father.”
“But you do account for keys,” I say, quieter this time. “On boats.”
He turns his head the smallest degree, finally granting me direct attention like a stingy priest doling out a blessing. His voice drops. “Ms. Keane, you have turned grief into your vocation. Be careful what doors you pry. The wind can catch them.”
I don’t flinch. I let the chair take my weight. “The wind rings bells,” I say. “You taught me that by trying to hold the rope.”
The court reporter’s keys are a rainstorm now, fast and neat and relentless. Everett’s lawyer leans into a whisper trench. My attorney sits back, lets the room boil, then spoons it into bowls we can serve.
“For the record,” she says, “we will seek to admit Exhibit 14 at any evidentiary hearing and at trial. We believe it is admissible as a party admission. We also reserve the right to impeach the witness with it should his testimony differ.”
“And we will move to exclude,” Everett’s lawyer says. “We will move to sanction. We will move to strike this entire deposition if necessary.”
“Try,” my attorney says, which is the most violent word she’s used all day, and it wears a cardigan.
Micro-hook: leverage is a rope that burns the hand of whoever pulls it without gloves; I need to remember which skin I’m willing to lose.
We break for ten minutes. The hallway outside the room smells like copier toner and wet coats—the courthouse blend. In the bathroom, I run water over my wrists until the copper blank warms through fabric. I stare at my face not as a mirror but as a waveform: peaks around the eyes, a steady line where my mouth knows better than to shake.
Back in the room, Everett has shed his jacket. He is smaller in shirtsleeves; money always is when you take away shine. His cufflinks are brass boats. The court reporter flexes her fingers and takes a sip of coffee, grimaces, adds sugar. I taste percolated bitterness with her and think of regatta baptism rings at St. Brigid’s—boys raising arms under bell thunder while girls learned they were the echo that didn’t count unless it sounded like cheer.
“On the record,” the court reporter says again, and we snap back into alignment.
“Mr. Crane,” my attorney says, calm as a dock rope. “Knowing that Exhibit 14 exists, would you like to amend your earlier testimony regarding possession of a key?”
Everett looks at me, then past me to the window where the church spire pricks the sky. “No,” he says.
My attorney nods, a small bell strike. “Then I have no further questions at this time.”
Everett’s lawyer clears his throat. “We reserve all objections, and we will be seeking a protective order to prevent dissemination of Exhibit 14.”
I answer without looking at him. “You can try to keep the bell silent,” I say, voice even. “But the tower remembers how to carry.”
“Ms. Keane,” my attorney says softly, and I stop there. Control is the only luxury we can afford.
We pack in quiet. The recorder goes into its bag. The exhibit copy goes into a red folder that smells faintly of lemon oil from my studio hands. Outside, the lake pushes a new breath toward town; I can feel it in the window’s slight tremor. Everett buttons his jacket, slow and theatrical, then leans over—not close, just enough to make sure the court reporter captures the air around it.
“I don’t lose,” he says, too softly to sting, loud enough to stick.
I pick up my bag. “You just did,” I say. “You traded memory for precision and the tape caught the exchange.”
He watches me leave with that donor-wall smile reinstalled. My attorney touches my elbow in the hallway. “We still have to get it in,” she says. “Admissibility is a fight.”
“I know,” I say, and I hear the lake in my own mouth: a seiche sliding sound off true north and then returning. “But even if the judge keeps it out, it’s leverage for a plea. He felt it.”
She nods. “He felt it.”
I step into the cold and taste diesel from a city plow idling at the curb. Bells from St. Brigid’s travel oddly—late, early, unsure—which means the lake is moving under us again. I press the copper blank in my pocket and listen to a question I can’t yet answer: will the court let the tape ring where law can hear it, or will I have to turn leverage into a ledger and chase the father’s accounts to make the next sound carry?