I find the scarf in the mudroom, coiled on the bench like something someone forgot on their way out of a life.
Claire points at it with a rubber-gloved hand while she hangs up a damp Barbour coat. “Mr. Mercer left that on the back of his chair at lunch,” she says. “Mrs. Mercer asked if someone could return it to his study.”
The scarf is soft under my fingers, cashmere that smells faintly of his cologne and the salt that seeps into everything on this peninsula. Through the mudroom window I can see the harbor far below, a slick of dark glass dotted with white and blue lights left over from the Light the Harbor parade. The Mercer crest still hangs on banners near the docks, that abstract wave pattern looking noble from up here and invasive in my memory.
“I can take it,” I say.
Claire gives me a quick, sympathetic look, the kind you offer someone walking into a room with Evelyn in it. “He was alone when I last brought tea,” she says. “Might be a good time.”
Good time for what, she doesn’t say. Confession? Negotiation? Surrender?
The hallway to the study smells of wood polish and woodsmoke, the floor beneath my slippers warm from the hidden heating system Evelyn bragged about once. Portraits line the walls: black-and-white ancestors who built the hospital, posed in stiff rows, the Mercer crest tucked into every frame. Their eyes follow me in that way expensive oil paint always seems to manage.
The study door is cracked open, a strip of amber firelight spilling into the dark hall. I lift my hand to knock, then pause when I hear nothing—no rustle of paper, no keys tapping, no low phone call full of veiled orders.
I nudge the door with my knuckles.
“Robert?” I say. “You left your—”
I step in before I finish, because the word snagged behind my teeth. He’s in the armchair by the window, not at his desk, a glass of amber liquid on the side table beside a box of photographs. The fire pops, throwing sparks against the grate. The air is thick with smoke and a sharper tang from his drink, blended with that ever-present hospital disinfectant that leaks in from the wind off the hill.
He doesn’t jump when I enter. He just lifts his eyes slowly, like it takes effort.
“Hannah,” he says. His voice is roughened, not quite hoarse. “Thank you.”
I glance at the scarf in my hand and then at the photos on his lap. “Claire asked me to bring this,” I say. “She said you might be cold.”
“She worries,” he says, managing a curve of a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “They all do.”
I cross the room and drape the scarf over the back of his chair. As I do, my eye catches the top photograph in the stack. It’s an old glossy print of the harbor during Light the Harbor, the boats lined up in procession. A young Evelyn waves from the deck of a yacht crowned with white lights, her hair darker and looser, one arm around Daniel as a boy. On the other side of her is Lydia, gap-toothed and grinning.
A fourth child stands half-turned, caught mid-motion, features blurred by the flash. Small, dark-haired, a hand reaching toward the water.
I steady my hand on the leather chair back.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” I say.
He reaches up and touches the scarf where it hangs, then lets his fingers drift down to the photograph. He covers the blurred child without looking down, his wedding band catching the firelight.
“You didn’t,” he says quietly. “The interruptions are behind us, I think.”
I step back, unsure if he wants privacy. “I can leave this and go,” I say. “You look tired.”
“Sit,” he says abruptly.
The word lands more like a plea than a command.
I pull the other leather chair closer, the legs scraping softly over the Persian rug. When I sit, the cushion exhales air with a tired sigh. Outside the window behind him, Harbor Glen curves along the narrow peninsula, a string of lit mansions perched above the black drop of the cliffs. From here, the back roads that locals use to bypass the manicured town center look like faint veins through the snow-dusted trees.
Robert turns one of the photos over and back in his hands, not really looking at it. “I owe you an apology,” he says.
Every muscle in my body tightens. A dozen possibilities slam through my brain—Lydia’s accident, the trust, Riley—but I keep my voice level.
“For what?” I ask.
He lifts the glass, studies the level, then sets it down without drinking. “For leaving you alone in this house with… pressures,” he says. “For letting Evelyn handle things I should have handled as a father. And as a doctor.”
My throat goes dry. I reach for the glass of water on the table between us, the one Claire must have set out earlier, and take a sip. It tastes faintly of chlorine and the lemon slice floating on top.
“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I say. “You’ve always been kind to me.”
“Kindness and courage are not the same thing,” he says. He looks finally at the harbor, not at me. “I had one. I needed the other.”
My heart thuds against my ribs, a drum in my ears. I think of Riley’s email drafting itself in the time-release system, its timer ticking down in some digital corner. I think of my own DNA report, the stranger’s name hovering where my mother should have been.
