I set the firebrick, clear the bench, and breathe until my shoulders drop. The studio smells like flux even with the window open, a tart-metal tang that rides the same air I’ve been breathing since the bell rope came down—diesel from the marina, wet rope from the boathouses, and a ghost of percolated coffee from St. Brigid’s hall. I pull the copper blank from its cloth wrap. It picks up my heat like a living thing.
“Steady,” I tell my wrists. “No rush.”
I click the regulator and coax the torch to life. The flare hushes the room. Blue-white flame licks the blank while I count: one, two, three…not to scorch, only to anneal. The metal blushes and slackens; I can feel the soft give through the tweezers. I set it to cool on the brick and listen for the harbor’s forklift to pass and for the lake to shove a little seiche against the pilings. The slap comes, then the pullback, and the gull cries drag like tape.
“This is for work,” I say. “Not for show.”
I clamp the blank in the old jig Lydia gave me—Celia’s jig, the same one whose faint scratches matched the locket’s lip—and I mark a circle with soapstone where the bell’s throat will rise. The jeweler’s saw sings thin as a wind chime while I free the shape: a petal that will fold onto itself, a flare that wants to be voice, not ornament. Filings dust my fingertips with copper brightness; they taste blood-clean when I lick a grit from my lip.
“Don’t chase pretty,” I tell myself. “Chase true.”
I file the seam where the edges will meet. The file’s rasp becomes a metronome for breath in-breath out. I tilt the blank to the light like I did the first time I cleaned the locket’s hinge and heard the scream come alive. This metal won’t hold terror; it will hold a pledge. I scribe a tiny rebate for solder to lie and not puddle. I bend the petal on a dowel and press until the seam kisses shut.
The torch returns with a softer voice. Flux sizzles clear; solder flashes and runs, a silver river across copper banks. When the seam flows, I draw the flame away and let dull red fade to baked sunset. Into pickle it goes—a bowl of vinegar and salt that snaps the black from the join. The smell homes itself behind my eyes: shop class memory and careful kitchens and the back stair of the Annex.
“Good,” I say. “Keep going.”
I drill the crown—two pinholes, then a careful ream so a jump ring will move without scraping. I cut the clapper from wire stock, ball one end in the torch until it swells, then hammer the ball once on the anvil for a flat that will kiss, not bruise. I thread the wire through the throat and stake it. When I shake the capless bell in my palm, it whispers against my skin instead of the bench. The sound is barely there and perfectly enough.
“Speak softly,” I say to it. “I’ll do the rest.”
I lay out the stamps from the jig—straight, no flourish. I won’t carve initials that were used like property; I won’t pin a girl to an emblem. I choose letters that name the work, not the wound. One side: SL (Second Lives), small, off-center. The other: CB, not as claim but as thanks, with a dot between to say because of, not belongs to. I lift the hammer and count breaths between strikes. Each tap leaves a clean indentation without mushrooming the bell’s skin.
The blank is a bell now, but it isn’t mine until it sits where the work lives. I take my headphones from the hook and run a fingertip along the cold metal yoke. The pad smells faintly of leather and old episodes. I open the band’s inner seam and stitch the jump ring to a threaded loop I sewed there months ago, back when I promised myself I wouldn’t wear talismans until I had rules to deserve one.
The bell slips inside the headband, invisible unless you look for it, able to brush the metal when I move. I tilt my head. The charm touches home. It gives the smallest tick—copper to yoke, memory to present—too faint for the mic, perfect for me.
“You ring when I lie,” I tell it. “You ring when I rush.”
I reset the bench: quench jar capped, torch off, filings swept and saved. I run a soft brush along the bell to lift a last bloom from the seam, and I hold it to the window. Lake light runs through the opening like thin smoke. The town is quiet at this hour—post-lunch, pre-dinner, that hollow that used to make me pump music under dialog. I leave the room bare. I want to hear breath and wind and the honest grain of this space.
I sit at the desk, slide the headphones on, and feel the bell settle against the yoke like a heartbeat getting comfortable. I lower the mic boom. The preamp clicks, tiny relays aligning. The input meter opens its green eyelid.
“New season,” I say to the empty track. “New rules.”
The words warm the glass like steam, but they are not the ones I want to start with. I tee up a fresh session and label it S4E1—Intro. I copy our manifesto into the notes pane so it stares at me while I speak. I check the text chain with the steering committee: three thumbs-up, one heart, one “I’ll listen later but I trust you.” I don’t clutch those words; I place them down like a ladder I don’t intend to kick away.
“No music,” I tell the room. “No score. Say it plain.”
I press record and let a full five seconds pass. Room tone wraps me—the faint hum of the fridge, the harbor’s rope slap, my own breath brushing the pop filter. I hear a truck back up two streets over and wait. The lake lifts and the window clicks—another small seiche bending sound a degree, then returning it.
“Content warning,” I say softly, not because there’s new harm in this intro but because I want the habit in my mouth. “This show names injury and power. We do it with consent, with care, and with the option to stop listening and still be welcomed back.”
