By midday the estate hums like a beehive someone kicked.
Florists cart buckets of white roses down the hall, their scent fighting with lemon polish and the ever-present salt sneaking in around the old window frames. In the distance I hear workers testing microphones in the ballroom, that hollow echo of “Check one, check one,” bouncing off crystal and glass. Every time I glance toward the cliffs, I see crews down by the harbor setting up for the Light the Harbor parade, yachts lining up like teeth, every slip a social ranking.
I walk the upstairs corridor with an armload of folded linens because carrying something makes me look purposeful. Staff pass me with their eyes carefully lowered, each of them trained in the Mercer art of being present but invisible. The donor wall in the foyer catches flashes of winter light, the wave crest etched and repeated until it may as well be wallpaper.
Claire steps out of the laundry room without warning and I flinch, sending a towel sliding off my pile.
“Oh—sorry,” I say, swallowing a shrill laugh. “Nerves.”
“Everyone is keyed up,” she says, bending gracefully to grab the fallen towel. Her accent carries the softened consonants of someone who has been practicing polite for a very long time. “Tomorrow is… important.”
Important. Award, speech, ambush.
I shift my stack so she can place the towel on top. Her fingers brush mine, cool and dry.
For a second her hand doesn’t withdraw.
“Look what I found behind the ironing board,” she murmurs, low enough that the hum of a vacuum down the hall masks it. “I think someone left it behind.”
When she lifts her palm away, a hard plastic rectangle sits on the folded linen. White, with the hospital’s abstract wave crest in blue and a small photo rectangle left blank.
A key card.
“Claire,” I whisper, throat tight. “I—”
“You mustn’t let Mrs. Evelyn see you with extra things,” she says in a normal, brisk tone, already turning to her cart. “You know how she likes everything accounted for.”
Her eyes meet mine for a breath, dark and fierce. Then the shutters come down again and she pushes the cart away, humming a carol under her breath like this is any other holiday.
I stare at the card until the wave pattern goes furry.
I tuck it deep between two sheets, then adjust the stack so nothing shows and keep walking, my pulse drumming in my ears. Every step feels heavier now, weighed down by the tiny, dangerous gift in my hands.
In my room, I lock the door before I even set the linens down. I fish the card out and hold it up to the light slanting in from the Sound. The name field is empty; the back has a faded sticker with a number and the words “FOUNDATION LEVEL ACCESS” in small print.
“Who did you belong to?” I murmur.
Somewhere downstairs, Claire’s laugh floats up through the vents—polite, practiced, exactly right for a woman who has cleaned other people’s secrets for decades. I picture her slipping this card into her pocket and holding it, waiting for the day someone might use it for a different kind of cleaning.
I snap a photo of both sides on my phone, then slide the physical card into the lining of my bag. It presses against the duplicate of Riley’s trust letter and the printed server logs like a new layer in a very fragile armor.
I text Riley: I’ve got a key card. Foundation-level. Courtesy of the upstairs resistance.
Her reply comes fast: You have a mole now? I’m hurt, I thought I was your only one.
I send back the photo. Housekeeper. Longtime. No details over text. I’ll brief you off-camera.
Three dots blink.
Be careful, Cole-Mercer. People who help us are painting targets on themselves.
I stare at those words until the screen dims. She’s right. I already have Claire’s face filed next to Mrs. Donnelly’s and the junior nurses who swallowed the truth. The ledger of people the Mercers owe is getting longer.
That afternoon I drive down from the hill into town, taking one of the back roads locals favor, the narrow route that bypasses the manicured main drag and the country club’s stone pillars. The tires sing over salt-scattered asphalt. On the horizon, the hospital crouches on its rise, glass and steel catching the weak winter sun.
My pretext is a “quick check-in” with the gala events team at the foundation, in case Evelyn asks. The real reason sits underneath: I need to feel the place where so many stories were rewritten.
The Mercer Foundation Wing lobby is its own ecosystem—warm air, coffee, and disinfectant. The donor wall dominates one side, names marching upward in neat tiers, the wave crest engraved at the top like a brand. A cluster of people in winter coats waits in line at the coffee kiosk, and the low murmur of hospital life buzzes beyond the glass doors.
I join the line, slipping into the role of anxious spouse getting caffeine before a consult. My phone vibrates in my pocket.
Unknown number.
I answer with a tight, “Hello?”
“Mrs. Mercer?” a young voice asks. “This is Sam from the events office. I was told you might be stopping by to check on last-minute gala details.”
My skin prickles.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m here now, actually. In the lobby.”
“Perfect,” Sam says. “I’m grabbing coffee. I’ll bump into you in a second.”
The line shifts. A guy in a rumpled button-down and lanyard slides into place behind me a moment later, holding his phone to his ear like everyone else in this building.