“Is this about the hospital?” I ask. “Or the foundation? Because I keep stumbling over… inconsistencies.”
His mouth tightens at the word. “You’re very polite,” he says. “My son chose a woman who wraps dynamite in good manners.”
Heat flashes up my neck, anger and something like gratitude colliding. “Evelyn calls it disloyalty,” I say. “You call it dynamite. I call it wanting the stories to line up.”
He exhales through his nose, a soft, defeated sound. “The stories never line up,” he says. “Not all the way. Not when you build a life on triage.”
I blink. “On what?”
“Choosing who you can save with the resources you have,” he says. “Hospitals are built on that calculation. So are families, in their own way.”
The fire crackles. A piece of log shifts, sending up a brief flare that lights the lines around his eyes, deep grooves carved by years of smiling for donors and frowning over charts.
“I signed a lot of papers,” he says.
My fingers grip the arms of my chair. “What kind of papers?”
“Consent forms. Transfers. Foundation grants, research approvals.” His gaze drifts to the shelves of leather-bound volumes behind me. “Adoption agreements. Trust documents. Emergency protocols after… incidents.”
I hear the word incidents and see Lydia’s tree at the cliff’s edge, branches rattling in the wind. I see the police report with the scribbled-over “two minors unaccounted for.”
“You’re the chair of the board,” I say carefully. “It makes sense you’d sign things.”
“The chair,” he repeats, like it’s a joke. “The man at the head of the table, handed a stack with colored tabs and assurances from counsel that everything is in order. The husband whose wife says, ‘It’s taken care of, Robert, just sign.’”
He lifts his right hand and studies the faint ink stain on his index finger, as if he can still see the pen marks from decades of signatures.
“Did you read them?” I ask. My voice comes out softer than I intend.
His hand drops. He does not answer immediately. The clock on the mantel ticks through six heavy seconds.
“Not all of them,” he says at last. “Not carefully. Not… critically. Not the way I read a chart in the ICU.”
He closes his eyes briefly, lashes leaving faint shadows on his cheeks.
“I trusted my lawyers,” he says. “I trusted Evelyn. She was… thorough. She said she was protecting the family and the hospital. That we were helping children who would otherwise fall through the cracks. That someone had to make difficult choices.”
The words line up exactly with the speeches I’ve heard at Mercer Foundation galas, the same phrases donors eat up between sips of champagne.
“Were you helping them?” I ask. “The children. The mothers. The… second daughter.”
His eyes snap to mine at that last phrase. For a moment, the room feels too small, the air too thick.
“Hannah,” he says sharply.
“I’ve seen the trust,” I say. “Mercer Family Trust II. Second Daughter Beneficiary. I’ve seen the redactions. I’ve seen the police report from Lydia’s accident with two minors unaccounted for. And I’ve seen a DNA report that says—”
My voice breaks. I swallow hard, the water in my mouth suddenly metallic.
“That says what it says,” I finish.
His shoulders slump, a building caving in slow motion. He looks older than I’ve ever seen him, older than he did in the hospital wing after a fourteen-hour shift.
“I failed my daughters,” he says.
The plural lands between us like a dropped scalpel.
“Which daughters?” I ask quietly.
His gaze flickers to the box of photographs, to the harbor, to the framed portrait on the far wall of Evelyn, Daniel, and Lydia in front of the hospital’s grand opening. His voice, when it comes, is barely above a whisper.
“The one we buried,” he says. “And the one we… lost to the system.”
A roaring starts in my ears. “Lost how?” I ask. “To what system? The adoption system you oversaw? The one your foundation funded?”
He shakes his head once, a small, jerky motion.
“Lines were blurred,” he says. “Between charity and… arrangement. Between closed adoption and… removal. Catastrophes, Hannah. There were catastrophes. Babies who died, or were said to have died. Mothers who signed papers under duress. A child who—”
He stops. His throat works.
“Who what?” I press. My nails bite into the leather.
He squeezes his eyes shut. “A child whose file did not match any reality I could accept,” he says. “Names that shifted. Birth dates adjusted. A trust written to atone, perhaps, and then wielded like a leash.”
Riley’s face flashes in my mind, lit by laptop glow, saying I am Riley Mercer, née Shaw.
“You knew,” I say. My voice has gone flat. “You knew something was wrong.”
“I suspected,” he says quickly. “Evelyn said… she said there were irregularities, but that to expose them would hurt more people than it helped. That the children were safe where they were. That the mothers had moved on. That dredging it up would destroy Daniel.”
