The Crane House Marina Club smells like wet rope and lemons that learned to shine wood. The lacquered floor reflects pennants and donors and me, smaller than both. I pin the paper name tag to my jacket and let the adhesive tug my hair, a minor pain that keeps me awake.
“Tickets?” a volunteer asks, voice dipped in percolated coffee politeness.
“Press,” I say, which is generous. I show the printed invite some committee member sent after a Facebook thread called me “the podcast girl who needs a hobby.” The volunteer smiles at the word “press” like it’s a charity case and waves me through.
Inside, the air hums with money in its church voice—well-behaved and certain. The lake pushes little shoulders against the pilings outside; the seiche has come up again, the kind that tricks sound into carrying farther than it should. A brass bell near the door hangs slack, the rope loop polished where hands have been proud.
Everett Crane takes the small stage with a glass that catches every light in the room. He’s in a navy blazer that tells its own story and a watch I’ve seen on donor boards where items are auctioned to applause.
“Friends,” he begins, and the room tilts toward him on cue. “Ashgrove has always been a harbor—”
“—for good families,” someone whispers near my ear, not to me, to their date. I keep my face facing forward.
“—and tonight,” Everett continues, “we strengthen what protects us. On the water, that means new youth life vests and evening patrol lights. Onshore, that means supporting programs that keep our kids engaged and our traditions clean.” He smiles like a man who has already been forgiven for anything unclean.
I raise my phone and take a single photo of the stage for notes, not for posting. The screen shows Everett framed by pennants, the brass crane emblem at his elbow like a coat of arms. His glass lifts.
“To safety,” he says.
“To safety,” the room answers, like a liturgy. Glasses brush softly, the sound crisp as a consonant.
He goes on, efficient. “We’ve partnered with St. Brigid’s to update tower access—key logs, chime schedules, volunteer training. We’re working with the harbor master on incident reporting by text, because nothing should go unreported. And we’re funding a scholarship for a young metals artist—” his smile widens a fraction “—to remind us that craft builds futures.”
My heart puts a fist on the table of my ribs. Metals. I don’t move. A server sets down a tray near my hand. The canapés smell like dill and very careful salmon.
“We heal by building,” Everett says. “Not by tearing.” He lets that hang, a silk thread that glints from some angles and cuts from others. “Welcome home.”
Applause beads like rain on a windshield. The donors glimmer. My recorder sleeps in my bag, because tonight I’m a guest, not a thief. Apprehension sits well-behaved at the base of my spine and watches the room.
Micro-hook rises in the way he descends the steps: people lean toward him, not to touch, to be touched. He touches them with his eyes, a hand at a shoulder, a first name remembered. When those eyes land on me, he doesn’t blink.
“Ms. Keane,” he says, arriving with no wasted steps. The sound of his voice is the lacquered floor itself: shiny and ready to bear weight. “Everett.” He offers his hand like a contract that won’t admit it is one.
I take it. His grip is warm and exact. “Thank you for the invite,” I say. “It’s… instructive.”
“Instructive,” he repeats, amused. “I like that. We’re fond of context here.” He releases my hand as if to show he knows how to. “The town’s been buzzing about your—what do we call it? Artifact? Relic?”
“Locket,” I say. “I call it a locket.”
“A locket.” He smiles as if the word told a joke on itself. “How romantic. You know, romance doesn’t scale. Safety does.” He gestures toward the windows. “The lake is a simple teacher: respect the current and you don’t drown.”
“And if someone holds you under?” I ask lightly, as if we’re already friends and it’s safe to joke.
He doesn’t laugh. He merely lays his glass on a passing tray the way a surgeon sets down a tool. “Old storms,” he says, and the softness in his voice is practiced, “are best left offshore.”
“I study storms,” I say, keeping my voice at room temperature. “Weather tells you who forgot to secure a line.”
He tilts his head. “Then let me help with lines,” he says. “Context. Introductions. Guardrails. The Marina Club believes in responsible storytelling.”
“I believe in accurate storytelling,” I say.
“It’s the same belief,” he says, and the smile returns, narrower. “Sometimes we forget.” He glances at my name tag. “Second Lives, right? Lovely brand. Lives deserve second chances.”
I think of Lydia’s hands on the album and of Celia’s bite in the copper. “Some don’t get first chances,” I say.
“And yet we honor them by ensuring what remains is… orderly.” He steeples his fingers for half a breath. “What do you need?”
This is where dazzled distrust slips a foot onto the dance floor. He’s giving me attention I haven’t earned here, smoothing it like varnish. I feel sponsors in the corners of the room watching, real or imagined—ad buys that would love a Crane smile in their inbox.
“A copy of any tower access policies,” I say. “Historical. Current. Volunteer rosters if they’re public. And a quiet hour with a bell ringer for background.”
“Policies are easy,” he says. “Rosters are private; you understand how minors and churches get complicated. Bell ringers can be found.” He nods toward the donor wall as if names sprout there like herbs. “But Mara—may I call you Mara?”