“Hi,” he says, softly enough that the woman in front of me doesn’t look up. He drops his phone into his pocket. “I’m Sam.”
Up close he looks even younger—mid-twenties, with faint acne scars along his jaw and deep shadows under his eyes. His ID badge reads “Sam H., Development Assistant.”
I keep my gaze forward.
“You work with Daniel,” he adds under his breath. “On the outreach stuff. He’s… nice.”
I let that sit, neutral territory, while the espresso machine hisses.
“He tries,” I say quietly. “It’s a complicated ecosystem.”
Sam huffs a breath through his nose.
“That’s one word,” he says. “Listen, I can’t be seen talking to you for long. Cameras everywhere. The kiosk, the elevators, the donor wall. They don’t all belong to the hospital.”
My shoulders tighten.
“Then don’t,” I answer. “You don’t have to do anything.”
He steps half an inch closer, just enough that our coats brush.
“My aunt lost a baby here,” he says. His voice is steady, but the hand holding his ID fidgets. “They told her the baby died. They wouldn’t let her see the body. When I started working in Development, I thought I’d find answers. Records. Anything.”
Heat hits the back of my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Stop,” he says quickly, glancing up at the dome camera above the kiosk. “You don’t say that in this lobby.”
The barista calls, “Next!”
I step to the counter. My fingers tap my card too hard against the reader.
“Large drip,” I manage. “Whatever’s fresh.”
“Same,” Sam says from my elbow.
Cups thud. Lids snap on. I move sideways to the pick-up area, heart punching at my ribs.
“I found a box in a storage closet last month,” he murmurs, barely moving his lips. “Old gala photos. Lawn parties at the estate. Kids’ days. Volunteers. Someone had written ‘discard after digitizing’ on the lid. The box was still sealed.”
I swallow.
“And?” I ask.
“And I opened it.” He coughs, covering the word with a fake throat clear. “I recognized someone who’s not supposed to exist.”
The world narrows to the space between us, to the hiss of milk steaming. The hospital smells sharper now, the tang of alcohol wipes cutting through coffee and perfume.
“Why tell me?” I whisper.
“Because you’re the only one looking in the direction that hurts them,” he says. “And you look like someone who remembers what pain is for.”
The barista calls my name. I step forward, grab my cup. Sam reaches past me to take his, his arm crossing mine. For half a second his hand disappears into his messenger bag, then reemerges.
An unmarked manila envelope appears between our coffee cups, resting against the sugar packets.
“Someone left that behind,” he says, louder, already turning away. “We should take better care of our materials.”
My fingers close around the envelope so fast I slosh coffee onto the counter.
“Thanks,” I say, voice too bright. “I’ll drop it at the desk.”
“Of course, Mrs. Mercer,” he replies.
Our eyes meet once, sharp and brief. Then he is walking toward the elevators, sipping his coffee like any tired staffer at an overworked hospital.
I carry the envelope and my cup to a corner by the glass wall, pretending to admire the view: Harbor Glen’s town center below, the docks, the thin back road I drove in on, and beyond that, the scatter of yachts that will light the harbor like moving constellations. On the hill opposite, the Mercers’ estate stares back through the haze.
In the reflection of the glass, the envelope looks innocent. My hand around it doesn’t.
I don’t open it there. Instead, I tuck it inside my coat, text Riley a single word—Proof?—and head for the parking lot, the smell of disinfectant clinging to my hair.
We meet an hour later in her car, our usual confessional, parked on a side street that runs parallel to the docks. The water breathes against the pilings, and somewhere someone is burning wood; the smoke drifts through the cracked window.
“You’re jumpy,” she says, watching me. “More than usual.”
“Gala jitters,” I say. “And the part where there are now at least two people inside the machine risking their lives for us.”
Her eyes sharpen.
“Two?”
I tell her about Claire and the key card, then about Sam and the coffee kiosk, editing out anything that could identify them more than their own courage already has. As I talk, she stares at the envelope on her lap, its flap still sealed.
“He said he saw someone who isn’t supposed to exist,” I finish. “In a box that was supposed to disappear.”
“So we’re opening Schrödinger’s photo,” she mutters. “Fantastic.”
I force a small smile and nod at the envelope.
“You should do it,” I say.
She runs her thumb along the edge like she’s testing a blade. Then she tears it open in one clean motion and spills the contents onto the center console.
Glossy prints slide over each other, blurs of color and light. We sort them into a messy fan.
Garden parties at the estate, I realize. I recognize the ivy-covered stone wall, the clipped hedges, the crooked willow near the cliffs. Adults in linen and silk, their mouths parted mid-laugh. Children in smocked dresses and little blazers, holding balloons stamped with the Mercer crest.
Riley’s fingers freeze on one.
“There,” she whispers.
I look.