He finally picks up his glass and takes a sip. The ice clinks sharply, brittle as bone.
“I chose my son,” he says. “Over ghosts.”
My chest twists. “They’re not ghosts,” I say. “They’re daughters. Sons. Real people living with names that don’t fit and histories that don’t belong to them.”
His hands tremble. He sets the glass down too hard; liquid sloshes over his fingers. The smell of scotch mingles with woodsmoke and lemon, sharp in my nose.
“You’re right,” he says. “And I am late. Too late to be the man who threw his body in front of the machine when it mattered.”
I lean forward. “You’re not too late,” I say. “You can still tell the truth. You can still back us when—”
“Us,” he repeats. “You and… the investigator girl?”
“Her name is Riley,” I say. “Riley Shaw. Riley Mercer.”
His jaw tightens around the last name. “You know what Evelyn will do if she hears that from my mouth?” he asks. “She will scorch the earth. She will call every judge she’s bought holiday tickets for, every council member whose child got a scholarship because of this family. She will paint you as delusional, that girl as an extortionist, and me as senile.”
“She’s already laying groundwork to call me unstable,” I say. “Bringing in Dr. Lang. Collecting notes. Hinting I’m under stress in front of staff.”
He flinches at the therapist’s name. “I told her that was unnecessary,” he says weakly.
“But you didn’t stop it,” I say.
He presses his fingers to his temples, massaging in small circles. “You think I don’t know what she’s capable of?” he says. “I’ve watched her build and rebuild this town’s spine. Harbor Glen sits on land held together by her checks. You pull one out and the whole peninsula cracks. People lose jobs, clinics close. Children go untreated. Do you want that on your conscience alongside whatever… truth you drag into the light?”
“Do you want Riley’s stolen life on yours for another decade?” I ask.
The question hangs there, electric.
His eyes glisten, but no tears fall. He swallows them back like everything else.
“Please,” he says. “For Daniel. Leave this alone.”
The request hits me harder than any threat Evelyn has thrown. “For Daniel,” I repeat.
“He is not strong the way you are,” Robert says. “He has spent his life believing in the story we told him because the alternative would have broken him as a child. He still needs that story, Hannah.”
“He needs the truth,” I say. “Even if it breaks him.”
Robert shakes his head. “No,” he whispers. “He needs a life beyond his mother’s shadow. If you wage this war, she will drag him into the center. She will make him choose. She will not forgive his choice.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” I say. “Maybe he needs to choose.”
Footsteps sound in the hallway, light and measured. A familiar perfume threads under the smoke, citrus and something colder, practiced.
Robert straightens in his chair, spine snapping into place. The conversation slams shut behind his eyes.
Evelyn appears in the doorway, her hand resting lightly on the frame.
“There you are,” she says, eyes flicking from me to Robert to the scarf, reading the room in one sweep. “Claire said you were delivering something and vanished.”
I stand too quickly, my chair scraping the rug. “Robert left his scarf at lunch,” I say. “I was just dropping it off.”
Her gaze touches the box of photographs, lingers a half-second on the harbor scene, then returns to his face. “Reminiscing?” she asks.
“Nothing more,” Robert says smoothly. His voice has its usual boardroom tone again. “Hannah was kind enough to keep an old man company.”
“How thoughtful,” Evelyn says. Her smile glows, but her eyes lock on mine like nails. “You do have a talent for finding the past, dear.”
The heater kicks on, sending a rush of warm air past my legs. I can’t tell if I’m shaking from heat or from restraint.
“I should let you both rest,” I say. “Thank you for the conversation, Robert.”
I walk past Evelyn, close enough to smell the faint starch of her shirt, the salt from the sea woven into her hair. She doesn’t move aside. I have to angle my shoulder to avoid brushing her.
“Sleep well, Hannah,” she says softly.
The words sound like a warning.
In the hallway, the air cools, the scent of disinfectant from the hospital drifting in through a cracked window. I press my palm against the wall, feeling the solid bone of the house under the paint.
Inside the study, Robert knows a second daughter was swallowed by their system and did nothing. Now he asks me to join him in that silence for Daniel’s sake.
The question that drives me down the corridor, away from the firelight and back toward the guest room where my laptop waits, is not whether Robert will ever find the courage to choose between his wife and his daughters.
It is whether Daniel, when he finally hears the truth his father refused to say aloud, will step into the space Robert vacated—or retreat into the story Evelyn wrote for him and let us go to war without him.