I let the call ring out.
Riley watches my thumb hover over the glowing screen, then dim. I turn the phone facedown on the console between us, the toddler in the yellow dress smiling up from the photo underneath.
“You’re going to have to talk to her,” Riley says.
“She’ll get her audience,” I answer. “Just not on her terms.”
By the next afternoon, those terms look like gold and glass.
The ballroom smells like beeswax and fresh-cut flowers, the kind of scent that makes rich people think everything is clean. Chandeliers drip light over rows of round tables, their white cloths still bare, waiting for centerpieces. Outside the wall of glass, the harbor sits in its winter gray, boats bobbing in their slips, the early skeleton of the Light the Harbor parade visible in the distance. Yachts glide in, one after another, each one a floating name on the town’s invisible social census.
I stand near the stage and check my phone again. No missed calls from Evelyn since yesterday. It feels less like mercy and more like the silence before a wave breaks.
“Can you step back, dear?”
A lighting tech waves me away from the edge of the stage so he can adjust a cable. I murmur an apology and retreat toward the rear of the room, taking in the setup with the detached eye of someone studying a crime scene. The lectern onstage bears the Mercer crest, inlaid in brushed metal—those abstract waves, forever pretending to be about healing while they erase.
This is where Riley will stand. Where I might stand beside her. Right now, my reflection wavers in the glass doors like a ghost at my own future.
Staff move around me in a quiet choreography—unrolling carpets, polishing stemware, testing speakers. Somewhere deeper in the house, a caterer shouts about missing trays. The air tastes faintly of salt from the cracked terrace doors, a reminder that, technically, the cliff and the water outside exist in the same town as the hospital and the docks. The Mercer estate just pretends to float above all of it.
“Ten-minute break!” someone calls.
The crew peels away, a line of black-clad figures vanishing through the side doors toward the staff kitchen. The ballroom exhales, suddenly cavernous and quiet.
I walk out to the center of the room, counting the tables, the distance from the front row to the stage. I picture faces there, donors whose names are carved into the hospital’s marble donor wall, people who talk about “second chances” over cocktails while nurses scrub the tang of disinfectant out of their hair.
The overhead lights flicker, then dim.
I stop breathing.
The chandeliers settle into a lower, richer glow, the kind they use for photos, flattering and soft. The stage lights blink once, then come to life in a hazy wash, illuminating the lectern and the microphone in a lonely little island of brightness.
“There we are,” a voice says from the back.
I turn.
Evelyn stands by the double doors, one manicured hand still resting on the dimmer panel. She wears navy instead of her usual winter white, the color rich and flat under the low light. Pearls at her throat, hair perfect, lipstick a sharp, controlled red.
“Lighting tests?” I ask, hating the way my voice comes out thin.
“Among other things,” she says. “I like to see how a room behaves when you change its mood.”
She leaves the doors swung shut behind her, the soft click of the latch echoing louder than it should. We’re alone. The staff break suddenly feels less like a coincidence and more like a stage direction.
I force my feet to stay planted, my hands to stay loose at my sides.
“Everything looks beautiful,” I say. “Harbor Glen will be impressed.”
“Harbor Glen is already impressed,” she answers, walking toward me. “They just enjoy new opportunities to show it.”
She passes a table and straightens a fork that doesn’t need straightening. Her fingers trail lightly over the rim of a wineglass, making it sing the faintest note.
“You’ve been busy,” she adds. “Driving back and forth between the hill and town. Back roads, yes? You’re learning, Hannah. Very locals-only of you.”
My mouth tastes metallic.
“I like avoiding traffic,” I say.
“And attention,” she says, smiling. “Such a modest girl.”
She stops a few feet away, the chandeliers painting soft crescents of light under her eyes. Up close, she smells like her usual expensive perfume layered over something sharper—a trace of hospital disinfectant that seems to follow her, even out of context.
“We should talk,” she says. “Really talk, without therapists or husbands or staff hovering.”
“Therapists are useful,” I say. “They help people see patterns.”
“Yes,” she replies. “Especially when those patterns need to be documented.”
A bead of sweat crawls down between my shoulder blades. I picture the therapist’s tidy notebook, the phrases she used—projection, stress, family history—words that can be flipped into diagnoses with a little pressure.
