The sound of knives on porcelain still rings in my ears when the first scream happens.
Not a horror-movie scream. Not even a startled shriek. Just a precise, trained exclamation, pitched to cut through clinking glass and low donor gossip without sounding hysterical.
“Oh,” Evelyn says from across the sitting room. “No. No, no, no.”
I look up from the coffee saucer I’m pretending to care about. The fire burns low in the stone hearth, throwing orange light across the tray of petit fours, the empty champagne flutes, the gleaming white of the Mercer crest etched into the coffee cups. Guests linger, some perched on the sofas, others standing near the windows that frame the harbor in black and silver.
The air tastes like sugar and smoke and a faint salt tang drifting in through a cracked window. Beyond the glass, the Long Island Sound rolls against the base of the cliffs, swallowing the lights of Harbor Glen’s peninsula one by one as people go to bed.
Evelyn stands beside the marble-topped console where she always drops her jewelry after events, hand hovering over the open velvet box. Her bracelets and rings lie in neat rows, except for one empty slot, a faint outline on the velvet where metal used to rest.
“Is everything all right?” Daniel asks from my side, already half out of his chair.
Her fingers pat the air, searching for something that isn’t there.
“My bracelet,” she says. “Robert’s gift. The one from our twentieth anniversary.”
The room shifts. Conversation drops to a murmur. A couple who had been talking about the next Light the Harbor parade fall silent, their eyes cutting toward the console.
I remember that bracelet: a thin line of diamonds and sapphires, Mercer-crest blue, delicate enough to whisper taste, expensive enough to buy a car. I also remember the way she told me once, in a rare moment of manufactured intimacy, that it had been “one of Lydia’s favorites to play with.”
“You wear it all the time,” one of the board wives says, her pearls clicking when she turns. “Maybe you left it upstairs?”
Evelyn presses her bare wrist, thumb smoothing over the ridge of her pulse like she can rub the bracelet back into existence.
“No, I took it off here,” she says. “I remember because the clasp stuck for a moment. Robert, don’t you remember?” She looks toward him, giving him the line.
Robert blinks behind his glasses, heavy-lidded from wine and pain meds. “You did put something down there,” he says slowly. “Claire brought you a cloth.”
The housekeeper at the edge of the room flinches when her name is spoken. Claire steps forward, hands folded, apron crisp over her black dress.
“Yes, ma’am,” she says. “I handed you the cloth and you put the bracelet in the box. I saw you do it.”
Evelyn’s mouth twists in a wounded smile.
“Thank you, Claire,” she says. “Then it must be here. I must have misplaced it. I’m sure it’s nothing at all.”
She lets the pause stretch. All eyes slide to the empty slot again.
I feel heat crawl up my neck. My fingers tighten around the coffee cup until the edge digs into my thumb. I know exactly what this is. I saw the contingency plan bullet points in her files last night: narrative shaping, legal containment. Asset removal, if required.
The bracelet is not an accident. It’s a prop.
“We don’t want to cause a fuss,” she says, turning to the guests with a rueful laugh. “I’m sure it will turn up. People come and go. Coats, bags, so many hands.”
People. Hands. I taste the implication like metal.
Daniel steps forward. “Mom, I’m sure it got moved during dessert,” he says. “We had the extra table brought in. Let’s not worry everyone.”
Evelyn gives him a grateful smile that looks rehearsed.
“You’re right,” she says. “No reason to worry our friends. Still…” She looks toward the staff clustered by the doorway. “Would you mind checking the usual places? Under cushions, by the side tables, perhaps in the powder room near the donor wall photos?”
She says it lightly, like a game, like a scavenger hunt for grown-ups. The staff nod and fan out, trained and efficient, lifting cushions, peering under rugs, checking the powder room where framed pictures of donors’ names hang in rigid order next to the Mercer crest.
I sit very still, the porcelain cooling in my hand.
Inside my pocket, my phone presses against my palm, full of pictures of her surveillance cabinet. Of the line about “amplify perception of HCM instability before public allegations emerge.”
My chest tightens.
“Hannah?”
I jump. Daniel has turned back to me, eyes soft with concern.
“You okay?” he asks under the murmur of the room.
“Fine,” I say. “Just tired.”
Tired does not cover the way my nerves spark under my skin. Tired does not cover the smell of lemon polish and perfume and faint sweat all mashed into one thick taste on my tongue.
“I’m sure they’ll find it,” I add. “There are cameras, right?”
His gaze flickers up to the small dark dome in the corner, the one aimed at the front of the room, not the console.
“They don’t catch everything,” he says. “It’s a big house.”
The house always misses what she wants it to miss.
Ten minutes later, when cushions have been fluffed back into place and the powder room declared “clear,” Evelyn offers apologetic smiles all around.
“It’s probably upstairs,” she says. “Things disappear in big old houses and turn up in the most embarrassing spots. Sock drawers. Shoe boxes.” She laughs, inviting everyone to laugh at scatterbrained wealth.
