The harbor road hugs the water in a lazy curve, the kind that looks picturesque on postcards and turns deadly in news footage.
My tires hum over the asphalt, the sound steady and low against the backdrop of gulls and distant boat engines. Sunlight glances off the Sound to my right, throwing hard white flashes through the passenger window, and the sky is a brittle blue rinsed clean by yesterday’s wind. No fresh snow, no flurries, just cold air pouring through the vents and the faint smell of salt and old coffee in the car.
I keep one eye on the road and one on the glittering line where water meets shore. A string of slips juts from the docks, boats bobbing on gentle swells, their masts rigged with dormant lights waiting for the Light the Harbor parade. Even in daylight, I recognize the Mercer yacht—long, white, obnoxiously serene—moored closer to the channel, the abstract wave crest gleaming on its side.
The phone on the center console buzzes again with Daniel’s text, already read: Take the side road past the docks—less traffic, better plowed. Love you.
I glance at it, then shove my attention back to the lane. The asphalt stretches ahead, dark and dry, flanked on the left by a shallow rise of trees and scrub, on the right by a steel guardrail with snow piled against its base. A green sign a ways ahead reads “No Winter Maintenance Beyond This Point,” but the road surface looks fine. Sun-dried. Ordinary.
I loosen my grip on the wheel by a fraction, letting my shoulders drop a notch from around my ears.
Mrs. Donnelly’s kitchen clings to me anyway—the lemon cleaner, the old hospital photos, the way her voice dropped when she said babies disappeared. I replay every word while my foot rests steady on the gas, trying to tease out what she didn’t say. She didn’t deny that a baby from the accident ended up in her ward. She just refused to name where the child went next.
The thought slams against another: they don’t forgive disobedient daughters.
I swallow, my mouth dry. The hospital sits behind me now on its hill, glass catching the sun, but the smell of disinfectant still lingers in my nose, riding under the harsher tang of salt and exhaust. I picture the donor wall with the Mercer crest stamped at the top, and the trust document on Evelyn’s desk, and the police report that insisted two minors were unaccounted for before the words were scratched away.
My hands tighten again.
“You’re fine,” I say out loud, needing the sound. “Just drive. You’re fine.”
The lane narrows where the road curls closer to the water, trees on the left dropping away. Ahead, the guardrail bows outward, following the lip of a deeper embankment. The snow there has been plowed back into dirty ridges, gray with gravel and whatever chemicals the town spreads when it wants to pretend it cares about regular people’s tires.
The sun ducks behind a small cloud for half a second, then reappears. That’s all.
My front tires hit the darker patch without any warning.
The steering wheel goes light in my hands, weightless. The car jerks sideways, the hum of the tires breaking into a sharp, skidding hiss. My stomach lurches up into my chest.
“No—no, no—”
I yank the wheel back out of instinct, the worst move I could make. The rear of the car swings around, the world outside the windows tilting in a smear of snow, steel, and sky. My body slams against the seat belt, the strap carving into the meat of my shoulder. The sound of rubber over ice and then gravel fills the cabin, loud and raw, like the road is grinding its teeth.
The car spins once, twice, too fast for me to count, the harbor flashing in and out of the windshield. On one revolution I catch a glimpse of the cliff far ahead, the gray bulk of the Mercer estate perched on top, windows glinting in the winter sun. On the next, all I see is the guardrail rushing closer.
I don’t scream so much as let out one raw sound that tears my throat. My foot slams uselessly against the brake. The pedal vibrates under my sole, anti-lock system chattering, but I might as well be pressing air.
The impact when the front bumper hits the rail knocks the breath right out of me. Metal shrieks against metal; something pops under the hood. The car jolts to a stop at a sick diagonal, the passenger side pitched down toward the drop. Loose change in the cupholder flies past my hand, clattering against the dashboard, and my head snaps forward, my forehead meeting the steering wheel in a dull, thudding kiss.
Then silence.
No airbag. Just my heart hammering in my ears and the thin whine of the engine protesting in neutral.
For a second I can’t move.
The seat belt cuts across my chest, digging into my collarbone hard enough that I know a bruise is blooming beneath my sweater. My hands lock around the spoken wheel, knuckles white, fingers numb. There’s an iron taste in my mouth, hot and metallic; I must have bitten my tongue.
Slowly, with effort, I peel my right hand off the wheel and kill the engine. The abrupt silence leaves a high ring in my ears. Outside, gulls cry, and somewhere far down the road a truck downshifts.
I force myself to look.
The hood is crumpled where it meets the rail, paint scraped bright and raw. The steel barrier beneath the snow is scarred with older scratches and dents, pale metal showing through chipped paint in long parallel streaks. My front right tire hovers just over the edge of the embankment, suspension compressed, a few inches of cold air between rubber and nothing.
My stomach flips.
“Okay,” I whisper. My breath fogs the glass. “Okay, okay.”