“I know what you’re planning,” Evelyn says.
I keep my face neutral.
“The floral arrangements?” I ask. “I was thinking of asking for more greenery around the lectern.”
Her smile barely shifts, but her eyes cool.
“You and your… friend,” she says. “Your journalist. The little drama you’ve cooked up for my award ceremony.”
The room tilts for a second.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say.
She doesn’t bother answering that.
“Do you remember,” she asks instead, “what Dr. Adler said in our session? About your ‘difficulty distinguishing between internal anxiety and external threat’?”
The words land with a sickening clarity. I remember every syllable. I remember the way Evelyn folded a tissue with surgical precision while he spoke.
“He had concerns,” she continues, “about your history. Your mother’s instability. Your recent behaviors. The theft incident.”
My hands curl before I can stop them.
“I didn’t steal your bracelet,” I say.
“Of course you didn’t,” she replies, her tone maddeningly gentle. “But the record shows that you might have. The staff statements, your… confusion. People reading Dr. Adler’s notes will find that very compelling.”
“People?” I ask. “What people?”
She lifts her chin toward the far wall where the Mercer crest is projected in ghostly blue light, wavering slightly on the white paneling.
“Doctors,” she says. “Adler is well respected here. I have known the heads of psychiatry at Harbor Glen Memorial for decades. Chief of medicine, too. A concerning report from a specialist, accompanied by a worried mother-in-law and a distraught husband?” She shrugs. “That opens doors.”
The hospital on the hill suddenly feels closer, its bright corridors and locked wards reaching invisible fingers down toward this room.
“You’d try to have me committed,” I say.
“Try?” She lets out a small laugh. “Oh, Hannah. You really don’t understand how thin the ice is for women like you. Working-class background, complicated childhood, sudden access to wealth and stress. It doesn’t take much for people to nod and say, ‘Of course she broke.’”
My heart slams against my ribs. I swallow, tasting coffee and fear.
“Daniel wouldn’t let you,” I say.
She arches an eyebrow.
“Daniel will be devastated,” she says. “He will sign whatever papers the doctors recommend if it means keeping you safe from yourself. He has always deferred to experts when a situation is beyond him.”
My mind flashes to his face in the motel, pale and wrecked, begging me to come home, to let him “fix this.” I picture that same face in a hospital corridor, pen shaking over a form while a nurse murmurs, It’s for the best.
Evelyn watches my reaction with clinical interest, like she’s tracking vitals.
“And then there are the lawyers,” she continues, moving toward the stage. Her heels click softly on the floor, measured, unhurried. “You know some of them. You met Graham when he handled your prenup. Charming man.”
The memory of Graham’s easy grin and dense legalese hits like a punch.
“Your agreement includes provisions,” she says. “For marital misconduct, reputational harm, public slander of the family. Nothing unusual, really. Very standard for a family in our position.”
“And you think telling the truth about illegal adoptions qualifies as slander?” I ask.
“I think,” she says, running a hand along the polished edge of the stage, “that in the court of public opinion, perception is everything. A young woman with a history of ‘emotional difficulty,’ coached by an unstable stranger to attack the family that rescued her—that reads one way. A respected philanthropist with decades of service, who has tragically lost a child and devoted her life to saving others—that reads another.”
She steps up onto the stage with surprising agility, then turns and looks down at me. For a second, the chandelier light behind her makes her look taller, her silhouette cutting against the Mercer crest projected on the far wall.
“The local paper owes us favors,” she says. “So do the regional stations. I have hosted their fundraisers, saved their children’s lives, funded their scholarships. If you manufacture a scene tomorrow night, they will call me first. I will speak about my concern for you. Your fragile state. Your unfortunate alliance with somebody who has a documented history of… what was the phrase?” She tilts her head. “Instability in care settings.”
“Riley is not unstable,” I say, my voice sharpening.
“The file the hospital kept on her says otherwise,” Evelyn replies. “So do a string of foster reports. Traumatized children make such convenient villains when they grow up angry, don’t they?”
I take one step closer to the stage.
“You created that trauma,” I say. “You built your foundation on it. You’re proud of the lives you saved while you erased the ones that didn’t look good in the brochure.”
