The movie they pick is one I already know by heart.
That helps. Knowing the beats lets me count the minutes I need to stay on the sofa and the exact scene I can use as cover. Onscreen, animated snow falls over some picture-perfect town; offscreen, real snow claws at the Mercer estate’s glass, trying to get in.
“Top off?” Evelyn asks, leaning over the back of the sectional with the bottle of red.
The wine catches the recessed lights, deep and glossy. Her bracelet slides down her wrist, the tiny Mercer crest charm chiming against the glass. A cluster of neighbors stranded up the road—two couples who arrived an hour ago for “just one drink while we wait on the plows”—laugh from the bar area at the back of the media room.
“I’m good,” I say, cradling my half-full glass in both hands so she doesn’t try anyway.
“You?” she asks Daniel.
“Sure.” He tips his glass toward her. “Last snow day before the Light the Harbor chaos.”
One of the neighbors, a man with a perfect salt-and-pepper fade and a country club laugh, calls out, “We’ll see if the boat parade even happens, Ev. The docks are buried. Harbor looks like a postcard.”
“Please,” she answers, smiling over her shoulder. “You know the town will dig out every yacht slip on this peninsula before they bother with Main Street. The parade is good for morale. And donors.”
Laughter again. The sound blends with the movie’s cheery music and the low drone of the storm pressing against the house.
I sip my wine, tongue buzzing with tannin, and watch her.
She pours for the neighbors, for Robert, for herself. Her second glass tonight. A third, maybe, by the time the protagonist loses their job right before Christmas. I file that away like a timestamp.
“Everyone settled?” she asks, easing into the leather recliner near the aisle. “Claire, you can go. We’ll buzz if we need anything.”
Claire slips out with the tray. The door clicks shut, sealing the room in darkness except for the TV’s cold blue light and the soft wall sconces shaped like little lanterns. Outside this cocoon, Harbor Glen is blackout patches and buried back roads, the hospital on the hill lit up like a benevolent ship. Inside, the generator hums beneath the surround sound.
“Ready?” Daniel squeezes my knee under the blanket.
“Ready,” I lie.
The opening credits roll. The neighbors murmur little comments—about the actor, about how their kids loved this when they were small. Evelyn’s laugh flutters in the dark at the right moments. I count scenes, not jokes. First act twist: job loss. Meet-cute. Awkward family dinner.
When the main character’s car skids toward the town’s harbor—too-bright fake harbor, not the gray-brown real one below us—I feel my chest tighten. The director apparently likes cliffs too.
“You okay?” Daniel whispers.
“Bathroom,” I whisper back, standing before he can read anything else in my body. “Too much cocoa earlier.”
He chuckles softly. “Want me to pause?”
“No, no, don’t.” I keep my voice breezy. “I’ve seen this a million times.”
Evelyn glances over, profile sharp in the flicker. “Down the hall, first left,” she says, as if I haven’t been here for days. “Don’t get lost in the dark.”
“Got it,” I say.
I slide past knees and blanket edges, the bowl of popcorn, the neighbors’ socked feet on the ottoman. The smell of butter, salt, and expensive perfume clings to me as I reach the door.
The hallway outside is cooler, quieter. The soundproofing in this house is no joke; the movie drops to a muffled swell behind the closed door. Out here, I hear the real noises: wind pushing against the cliffside, branches ticking the windows, the low mechanical pulse of the generator down below.
I don’t go left.
I go right, toward the front of the house.
My heartbeat feels too loud in the stillness. I walk past the framed foundation awards—plaques engraved with Mercer names and donors, photos from Light the Harbor boat parades, Evelyn in gowns on polished decks, fireworks blooming over the Sound. The crest appears over and over, stylized waves carving through metal and glass.
Above the crest on one plaque, a line reads: For keeping Harbor Glen’s families safe through every storm.
I clamp my jaw to keep from laughing.
The office door waits at the end of the corridor. Last night, I watched Evelyn lock it after a call, keys slipping into her pocket. Tonight, the keyhole glints at me, small and smug.
“Please be careless for once,” I whisper, fingers closing around the knob.
It turns.
My breath catches hard enough to hurt.
I slip inside and nudge the door almost closed, leaving a sliver open so the hall light paints a thin line across the rug. The office smells the way it did before: leather, paper, faint wood polish, and under it all the clean, chemical tang I associate with hospital corridors. Evelyn carries Harbor Glen Memorial with her like a second perfume.
Snow rattles at the windowpanes. The Sound is just a dark suggestion beyond the glass.
The desk lamp is off. I don’t dare touch it. Instead, I pull my phone from my pocket and wake the screen. The dim light washes the room in blue, enough to make out shapes: the bookshelves, the credenza, the neat stacks.
