I move down the aisle, each step a thud against the music-less air.
The security guard closest to the stage angles toward the stairs, hand lifted in a gesture that pretends to be polite. His cologne—sharp and clean, like new soap—cuts through the mingled smells of wine, perfume, and catered salmon. Onstage, Riley’s shoulders square; she hasn’t moved the mic from her mouth. The crowd hums with low whispers, a hive working up to a sting.
I’m three tables away when green silk cuts into my path.
Evelyn doesn’t rush. She glides.
She leaves the head table without a word, chair pushed back by a staffer who jumps to help. Light from the harbor boats flashes across her emerald gown and diamond earrings, turning every angle of her into something polished and hard. For a second, we pass within arm’s length.
I catch the light, floral bite of her perfume. Her profile doesn’t flicker.
“Stay in your seat, Hannah,” she says, soft enough that it threads under the murmur without riding it. “Do not make this worse for yourself.”
The words brush my ear like a hand on the back of my neck.
I keep walking.
She doesn’t repeat herself. She pivots toward the stage instead, raising a hand—Queen of Harbor Glen, granting or denying. The guard pauses mid-step, looks to her, and then steps back. He becomes part of the background again, just another dark-suited shadow on the edge of the spotlight.
Evelyn climbs the stairs.
The ballroom stills the way the ocean does right before a wave breaks. Outside the glass, the Light the Harbor parade glows on, oblivious—MERCER FOUNDATION spelled in cold white across one yacht, the abstract wave crest looping along the hull. Inside, everyone tracks the matriarch to her mark.
Riley doesn’t move away.
That shakes me more than anything.
Evelyn reaches her, stops a careful foot away, and turns outward to face the room. Cameras click from the press platform. Phone screens lift across the tables like a second constellation.
“May I?” Evelyn asks, her voice not yet amplified, lips close to the microphone.
Riley stares at her, jaw tight. The mic trembles once between her hands.
Then, with a tiny exhale I feel in my own ribs, Riley loosens her grip.
Evelyn takes the microphone.
She doesn’t snatch. She receives, palms gentle, like she’s being handed a fragile heirloom she’s vowed to protect.
“Thank you,” she says, and now her voice booms smoothly through the speakers. “Thank you, Riley, for sharing your pain with us.”
She slides the arm not holding the mic around Riley’s shoulders.
It looks tender from a distance—comforting, protective. Up close, I watch her fingers settle right at the junction of neck and collarbone, thumb resting where a pulse beats. It’s a hold that can tighten in an instant.
“We’ve heard a lot tonight about healing,” she continues. “About the incredible work Harbor Glen Memorial Hospital and this foundation do for families in crisis.”
She pauses while a few loyal donors reflexively clap. The sound is small, misplaced. It dies quickly.
“But healing,” she says, softening her tone, “is not a straight line. Anyone in this room who has loved someone struggling with mental health knows that.”
The phrase lands with the weight of a stone dropped in water.
Mental health.
I see the ripple move: a woman in pearls squeezes her husband’s arm, an older man nods slowly, sympathetic and relieved to have a frame he recognizes. A staff nurse at a table near the back crosses her arms tight across her chest.
Evelyn gives Riley’s shoulder a small squeeze, like she’s modeling compassion.
“Riley is clearly in pain,” she says. “You can hear it in her voice. You can feel it in this room. And I am so grateful she trusted us enough to stand here tonight and speak that pain aloud.”
She looks down at Riley with an expression that reads, from twenty feet away, as pure maternal concern.
I know that look. I’ve had it turned on me over hot chocolate and therapy couches and “impromptu” check-ins that left the air tasting like chemicals and ash.
“Our mission,” Evelyn says, turning back to the guests, “has always included advocating for mental health care. Too many beautiful, promising lives are derailed when vulnerable young people do not get the support they need. Or when they get… the wrong kind of attention.”
The last phrase sharpens delicately.
On the press platform, Stevens lifts his eyebrows. He keeps filming.
“We live,” Evelyn goes on, “in an age where any of us can go online and find stories, theories, accusations—many of them compelling, many of them unverified. For someone already hurting, those stories can feel like lifelines. Like explanations. Like belonging.”
She lets that hang.
No direct mention of DNA. No mention of documents. Just the broad, foggy menace of the internet.
Behind the glass, the harbor darkens as the parade drifts farther down the peninsula. The boat with the Mercer crest shines brightest, hovering in the corner of my eye like a threat and a promise.
“I think of our own community,” Evelyn continues, “our own tragedies. Many of you remember losing our Lydia in that terrible boating accident.”
A murmur, softer now, ripples through the room. People bow their heads, glance at Robert, at Daniel.
At me.
“Grief,” she says, voice catching at the edges in a way that sounds raw and rehearsed at once, “creates gaps. In memory. In story. In self. And unfortunately, there are people who exploit those gaps. They reach out to hurting young women and tell them, ‘You belong to us. Your story is here.’”
Her hand on Riley tightens.
“They say, ‘You are a lost heir.’ Or ‘You are the missing child.’”
The crowd inhales together.
I can feel the temperature in the room rise, heat collecting under the chandeliers and in the narrow band between my collar and my skin. Sweat trickles under my dress, creating a cold stripe down my spine.
Evelyn smiles sadly.
“How many online forums, how many videos, have we all heard about?” she asks. “Where strangers with no medical training, no access to full records, convince vulnerable people that they have been wronged, that hospitals are lying, that families like ours are hiding monstrous secrets.”
There it is. The monster word. Hanging right where she wants it.
My fists clench.