“You may,” I say, because names are less expensive than the rest of me.
“Mara, context matters. There’s an appetite right now for performance—for gotcha, for downloadable grief. Your show’s name is darling, truly, but second lives aren’t a spectacle.” He folds his arms loosely, not blocking me, not opening me either. “If you need introductions, ask me. I can keep doors from closing… or open ones that should remain closed, if you prefer drafts.”
“I prefer light,” I say.
“Light can bleach,” he says. “And donors don’t like sunburns.”
A laugh bubbles from two women behind him; someone mentions raffle baskets. Everett’s gaze doesn’t leave my face. “You’ll be measured by the company you keep,” he adds. “This town forgives curiosity. It punishes carelessness.”
I hold his gaze until my eyes want to blink and refuse to. “Then I’ll be careful,” I say. “With the living and the dead.”
“Good,” he says. The word lands like a stamp. “Come see the photo wall. I think you’ll appreciate our history. It humbles. It also protects.”
He leads me along the varnished corridor where framed regatta photos march in years, the colors evolving from film to digital and the smiles hardening into prestige. The air near the windows tastes like lake and caterer sterno. Outside, the water flicks the pilings with finger taps, seiche still mischiefing the acoustics.
Everett stops at a black-and-white from the nineties, points out a former mayor with hair like a wooded lot, tells a story about rebuilding the dock after a storm. People pause as he speaks, nodding as though history itself asked for their assent. He moves on to a 2008 frame—summer bodies, white polos, the bell tower a little ghost behind shoulders. My heart adjusts volume.
At the far right edge, partly cropped, a girl stares sideways at the lake, not at the camera. Her hair whips into her mouth like it refuses to be tamed. The angle of her jaw is Celia’s. The glint at her throat is a heart on a thin chain. The caption reads REGATTA NIGHT, with a last name list that stops before it gets to Brighton. Edges erase.
I lean a fraction closer, breath slow so I don’t fog the glass. Everett watches me watch. His reflection rests over the frame: my face, his face, the tower, the girl.
“You recognize anyone?” he asks mildly.
“A lot of people,” I say. “And someone who deserved to be in the middle.”
He considers the photograph like an asset, not a memory. “Photos lie by what they include,” he says. “And by what they exclude. Context again.”
“I’m fond of margins,” I say. “Margins keep secrets until they don’t.”
He smiles like a man who has heard every kind of ambition and knows where each ends. “Let me save you time,” he says. “If you’re chasing rumors about… old storms, you will end wet, and those who cheer now will dry themselves in rooms like this.”
“You said you could help,” I say.
“I can. I will. I want Ashgrove to heal.” He turns the word heal into an instrument. “Send me your questions before you publish, and I’ll make sure what you say doesn’t harm the wrong people.”
“And who decides which people are wrong?” I ask.
“Someone has to,” he says. He’s gentle about it, which is worse than if he’d been arrogant.
My phone buzzes, a tiny insect under lacquer. A sponsor rep’s name flashes across the lock screen and then vanishes. Everett notes the motion with the corner of his mouth and returns his hands to his pockets like a man who trusts gravity.
“Enjoy the evening,” he says. “And Mara—don’t let the lake carry you where you didn’t intend to go. That sound travels. It returns.” He touches the frame under the tower, not the girl, and walks away, collecting greetings like tithes.
I stay with the photo wall and let my pulse stop drumming. The room tastes like congratulation and lemon oil. I lift my phone, slide it to camera, and frame the 2008 photograph so that the right edge fills the screen: tower, girl, chain. I take a shot and a second one that catches a reflection of the bell rope coiled like a sleeping animal. I send the images to my offsite drive with a caption for me, not for posts: EDGE_CELIA_TEST.
A donor couple wanders up, admiring themselves five years younger. “Look how thin we were,” the woman laughs. I step back, make myself small, let them take the center. It’s the only way to get to the margins sometimes.
The bar clinks, the raffle begins, the bell near the door gives a ceremonial, curated ring. On cue, a teenager in a club polo rings it again, baptism for the new season. The sound threads through the room and shivers my recorder in its bag. Regatta culture knows how to turn strikes into certainties. My chest answers with Lydia’s voice: They were everywhere.
I angle toward the exit, avoiding small talk that smells like bait. The night outside is colder than the room promised; diesel from a late towboat hangs low, making my tongue tin. The seiche lifts again and drops, a breath that knows how to hold back and how to surge.
My phone buzzes once more. Another sponsor. Another “quick check-in.” I put it face down in my pocket. The brass crane emblem over the door reflects my silhouette back to me, stretched, anonymized.
“Context,” I say aloud to the dark, testing the word the way you test a fence. It doesn’t give.
I walk along the dock lights, counting pilings like beats between claps. Dazzle bleeds out of me and leaves steel. Doors will close. Some already did in there with a smile. But the photo is in my pocket now, Celia’s half-face insisting on the middle.
The lake slaps once, hard, like a reluctant answer.
I tighten my grip on the recorder I didn’t use and decide which door I will knock on next.