My hand goes straight to the top right drawer.
Locked, I think.
It slides open on the first tug.
Cold air wicks across my spine.
Inside, hanging files line up like obedient soldiers. Medical partnerships. Foundation minutes. Gift tax correspondence. I drag my fingers along the tabs until I feel the bump of the thick manila folder I’m looking for.
Mercer Family Trust II – Second Daughter Beneficiary.
My pulse moves into my ears. I ease the folder out and set it on the desk blotter, right over the embossed wave crest, like I’m pinning their secret to their own symbol.
“Okay,” I whisper to myself. “Fast.”
I flip the folder open. The first page wears that familiar redacted strip—heavy black rectangle across where the beneficiary’s name should be. Not enough to hide the indentation of letters pressed into paper years ago.
I snap a photo.
The sound of the shutter is mercifully soft, just a faint fake click. Still, every muscle in my body flinches.
The hallway stays quiet.
I move to the next page. Phone in one hand, I use the other to lift each sheet, pressing the camera button with my thumb. The pages smell dry and slightly dusty, edges rough against my fingertips. Ink and paper and money—that’s all this is, I remind myself. Ink and paper and a person’s entire life.
“Come on, come on,” I murmur.
Boil down the hospital, the foundation, the Light the Harbor parades, all the donor plaques and gala speeches, and it’s this: words bent into weapons on legal letterhead.
Clause after clause stares up at me. I don’t stop to read yet; I only capture.
At page four, a board in the hallway creaks.
My throat closes. I stand rigid, phone clutched against my chest, listening.
Silence. Then, faintly, the distant echo of laughter from the media room, that forced holiday sound floating all the way here.
I swallow hard and keep going.
By page seven, my fingers have started to tingle with adrenaline. My palms sweat, making the phone slippery. My head buzzes with the awareness that if Evelyn steps into this hallway for another glass of wine, I have nowhere to go. I can’t explain this folder. I can’t spin.
I finish the last page, capturing the signature blocks: the trustee, the Mercers’ attorney, Robert Mercer’s name in careful loops. Evelyn’s isn’t on this one, but she’s everywhere anyway—in the language, in the intent.
I shuffle the pages back into order, tuck them into the folder, and slide it into the exact slot in the drawer. I check, then double-check, that the edges line up with the neighboring files.
One more breath. One more.
I close the drawer, light on the handle, and move toward the door.
The stripe of hallway light is still there. No shadow breaks it.
I ease the office door open the rest of the way and slip into the corridor. The wall sconces cast soft pools of yellow over the framed photos of Harbor Glen’s gleaming hospital wing, charity races, and boat parades. Out a side window, snow whirls over the dark bulk of the hill where the hospital sits, its own generators keeping the building lit like a lighthouse.
I could go straight back to the movie.
Instead, I duck into the small powder room by the stairs and lock the door.
The light in here is harsher than anywhere else in the house, a bright overhead fixture that makes the marble gleam. The air smells like eucalyptus hand soap and the faint mineral note of the water, with a hint of salt and woodsmoke filtering in from some unseen vent. The house may sit above the town, but the town still seeps in.
I sit on the closed toilet lid, dress rustling, and open my camera roll.
The thumbnails line up like a new kind of filmstrip. I tap the first shot.
The header fills the screen:
MERCER FAMILY TRUST II – SECOND DAUGHTER BENEFICIARY AGREEMENT.
My fingers tighten around the phone until my knuckles whiten.
“You’re real,” I whisper. “You’re not just a drafting error.”
I pinch and zoom over the redacted name block. My screen shows nothing but black at first. I adjust the brightness, slide a filter over the image, drag contrast up until the whites glare. Under the heavy strip, I start to pick up faint ridges where a printer pressed toner once—ghosts of letters beneath fresh ink.
The shape of a curve. A vertical line. Maybe an O, maybe a D. My brain tries to fill in names: Danielle, Dorothy, Riley, Lydia-again. It’s like staring at a foggy harbor and hoping the right boat materializes.
I move to the second photo.
WHEREAS, Settlor desires to provide for the financial security of Second Daughter Beneficiary while ensuring appropriate boundaries from Settlor’s existing family structure…
“Appropriate boundaries,” I repeat under my breath, the words sour on my tongue.
My fingertip scrolls down.
Beneficiary acknowledges and agrees that no public identification with Mercer family name shall be made, including but not limited to use in legal documents, social media, professional bios, or press.
No name, no tag, no bio. A person turned into negative space.
The next clause hits harder.