“Now,” she says, “I am not saying Riley has not experienced hardship. Clearly, she has. The foster system fails children every day. That pain is real. Her longing is real.”
She touches her own heart.
“But longing and pain,” she says gently, “do not always tell us the truth about where we come from.”
A few donors nod, visibly relieved to have somewhere safe to place their discomfort. Acceptance comes easier than confrontation; I see it smoothing their faces like warm hands smoothing bedsheets.
Daniel shifts beside me. His jaw works. He looks like he’s chewing glass.
“You know,” Evelyn continues, voice turning confidential, “that I would never, ever dismiss a genuine concern about wrongdoing at our hospital. Robert and I have dedicated our lives to saving children. Many of you in this room have had grandchildren in our NICU. You know the care they received. You know the doctors who sat up all night with you.”
Heads bow. Smiles flicker at remembered kindnesses. This part is true, and that makes everything else she weaves around it more dangerous.
Love and harm, same hands, I think.
“But I also know,” she says, “how incredibly damaging misinformation can be. For our nurses. Our doctors. Our patients. And for fragile hearts who go looking for answers in the wrong places.”
Her gaze sweeps the room and lands, finally, on me.
It is soft.
It makes my skin crawl.
“Many of you have met my daughter-in-law, Hannah,” she says.
The spotlight doesn’t move, but suddenly I feel exposed, every eye in the room a pinprick on my skin. I straighten, refusing to shrink.
“Hannah has been open with us,” Evelyn says, molding the truth with skilled hands, “about the emotional difficulties she’s been facing this year. The stress of adjusting to a new family, confronting old childhood wounds, the pressure of our public life… it’s a lot for anyone, let alone someone with her history.”
“Evelyn,” Daniel mutters beside me, voice low and hoarse.
She doesn’t look at him.
“We did what any responsible family would do,” she continues. “We brought in a licensed therapist. We offered Hannah every resource. We have been so proud of her for engaging with that process.”
Proud.
The word twists inside me, sour as bad wine.
“Those of you who’ve checked in on us,” she adds, “know that she has struggled with intrusive thoughts, with fears that people are lying to her. Paranoia can feel very real from the inside. It deserves compassion and care, not ridicule.”
A couple at the next table glance at me with the softened eyes reserved for sick relatives and struggling children. My throat burns.
I remember the therapist’s pen scratching notes as I talked about the loose stair runner, about the skidding car, about the bracelet planted in my luggage. I remember her suggesting that my “history with an absent father” might make me more prone to see betrayal where none exists.
And I remember Evelyn, sitting in the corner, hands folded, nodding along.
“When someone like that,” Evelyn says, “ends up in contact with someone like Riley—someone in deep pain, someone whose entire identity has been shaped by loss and uncertainty—”
She looks down at Riley with a pity that tastes like poison.
“—the fantasies can grow together.”
My heart slams against my ribs.
She is erasing the evidence in front of witnesses, not by disproving it, but by rewriting the people who hold it.
“I am not angry with Riley,” she says. “Or with Hannah. I am heartbroken for them. They deserve help, not headlines.”
On cue, a murmur of protective agreement rises. The phrase mental health wraps around the room like a cashmere throw—soft, comforting, smothering the sharper questions.
“That is why,” she says, “we will be offering Riley every resource at our disposal. A full independent evaluation. A safe place to land. Support with her search for her true origins.”
She makes no mention of the DNA, the trust, the missing files.
“In the meantime,” she finishes, “I ask you, as people who care deeply about children and families, not to feed the fire of misinformation. Do not share rumors. Do not give oxygen to lies. Let us handle this privately, with the dignity and compassion these young women deserve.”
She holds the microphone out slightly, inviting applause.
It comes, uneven at first, then gathering.
Some people clap out of reflex, unsure. Others clap with relief, grateful to be told what to think. A few remain still. The NICU nurse in the back has tears in her eyes and her hands flat on the table. Stevens doesn’t clap; he’s already typing.
A donor I recognize from the country club leans toward his neighbor.
“Poor girl,” he says, not quite whispering. “Both of them, really. Internet can break a fragile mind.”
Anger spikes so sharp behind my eyes that the room blurs.
Riley stands inside Evelyn’s arm, rigid. From where I am, I can see the tension in her neck, the pulse hammering under Evelyn’s thumb. Her jaw trembles.
“I’m not crazy,” she says, voice caught by a still-hot mic.
The word crazy hangs there, the worst possible shorthand, catching ears and judgments on its hook.
Evelyn tightens her arm, mic dipped away from Riley’s mouth.
“We know, dear,” she says in a tone laced with practiced patience. “You’re hurting.”
Something inside me snaps cleanly.
Evidence, I think. Now.
Words clearly mean nothing in this room when her voice carries them.
I dig into my clutch with fingers that won’t steady, find my phone. A text from Stevens already waits on the screen.
Stevens: She’s spinning it. You sure you want this going live tonight?
Onstage, Evelyn turns back to the emcee, ready to glide us into the next planned video, the next curated success story that will paste over this moment for anyone who wants to forget.
“Yes,” I whisper, though no one has asked me aloud.
I type with my thumb, heart pounding so hard I feel it in my gums.
Me: Do it. Full story. Now.
I hit send.
The message whooshes away, carrying trust and terror with it. For a fraction of a second, the ballroom feels weightless, suspended between versions of reality.
Then a phone buzzes at the next table.
Then another, and another, a rising chorus of vibrations cutting through applause and the band’s tentative return to music, signaling the first tremor of the thing that might finally speak louder than Evelyn Mercer’s voice.