People relax, grateful for the script. Coats appear, cheeks are kissed, promises about summer cocktail hours on various Harbor Glen decks float through the air. Daniel gets pulled aside by a foundation donor who wants to talk about committee seats; Robert sinks deeper into his armchair.
I rise to say goodnight to a couple I barely spoke to, my head buzzing. I catch Claire’s eye. She offers a small, tight nod. We both know nothing in this house “disappears” without permission.
When the last guest leaves and the staff begin clearing dessert plates, Evelyn claps her hands softly.
“Before everyone goes up,” she says, voice warm, “would you mind checking the bedrooms? Just in case.”
The words just in case hang there. No one is named. Everyone is implicated.
“Mother,” Daniel says, returning to her side. “Come on. It’s late. You’re making people uncomfortable.”
She touches his arm. “Daniel, we have staff who count on us to keep their jobs safe,” she says quietly, but not quietly enough. “If something like this goes missing and shows up in a pawnshop, Harbor Glen talks. And you know how they talk.”
Harbor Glen, with its narrow peninsula and its country club waitlists and its unspoken rankings based on whose name appears where on which donor wall, lives for stories like that. Staff stealing from Mercers. It would bounce from the hospital lounge to the yacht decks at Light the Harbor in a week.
She turns her gaze toward the cluster of employees.
“No one is accusing anyone,” she says. “I would never do that. I just want us all to know we checked. For everyone’s sake.”
My face burns. The language is pure Evelyn: protective on the surface, poisonous underneath. I stand rooted by the fireplace while staff disperse, heading toward the staircase and the guest wing.
Claire hesitates, eyes flicking to me, then follows the others.
“You should get some sleep,” Evelyn says to me with a sympathetic tilt of her head. “You’ve been under such strain lately. We all have.”
I hear the therapist in that word strain. Stress-induced behavior. Projection. All those gentle diagnoses that can be sharpened into weapons.
“I’m fine,” I say. My voice sounds too high, too thin.
Her hand brushes my arm, the touch light and unbearably proprietary.
“You don’t have to be fine,” she says. “You’re family.”
The last word lands like a trap snapping shut.
I walk upstairs on stiff legs, past the framed photos of Mercer yachts lit up for Light the Harbor, the family waving from the upper deck while the town watches from the docks and catalogues who stands where. In one photo, the bracelet glitters on Evelyn’s wrist, a spark of blue fire.
In my room, the air smells like the sea and the faint cloying sweetness of the lilies Evelyn had sent up that morning. My overnight bag sits at the foot of the bed where I left it, zipper closed, canvas sides slightly slumped.
I’m halfway to the bathroom when a knock comes at the door.
“Yes?” I call.
The door opens a crack. Claire peers in.
“Mrs. Mercer?” she says.
“Call me Hannah,” I answer automatically. “Everything okay?”
Her throat moves. “Mrs. Mercer asked that I check your room,” she says. “Everyone’s rooms. For the bracelet.”
The words scraping the inside of my skull are not ones I can say in front of her. I just nod and step aside, palms damp.
“Go ahead,” I say. “Please.”
She scans the room, eyes moving over the dresser, the bedside table with my water glass and the abandoned book, the chair with my sweater draped over it. Her hands stay clasped at her waist; she doesn’t touch anything.
“She asked us to be thorough,” Claire murmurs.
That’s when she looks at the bag.
For the first time, her hands move. She approaches the canvas and crouches, the floorboard creaking under her knees. Her fingers rest on the zipper pull, then pause.
Her eyes lift to mine. There’s apology there. And fear.
“I’m so sorry,” she says under her breath.
She opens the bag.
Inside are my clothes, folded the way I left them. My toiletries case. The laptop sleeve. And right on top of the folded jeans I wore to the docks with Riley two days ago, a narrow line of blue and white flashes in the lamplight.
Time stutters.
Claire exhales, a small, crushed sound, and reaches in with careful fingers. She lifts the bracelet out by one end, letting it dangle like a string of ice. The stones catch the light, throwing flecks of sapphire across the wall.
“No,” I say. My voice comes out raw. “No. That’s not—Claire, that wasn’t in there. I never touched it. You saw me at dinner. I never—”
My sentences splinter. Heat rushes to my face. The room feels too small, the ceiling too low, the smell of lilies suddenly sour.
“I know,” she whispers. Her eyes shine. “I know where you were the whole time. But I have to call her.”
“Then tell her you found it under the bed,” I say. “Or in the hallway. Or—”
My brain claws for alternatives, for any story that doesn’t put her in the position of accusing her employer’s daughter-in-law. For any story that doesn’t give Evelyn exactly what she staged this for.
Claire’s mouth twists. “The cameras in the hallway,” she says quietly. “And on the stairs. If I lie, they’ll know. And they’ll say I helped.”
The surveillance domes blink behind her in my mind. Evelyn doesn’t just count risk; she records it.
Claire lifts her chin the slightest bit.
“I’ll tell her I found it,” she says. “I don’t have to say how quickly. Maybe that buys you… something.”
Something. Not safety.