The calm in my voice doesn’t match the shaking in my hands. I unclip the seat belt, every muscle protesting, and reach blindly into the passenger footwell for my bag. My fingers fumble with the zipper before closing around my phone.
I consider dialing Daniel, picture his face morphing from bored professionalism to panic, then to that flat, reasonable tone he uses when he wants to smooth everything away. I see the way he’ll say, It’s winter, these things happen, and feel my ribs tighten.
Instead, I hit the roadside assistance number on the insurance app, my voice high and too bright when the operator answers.
“I’m okay,” I say, insisting on the words so she doesn’t dispatch an ambulance. “I just need a tow. I’m on Harbor Road, just past the ‘No Winter Maintenance’ sign, near the docks. I…hit something slippery.”
“Black ice,” she chirps. “Happens a lot this time of year. Stay in the vehicle if it’s safe. I’ll send a truck.”
Black ice. Invisible danger, hiding in plain sight. Just like everything else in this town.
I hang up and sit there with my hands in my lap, fingers still buzzing. My shoulder throbs in time with my pulse. A trickle of warmth runs from my hairline down the side of my face; I dab at it with my thumb and see a smear of red. Not much. Just enough to stain my skin.
In the side mirror, the road behind me looks perfectly normal. Dry. Passable. No glitter of frost, no patches of white. Just that one darker stain where my tire marks start, angling wildly toward the rail.
“Treacherous roads for the unprepared,” Evelyn had said, when she showed me the memorial tree, when she tightened her grip on my arm near the cliff. “People underestimate how fast conditions change here.”
My hands curl into fists on my legs.
I stare at the smear of ice through the windshield. It begins a few car lengths before the guardrail’s bend and ends right where my bumper now rests. The snowbank on the shoulder bears fresh gouges from my slide, but the rest of the lane looks undisturbed.
Ten minutes later, the growl of a diesel engine fills the air. A yellow tow truck rounds the curve, hazard lights throwing amber flashes over the guardrail. The driver pulls ahead of me, then reverses with practiced ease, lining up near my front bumper before hopping down from the cab.
He’s thickset, mid-fifties, with gray stubble on his jaw and a beanie pulled low over his ears. His jacket smells faintly of gasoline and cigarette smoke when he leans toward my window.
“You all right in there?” he calls, voice muffled through the glass.
I roll the window down a crack. Cold air knifes across my face, stinging the cut at my hairline.
“I think so,” I say. My voice shakes despite my best effort. “Just…shaken up. Shoulder’s sore.”
He glances at the angle of my car and lets out a low whistle.
“You’re lucky,” he says. “Few more inches and I’d be fishing you out of the trees down there.”
I follow his gaze. Beyond the rail, scrub and bare branches drop steeply toward a rocky outcrop and, beyond that, the gray water of the harbor. Wind knifes up the slope, biting at my cheeks.
“I was going under the speed limit,” I say quickly. “The road looked dry. Then the car just—” I gesture helplessly. “Lost traction.”
“Yeah,” he says. His eyes move to the dark patch ahead of my tires. “Black ice. They never salt this bend right.” He shakes his head. “I’ve been called to this spot too many times.”
The words snag in my brain.
“Too many?” I repeat.
“Last week, a delivery van,” he says, crouching near the guardrail to inspect the damage. “Month before that, some kid heading back from the docks after the bars. You’re not local, are you?”
“My husband’s family…has a house here,” I say. “Up on the cliff.”
“Figures,” he mutters, straightening. “Town plows keep the center pretty, keep the roads to the country club tidy. Down here?” He gestures at the lane. “We get whatever’s left in the truck. Every year, I tell the council they either fix the drainage or start putting up real warnings. Every year, nothing.”
He says it like a complaint about lazy bureaucracy. My mind supplies a different translation: every year, someone with enough influence decides this curve doesn’t matter enough.
“You said you’ve been called here a lot,” I press. My teeth chatter more from nerves than cold. “Has anyone…gone over?”
He hesitates, eyes scanning my face more closely, then nods once.
“Couple of rollovers down in those trees,” he says. “They walk away more often than they should, considering the drop. Guardian angel must patrol this stretch.” He squints up the road toward the hospital. “Or the Mercers do.”
The name scrapes across my skin.
“Why would you say that?” I ask.
He shrugs. “They donate those fancy crash cushions on the main routes. Make sure their guests get home safe from the gala. They could afford to fix this bend too, if they cared. But this road’s for the folks coming from the docks, the staff heading home, the kids who park and drink. Not exactly top of the donor wall.”
He says it matter-of-factly, not realizing he’s just drawn a line between whose lives get padded and whose don’t.
He hooks up the winch, chains clanking, then gestures.
“Pop it in neutral, foot off the brake,” he says. “Let her come to me. You can ride in the cab while I haul it back to town. Body shop there owes me favors.”