A little girl stands on the brick path that curves around the Mercer garden fountain. She can’t be more than three. Her hair is dark and wild around her face, half-tamed by a crooked barrette. She’s wearing a yellow dress with tiny ducks along the hem and holding a stuffed rabbit by one ear. Her cheeks are flushed, eyes squinted in a sunlit grin aimed straight at whoever took the photo.
Behind her, blurred but unmistakable, the stone dolphin fountain rises, water arcing from its mouth. Behind that, the estate’s back facade, the same windows I’ve looked out of a hundred times, glint in the daylight.
“You know that’s you,” I say, but the words scrape on the way out.
Riley doesn’t answer right away. Her thumb traces the rabbit’s dangling ear.
“I had one like that,” she says finally. “I thought I remembered it from one of the foster houses. But that’s…” She laughs once, the sound thin. “That’s the Mercer fountain. I remember the sound it made at night. I thought I dreamed it.”
The wind rattles the car a little. Down the street, the harbor smells heavier, salt and diesel and something metallic riding the air.
“Look at the tiles,” she adds, pointing. “On the ground, near her feet. That mosaic.”
I lean closer. The bricks around the fountain form a ring, and in the center of it someone embedded a circular mosaic: blue and white tiles in the shape of an abstract wave.
The Mercer crest, under toddler Riley’s shoes.
“There’s no way to argue with that,” I say. “Even Evelyn’s PR guy can’t spin your face off that tile.”
Riley snorts.
“He’ll try,” she says. “He’ll say I volunteered, or came as a guest, or that my memory is ‘unresolved pain.’ But kids that age don’t get front-row seats at these parties unless they belong to somebody.”
My hand goes to the photo on reflex, then pulls back. I don’t want to smudge it.
“Who took it?” I ask. “Who was on the other side of the lens?”
“Somebody who wanted to keep me,” she murmurs. “At least long enough to press the shutter.”
We sift through the rest of the prints. In one, Riley’s yellow dress is a flash at the edge while Evelyn shakes hands with a state senator. In another, Riley sits on a picnic blanket beside Lydia, who is a few years older, both girls leaning over a board game. Lydia’s face is turned away, but her hair, that Mercer auburn, catches the light.
Riley’s breath stutters.
“That’s her,” she says. “I remember her voice. She taught me a song about waves that crash and get back up.”
My chest tightens until I can’t breathe.
“This is what they’re terrified of,” I say. “Not just logs and trust documents. This. Your face in their garden, next to their daughter.”
She flips one photo face down, then another.
“We have to keep these off any cloud,” she says. “Print only. The more copies, the harder they are to kill, but the more chances to trace the leak.”
“Sam said the box was marked for discard,” I remind her. “Someone already tried to erase this once and got lazy or interrupted.”
“Evelyn probably thought the past was safe,” Riley says. “Nobody was supposed to go looking in old paper. Everything’s supposed to be digital and controllable now.”
I think of the sabotaged server, of directories wiped and backups corrupted, of Evelyn’s login stamped next to deletions. I think of the speech she’s rehearsing, the way she plans to cry over Lydia while painting us as opportunists.
“Paper cuts back,” I say.
Riley smiles, just a little.
“We need to scan these onto an offline drive,” she says. “And get one to the journalist in person. No email. No links. If their people can’t delete it with a keystroke, it stays.”
I nod, my mind already mapping which motel lamp we can unplug to make an outlet for her hard drive, which back road we can take to avoid the town’s security cameras on our way to meet the reporter.
“And Claire?” she asks. “And Sam? We never say their names to anyone. Not even Daniel.”
The protective urge that rises surprises me with its force.
“They’re mine to shield,” I say. “Evelyn already has enough names.”
Riley taps the edge of the toddler photo against the steering wheel, then looks up at me.
“Do you feel it?” she asks. “The house cracking? The hospital? It’s like the tide’s started to pull back in the wrong direction and nobody at the country club has noticed yet.”
Outside, a gust of wind sends a spray of harbor mist across the windshield, beads of water blurring the view of the boats bobbing in their slips. Beyond them, the hospital’s glass walls reflect the gray sky, and on the hill, the Mercer estate sits like a ship above the town, its windows dark in the afternoon light.
“I feel it,” I say.
My phone buzzes on the console, skittering against the stack of photos. The screen lights up with a name that chills me more than the draft sliding under the car door.
Evelyn.
I meet Riley’s eyes. Between us, the toddler in the yellow dress grins up from the garden of a house she was never meant to remember.
“Answer,” Riley whispers. “Let’s see how much she senses.”
My thumb hovers over the green button while Harbor Glen breathes around us—salt and woodsmoke and the faint tang of disinfectant drifting from the hill—waiting to see whether the woman who owns the lights on the harbor can already feel her shadow thinning.