She steps toward the door, the bracelet glinting in her hand. I reach out, then stop myself from grabbing her wrist. There is no version where ripping the bracelet away helps.
“Claire,” I say.
She pauses.
“I know you didn’t put it there,” I say. “And I didn’t either.”
Her eyes soften.
“I know,” she repeats. “That’s the problem.”
She slips out before I can answer.
Minutes later, voices rise in the hall. Footsteps. The door opens wider and Evelyn appears, flanked by Daniel and Robert, who grips the doorframe tighter than necessary.
“Hannah?” Evelyn says, voice smooth. “Claire tells me… well, this is awkward.”
Claire stands behind her, face pale, hands clasped empty now.
“It was in my bag,” I say before she can launch into her performance. “Which means somebody put it there.”
Evelyn presses her hand to her chest.
“Darling, no one is saying you took it,” she says quickly. “This kind of thing happens when people are under stress. We misplace things. We tuck things away in… unusual places and then don’t remember.”
Her eyes flick to Daniel on the word stress.
“I didn’t tuck anything,” I say. “I never touched it.”
Daniel looks between us, jaw tight. The fireplace light downstairs has followed him up on his clothes; he smells faintly of smoke and the crisp wool of his blazer. His gaze drops to my open bag, then to the empty velvet slot he knows by heart.
“There has to be an explanation,” he says. “Hannah, did you maybe—during dessert—”
“No,” I cut in. My voice cracks. “Daniel, I didn’t.”
He meets my eyes. For a second, I see the man who danced with me under fairy lights the night of our wedding, laughing, hands steady on my waist. Then the second flickers and the son comes back, the one who grew up in a world where things go missing and stories get written for everyone’s protection.
“We can sort this out tomorrow,” Evelyn says. “Privately. There’s no reason to upset anyone tonight. I’d hate for this to become a… talking point around town.”
Around town. At the country club bar, at the hospital coffee kiosk, at the next Light the Harbor boat parade where people crane their necks to see who made the guest list and who didn’t.
“So what is this tonight?” I ask. “A dress rehearsal for my mugshot?”
Her lips thin.
“You’re tired,” she says. “You’ve been staying up late. The therapist mentioned your sleep. Sometimes stress and… obsessive thinking can lead people to self-sabotaging behaviors. Crying out for help.”
Daniel flinches at the word therapist. My lungs claw for air.
“Are you hearing her?” I ask him. “She is laying groundwork. Theft. Mental health issues. This is a narrative, not concern.”
“Hannah,” he says quietly. “I’m trying to understand. I walk in and my mother’s bracelet is in your bag. What am I supposed to think?”
“You’re supposed to think she planted it,” I say. “Or had someone plant it. You’re supposed to remember that this house is full of cameras and cabinets full of files rating everyone you’ve ever dated on their risk to the family.”
His eyes widen. “What cabinet?”
I bite my tongue. I can’t admit to breaking into his mother’s locked files without handing her a legal gift.
“I can’t give you my source without making things worse,” I say. “But I know what she’s doing. And if you let her, she will turn me into a case study: unstable, dishonest, a liability.”
Silence spreads across the room like frost.
Evelyn breaks it with a soft, wounded sigh.
“I think we should all get some rest,” she says. “Clearly, feelings are high.”
She steps back, signaling the end of the scene. Robert shuffles after her, eyes on the floor. Claire lingers another heartbeat, then follows.
Daniel stays in the doorway.
“Did you take it?” he asks, in a voice so low I can barely hear it over the wind outside.
The question slices deeper than any accusation.
“No,” I say. I keep my eyes on his, no blinking, no flinching. “I did not take your mother’s bracelet. I did not hide it in my bag. I will swear that under oath, in any court, to any judge she thinks she owns.”
He searches my face like he’s looking for a tell.
“I want to believe you,” he says.
Want to. Not do.
My hands tremble. I press them into the mattress to steady them.
“Then believe me,” I say. “Because the next time she decides to ‘misplace’ something, it might not be jewelry. It might be my sanity. Or my freedom.”
He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing.
“We’ll talk in the morning,” he says. “When everyone’s calmer.”
He closes the door gently, like noise would shatter me.
I sink onto the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under my weight. The lilies’ scent presses in, cloying. In the distance, a faint foghorn moans from the Sound, and I picture Harbor Glen’s cliffside mansions lit up, sitting literally above the law while the hospital on the hill pumps its antiseptic air into the night.
In my pocket, my phone buzzes with a silent notification: Riley’s name on the lock screen, a new message waiting. I don’t open it yet. My eyes stay on the door Daniel just closed between us.
The question needling under my skin is no longer whether Evelyn is willing to fabricate petty crimes to destroy my credibility.
It is how many planted objects and concerned notes it will take before a judge in this town—breathing hospital disinfectant and reading donor walls with Mercer crests at every turn—decides the story of my instability is more convincing than my reality, and whether Daniel will stand in the doorway beside me when that moment comes or step quietly aside and let his mother’s narrative lock shut around me.