Beneficiary shall execute and abide by perpetual non-disclosure regarding parentage, adoption history, or any alleged relationship to Settlor, Settlor’s spouse, or their descendants, except as compelled by court order under seal.
“Perpetual,” I say. “Not just while the checks clear.”
My mouth tastes metallic, like I bit my tongue.
I swipe to the next image.
Beneficiary shall make no attempt at direct or indirect contact with any member of the Mercer family, including but not limited to in-person visits, letters, electronic communications, or third-party intermediaries, except through counsel designated by Trustee.
My chest tightens until I have to put the phone down in my lap for a second.
No contact. No “I exist.” No late-night call to say, “Why did you give me away?”
I pick the phone back up and keep reading, because stopping feels worse.
In consideration of the covenants herein, Trustee shall distribute to Beneficiary the annual sum of [amount] adjusted for inflation, contingent upon Beneficiary’s continued compliance with Sections 4 through 7 (Non-Disclosure, Non-Disparagement, Non-Contact). Any breach shall result in immediate termination of distributions, repayment obligations, and injunctive relief as permitted by law.
“They bought your silence,” I whisper. “They paid you to stay away and keep their story clean.”
I think about Harbor Glen: the way the town sniffs around the Mercer name like it’s incense, the way the country club waitlists rearrange themselves around Evelyn’s nod, the donor walls in the hospital lobby etching the hierarchy in bronze.
Love and harm, same hands.
Right now, those hands are folded prettily around a wineglass in a dark media room, laughing at a movie about found family while their actual blood daughter has to pretend she isn’t one.
I scroll to the signatures.
The trustee, some white-shoe firm partner downtown. Robert’s name sits on the line marked SETTLOR, neat and contained. There’s a blank where an eighteen-year-old might sign acknowledgment of the terms. On the photo, I zoom in. The line shows faint impressions, like someone once signed and the signature was later scraped or blacked out.
“Did you change your mind?” I whisper to the absent girl. “Or did they?”
On the next page, there’s a paragraph in smaller type.
This Trust is intended to resolve any and all potential claims arising out of prior custodial arrangements, adoption placements, or medical documentation irregularities, including but not limited to records associated with Harbor Glen Memorial Hospital and affiliated entities.
My stomach flips over.
That’s the hospital hill in one sentence. All the sealed files. All the missing adoption records. Wrapped up in legal cotton and tied off with a bow.
“Medical documentation irregularities,” I say. “That’s one way to phrase stealing someone’s story.”
A flush of heat climbs up my neck, prickling under my skin in the chilly bathroom. My leg bounces, heel tapping the tile in sharp little clicks.
I scroll to the final page. A notary stamp from over a decade ago. The embossed seal looks thick even in the photo, pressing the state crest into the paper like a brand.
Under it, more Mercer crest watermarks faintly repeat in the background of the stationary—those stylized waves, over and over. Reshaping everything they pass through.
I lock the screen and stare at my reflection in the mirror opposite the toilet.
My face looks pale under the bathroom light, eyes too big, wine flush fading to a sharper color. Behind me, in the mirror, the bathroom door takes up most of the frame; no one pounds on it yet. No one yanks it open to catch me mid-crime.
“You have proof,” I tell the woman in the mirror. My voice shakes anyway. “She’s real. They paid her. They paid her to stay gone.”
The blocked call from earlier echoes through my memory: Mrs. Mercer? The breath on the line, the fear. Evelyn’s hissed words later about “old cases” and “harassment.”
“Are you her?” I whisper to my phone. “Or are you the one trying to drag her back into the light?”
Either way, the trust in my photos is a loaded gun.
If Evelyn catches me with it, I hand her exactly what she needs to paint me as untrustworthy, delusional, invasive. An annulment. A quiet settlement. A story about the poor unstable girl her son married.
I slide the phone into my pocket, where its rectangle presses, heavy and hot, against my thigh.
Outside the bathroom, the Mercer estate breathes: generators purring, snow grinding against glass, the muffled cheer of a movie about people who find each other instead of buying each other off.
I stand, press my ear to the door, and listen for footsteps.
Nothing but distant laughter and the faintest echo of dialogue.
I unlock the door and step back into the hallway, the weight of the photos pulling gravity toward my pocket.
Somewhere in this house, in this town, there is a woman whose name used to sit on that redacted line, whose life is measured in distributions and conditions and threats hidden in plain sight.
And now that I’ve seen the contract that bought her absence, I know I can’t go back to pretending the Mercer story begins and ends with Lydia.
The only question left as I walk toward the media room is whether I’m ready to ask Daniel how many sisters his parents paid to erase—before his mother decides to erase me too.