I breathe. The bell gives a private hello when I nod.
“I’m Mara,” I say, and my name feels unimportant in the best way. “I make Second Lives with a steering committee of survivors who steer our edits. We publish a changelog. We share profit. We won’t take money that buys silence.”
I stop. I don’t polish. I leave the commas where my breathing wants them, not where my old sense of rhythm would have dragged violins through.
“We listen until the truth carries.”
The sentence lands with a weight that surprises me even now. I hear Ruth’s laugh inside the word listen. I hear Lydia’s letter inside truth. I hear the new rope’s single practice strike inside carries. I don’t overlay any of it with anything.
“Here’s how we’ll work,” I say, shorter now, cleaner. “No hidden mics. No surprise visits. No ambushes. If we fail, you’ll hear the repair plan before the spin.”
I close the track. I don’t fix my breath sounds. I don’t silk my plosives. I save and mark the file with today’s date, the first day I’ve ever worn a bell inside the band that keeps my world in my ears.
The bench draws my eyes back. The jig sits there, Lydia’s gift, holding the ghost of Celia’s hands the way jigs do—by absence and intention. I pick it up and feel the cold where the clamps meet. I carry it to the shelf and set it beside the milk crate index Ruth built. The locket, the old scream, and every witness live in evidence now. Nothing is on the shelf that belongs in a locker. This space holds tools, not trophies.
“You hear that?” I ask the bell in my headphones, not expecting reply. “Tools, not trophies.”
I brew coffee even though I don’t need caffeine. I want the smell—cheap grounds, hot water, the way church basements smell when they try to be hospitable without money. I pour the cup and carry it to the window. I watch a youth crew drag sculls onto racks at the marina, all synchronized shoulders and careful calls. No one rings a brass bell to baptize them into legacy today. Someone blows a whistle, flat and clear, and the boats move with purpose that doesn’t need heritage to bless it.
“Good,” I say to the glass. “Start how you mean to go.”
The phone buzzes. A committee member: Heard the line. Keep it. No music. Another: Add a link to the ledger in the show notes. I type yes to both and paste the URL. I check the donor inbox. The bakery confirms chairs have been delivered to the Annex room for meetings. The university clinic signs on to audit quarterly. I star the messages and drag them into a folder named Proof. Old me would have dragged them into Promo.
The headphones sit warm on my head. Each shift of my jaw brushes the charm to the yoke. It’s not a ring exactly, more a hush of contact, a reminder that metal remembers.
“I won’t cut to fit downloads,” I tell the bell. “I won’t sand to please donors. I won’t hide the ledger because the Facebook taste police can’t stand numbers.”
I set the coffee down and return to the bench to give the charm one last gentle file, the kind that rounds a burr you only feel with skin. The file skitters and sings. The bell answers with the faintest kiss to my ear cup when I look down, a private timer I’ll carry.
“All right,” I say. “Seal it.”
I dab a smear of Renaissance wax across the bell and buff until the copper glows without glare. Tarnish can come; I won’t polish it away when it does. Wealth hides blood by shining; memory earns its marks. I click the headphone band closed again and slide the set back on, heavier by a gram and the weight of a promise.
The lake pushes and releases, pushes and releases. Sound walks sideways and returns. That pattern used to unsettle me. Now it tells me where to stand. I position the mic at the height where my breath clears it on exhale, where my consonants don’t smack the mesh, where my voice sits like a person across a wooden table, empty hands on the grain.
“Test,” I whisper. “Not for level—for conscience.”
I hit record again, not to speak, but to catch the room I’ve chosen to live in. The track graphs a thin green line while the world does absolutely nothing special. It’s glorious. I picture Everett’s plea in a file I didn’t edit. I picture the trustees under oath to come. I picture Lydia’s sticker on the steering binder. Then I let them float out of frame. This is not for evidence. This is for marrow.
“Ready,” I say. “Let’s work.”
I end the take and roll the chair back until the casters hit the bump in the rug. The little bell taps the yoke, a final click that isn’t a click at all but the sound of something small doing its job.
I open the door to the porch. The cold runs fingers along my jaw, honest and unperforming. Diesel weaves in under a curtain edge, not cruel in this dose, just the smell of boats going home. A gull carves a complaint that doesn’t need translation. I stand there with the headphones around my neck, the charm tucked where I’ll hear it and no one else will.
“We listen until the truth carries,” I say again, not for the file this time, not for the town. I say it to the wind that bends and straightens trees, to the bell inside the band, to the part of me that kept craving applause. I say it to the rope I watched retire and to the ledger I now show without being asked.
I let the porch’s wood chill my feet through my socks. I hold the breath I’d rush in a mix and feel it lengthen. The lake gives one last small shove against the breakwater—a quiet seiche that moves sound then lays it back like a hand smoothing a rumpled sheet. I don’t add anything to it.
I close my eyes. The bell rests. The metal cools. I let the wind finish the sentence I’m done speaking, and I listen to my own steady breath carry.