In the truck, the cab smells of old french fries, motor oil, and the faint pine of an air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. He radios in my information, then glances over.
“You want me to call anybody for you?” he asks. “Family?”
“I’ll text my husband,” I say. “Thank you. For…everything.”
“No problem,” he says. “This road eats people who don’t know her tricks. You got off light.”
The phrase slams into Evelyn’s warning so neatly that my skin crawls.
These roads eat people alive if they’re careless.
I picture her saying it, her hand resting on my arm, her smile warm and sharp at once. I stare out through the windshield at the curve where my car just spun and try to decide whether I drove into that danger on my own, or whether I was aimed.
When he drops me at the small garage near town, I call Leonard, because I can’t bear the idea of Daniel’s voice right away. Leonard arrives in the estate SUV twenty minutes later, impeccably calm, gloved hands folded on the steering wheel while he waits.
“Mrs. Mercer,” he says, stepping out to open my door. “Are you injured?”
“Just a bruise,” I say, wincing as I slide into the passenger seat. “And my car’s ego.”
His eyes flick to the bandage the garage owner insisted I press to my forehead. A muscle jumps in his jaw.
“I’ll inform Mr. and Mrs. Mercer that you’re quite all right,” he says. “They were…concerned.”
The pause around that last word lands heavier than the rest.
The drive back up to the estate follows the main road this time, lanes neatly plowed, salt visible in white streaks along the edges. The hospital looms on our right, all glass and chrome, the Mercer crest huge over the entrance. The air through the vents carries a faint tang of disinfectant that mixes with Leonard’s clean cologne.
At the gates, the security camera tracks us. I swear I feel its gaze follow me all the way up the long drive.
Evelyn waits in the foyer before we even step inside.
She wears a soft gray sweater, pearls at her throat, the picture of casual concern. The light from the high windows turns the streaks in her hair silver.
“Hannah,” she says, my name landing on a breath that flutters at the end. “Oh, thank God.”
She crosses the floor in three quick strides and pulls me into an embrace so sudden my sore shoulder protests. Her perfume wraps around me—white flowers and something colder underneath.
“I’m fine,” I say, my voice muffled against her shoulder. “Really. The car took the worst of it.”
She pulls back just far enough to cup my face in her hands, turning it toward the light. Her thumbs skim close to the bandage at my hairline without touching it.
“You’re shaking,” she murmurs. “Of course you are. That road is notorious.” Her eyes flick to Leonard. “Where did it happen?”
“The harbor bend, ma’am,” he says. “Just past the maintenance sign.”
A flicker—satisfaction, irritation, something—passes through her gaze and vanishes.
“Those back roads eat people alive if they’re careless,” she says, returning her attention to me. “I’ve told Daniel not to send anyone that way until you know the area.”
My throat tightens.
“He said it was better plowed,” I reply, keeping my tone light. “Less traffic.”
Her lips curve. It doesn’t reach her eyes.
“Daniel underestimates how quickly things change,” she says. “Snow melts, refreezes. Shadows fall. One minute the road looks safe, the next it snatches the wheel right out of your hands.”
Her thumbs stroke along my jaw, a tenderness that feels precisely calibrated.
“You have to learn which paths are worth the risk,” she says quietly. “Which you avoid, even when someone you love tells you they’re fine.”
I meet her gaze. For a heartbeat, the foyer falls away. It’s just the two of us, her hands framing my face, her words about roads carrying an entire extra conversation beneath them.
“I thought I was being careful,” I say. “I checked the weather. The sun was out.”
“You checked the sky,” she says softly. “The danger was on the ground.”
Love and harm, wrapped in one lesson.
She lets me go, smoothing my sleeve where it’s wrinkled, then calls for tea and an ice pack like this is a minor household mishap, no more serious than a stubbed toe on a centuries-old table. Staff materialize with efficiency, placing a plush throw over my lap when she steers me to the sofa, pressing porcelain into my hands.
“To think,” she says, standing over me, “we lost one child to the water down there already. I won’t lose my son’s wife to asphalt.”
My fingers tighten around the teacup. The china rattles faintly against the saucer.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say.
“See that you don’t,” she replies.
The words are affectionate on the surface. Underneath, they land like an order.
That night, long after the house settles and Daniel’s breathing evens beside me, I lie awake in the dark guest room, replaying the spin, the scrape of guardrail, the tow driver’s offhand “too many times,” Evelyn’s murmur about roads that snatch the wheel.
My shoulder throbs in rhythm with my pulse. Every time I shut my eyes, I see the patch of black ice on an otherwise clean road.
On the nightstand, my phone lights up, screen glowing in the darkness.
Blocked caller, it reads.
My hand hovers over it, the memory of Lydia’s erased sister and today’s skid colliding in my chest. The phone buzzes again, insistent, carrying danger and answers in equal measure, while I lie there suspended between picking up and staying silent, wondering which choice will keep me alive long enough to uncover the truth.