Something flickers across her face then—anger, or hurt, or both—but it passes quickly.
“Do you think the families we’ve helped will thank you for tearing this down?” she asks. “The women whose cancer treatments we funded? The babies who got NICU beds because of our donors? You’re about to jeopardize an entire ecosystem because you’ve decided one lost girl matters more than all the others.”
“She’s not lost,” I say. “She’s standing on the dock with proof you stole her life.”
Evelyn’s lips thin.
“You really have let that girl get inside your head,” she says. “You and Daniel both. It’s tragic, really, watching you throw away the future I arranged for you over a story you barely understand.”
She walks to the lectern and rests her hands on either side of it, gripping the edges like she’s already claiming tomorrow night.
“You’re still young,” she says, her voice dropping, intimate now. “You can choose a quiet life. You can walk in here with your husband on your arm, smile for the cameras, and let this pass. Accidents happen. Records are messy. You can decide that none of it is your burden to carry.”
The chandeliers hum above us, a soft electric buzz. Outside, a horn from the harbor carries faintly through the glass, some yacht announcing its arrival to the peninsula’s pecking order.
“And if I don’t?” I ask.
She looks straight at me, no softness now.
“Then I will do what is necessary,” she says. “I will give Adler everything he needs. I will let Graham unspool every clause you signed. I will tell the papers about your ‘episodes,’ the things you have said about hearing voices at night, about the shadow at the stairs—”
My breath jerks.
“You loosened that runner,” I say.
Her smile returns, chill and small.
“Accidents happen,” she repeats. “Especially on treacherous roads and old staircases. People in Harbor Glen understand these things. They know how quickly a moment can be misinterpreted. They trust me to interpret it for them.”
She releases the lectern and steps down from the stage, the heels of her shoes landing soundlessly on the carpet. She closes the distance between us until I can see the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, the careful paint of her face.
“You have no idea what I am capable of when my family is threatened,” she says quietly. “Ask anyone who has tried.”
My heart is racing so hard my fingers tingle. I make myself hold her gaze anyway.
“You keep calling this protection,” I say. “But all I see is fear.”
Her jaw tightens.
“I fear chaos,” she says. “I fear what happens when people tear down institutions without thinking about what replaces them. I fear watching Daniel grieve another sister because of your recklessness.”
The word sister hits me like a slap.
“Then stop pretending she’s a stranger,” I say. “She’s already lost you once.”
For the first time, Evelyn flinches.
A second later, her mask is back.
“This is my last kindness,” she says, lowering her voice until it barely stirs the air. “You either stand down, or you walk into a world where your name means ‘unstable liar’ in every boardroom, every courtroom, every gossip thread from the docks to the club.”
She leans in until her breath brushes my cheek, until her perfume overwhelms the clean beeswax and the distant salt.
“If you step on that stage with her,” she whispers, “there will be no mercy.”
For a moment, all I hear is the blood roaring in my ears and the faint crash of waves far below the cliffs, muted by glass and money.
Then my body does something before my brain can catch up. I straighten. I take one deliberate step back, not away from her, but toward the stage.
“Then you’d better hope you’ve erased every scrap,” I say, my voice shaking but standing. “Because we’re bringing more than mercy.”
Her eyes narrow.
Footsteps and laughter drift toward us from the hall as the crew returns from their break. She smooths her jacket, turns, and by the time the doors swing open she’s smiling again, the gracious hostess checking on preparations.
“Everything is perfect,” she tells the nearest planner. “Carry on.”
She walks away without looking back.
I stand alone under the dimmed chandeliers, staring at the lectern with its gleaming crest, the empty microphone waiting. My palms are damp, my knees loose, my heart a drum in my throat, but some new, cold thing has settled under my ribs, heavy and unmovable.
I know what stepping onto that stage might cost me. Marriage. Reputation. Whatever fragile safety I have left in this town perched on its narrow peninsula, where the Mercers’ version of events has always been the tide.
I also know what walking away would cost.
When the planner asks, “Do you need anything, Mrs. Mercer?” I hear my own voice answer, steady this time.
“Yes,” I say, looking straight at the waiting microphone. “I need tomorrow’s program. I want to see exactly when I’m supposed to be onstage.”