After everyone goes to bed, the house finally exhales.
The grand rooms shrink a little in the dark, the Mercer estate trading its holiday showroom brightness for lamplight and the orange flicker of the living room fire. I tuck my feet under me on the deep gray sofa, fingers wrapped around a heavy ceramic mug. The mug is white, thick-walled, and glossy, the Mercer crest pressed into one side in dark blue. The stylized waves ridge under my thumb.
Hot chocolate breathes steam into my face, sweet and heavy with melted marshmallow. Underneath it, I catch the faint smoke of the logs and the salt that sneaks in through the window seams. When the wind shifts, something sharper threads through—a clean, medicinal note from the hospital up on the hill, drifting over the peninsula like a reminder of who owns the air here.
Daniel sits at the other end of the sofa with his legs stretched toward the coffee table, laptop balanced on his thighs. The screen throws a cool glow onto his face, softening his jaw, catching in the glass of the picture window behind him. Out beyond the glass, Harbor Glen is a scattered constellation of porch lights and dock lamps, the dark ribbon of back roads curving around the manicured center. Somewhere down there, the yacht club slumbers with its waitlists and donor plaques, all the places his last name unlocks without thought.
I watch him for a moment, letting the sound of his fingers on the keyboard settle me. Tapping, pause, backspace, the faint huff when he rereads something that annoys him. It’s familiar, grounding. For a few seconds I pretend the trust document is still locked in that drawer and not lodged behind my ribs.
“You actually took a night off,” I say, nudging his foot with mine. “I’m impressed.”
He gives a small smile without looking up. “This is a night off. Just tweaking a slide deck for January. Our donors like their charts tidy.”
“Charts about saving kids,” I say. “Very on-brand.”
He glances at me, catching the edge in my tone, and his smile broadens. “Hey. You say that like it’s a bad thing. We do good work.”
Love and harm in the same hands. I swallow a mouthful of chocolate to keep the words down.
“I didn’t say it was bad,” I answer. “Just… very Mercery.”
“Mercery.” He chuckles. “I’ll tell my mom you coined a brand adjective. She’ll want it on a donor wall.”
The way he says my mom hooks into the knot in my chest, the same knot that tightened when she lifted that key. I stare into my mug, at the whirl of cocoa and foam circling the ceramic.
This is it. This is the moment I have been rehearsing all evening while I pretended to care about bow symmetry. I want him to know what I found, but I also want to keep the temperature of the room below full boil.
“Hey,” I say quietly. “Can I ask you something without it turning into a thing?”
He closes the laptop halfway and shifts toward me, eyebrows lifting. Firelight warms the gold in his eyes. “That is a very ominous opener.”
“I’m serious.” I pull the blanket higher over my knees and pick at a stray piece of lint. “I don’t want to sound accusatory. I just… saw something today, and I keep thinking about it.”
“Okay.” He straightens, all attention now. “Shoot.”
I take a breath and taste sugar. “When your mom sent me to the office for the wrapping paper, there was a folder open on her desk. I didn’t go looking for it—it was just… there.”
His expression changes by a millimeter. The lines around his mouth tighten, then smooth. “You were in the office?”
“She sent me there,” I repeat. “For tape. I did not break in. I promise.”
He huffs a quiet laugh at that, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Alright. So. You saw a folder.”
“A trust document,” I say. “It was labeled ‘Mercer Family Trust II – Second Daughter Beneficiary.’”
The words hang between us, thick as the steam that used to rise from our mugs. His gaze flicks down then back, as though checking for a punch line printed on my face.
“Second daughter,” I add. “In big letters. With capital T and capital B later on, like it was an official category. And there was a whole section redacted where the name should be.”
For a heartbeat, his jaw locks. Then he lets out a laugh—too loud for the quiet room, a little brittle around the edges.
“Oh my God,” he says. “Hannah. You found the estate-planning nerd pile.”
“The what?” I ask.
“Trusts,” he says, waving one hand in a lazy circle, laptop wobbling on his knees. “My parents’ favorite bedtime story. They’ve been tinkering with that stuff for years. Every few years the lawyers come up with some new structure, some tax-optimized whatever, and they give things the most dramatic names. ‘Second daughter’ probably refers to a second branch, or a secondary tier, or a hypothetical kid if we’d had one.” He grins, aiming for reassuring. “I promise my parents did not hide a surprise child in a folder.”
“It didn’t read like a hypothetical,” I say. “There were lines about ‘existing provisions for the First Daughter, Lydia, and the First Son, Daniel,’ and then separate language about this second daughter. And the name section wasn’t blank. It was blacked out.”
He exhales through his nose and leans his head back against the sofa cushion, staring at the ceiling. “You’re reading legalese like it’s a diary.”
“I can read English,” I say. “And the part about relocation support and encouraging the beneficiary to live at a distance from Mercer holdings didn’t scream ‘hypothetical tax structure.’”
His head snaps back down. “Relocation support?”
“That’s what it said.”
He shakes his head, a dismissive flick, and takes a long gulp of hot chocolate. The marshmallows bump his lip and leave a smear on his upper lip; he wipes it away with the back of his hand. “That’s standard. If, God forbid, someone in the family needed to get away for safety or privacy, the trust can support them. Abuse, stalking, bad press. My mother worries about everything.”
“Including locking up documents so no one can see whose life she’s planning?”
“Including making sure people can disappear from tabloids if they need to,” he says sharply. “There’s a difference.”
The fire pops, a spark jumping against the iron grate. I flinch.
“Daniel,” I say, gentler. “The name was redacted. Why would your parents have a trust that mentions you and Lydia by name and then erase the third one?”
His hand tightens around the mug. “You’re assuming there is a third one.”
“I’m reading the page I saw.”
“You saw part of a page,” he counters. “In a folder you say you ‘just happened’ to notice. That’s like listening in on one sentence of a therapy session and deciding you know the diagnosis.”
Heat climbs my throat. “You’re comparing me to a gossiping patient now?”
“I’m trying to explain that documents like that have context.” He sets his mug down too hard; the ceramic knocks the coaster, a dull thud on wood. “Trust II. That’s what you said? There’s a whole Trust I. There are annexes. Schedules. You think my parents personally drafted every syllable with some secret villain plan? They hire people.”
“Estate lawyers don’t usually redact their own documents with big black bars,” I say. “That feels… extra.”
His laugh this time comes out flat. “You’ve been watching too many true crime specials.”
I stare at him. “I grew up with a mom who hid my birth certificate in a metal box under her bed. I know the difference between boring paperwork and something you don’t want people to see.”
“Exactly,” he says, pointing at me like I handed him the answer key. “You grew up with that. You’re primed to see secrets in every form you don’t understand. This is a lot of… wealth stuff. I barely understand it and I’m related to the people who sign it.”
My chest tightens, a slow clamp. “You don’t believe me.”
“I believe you saw ‘second daughter’ on a piece of paper,” he says. “I don’t believe my parents have been hiding another child from me for thirty-three years. Those are different things.”
“What about the portrait in the study?” I ask. The question bursts out before I can stop it. “The extra girl with the painted-over face, the plaque that only names Lydia. That’s two different things pointing in the same direction.”
“We went over this.” His shoulders hunch. “Bad artist, weird composition, parents obsessed with Lydia. That’s the direction.”
“Your mom reacted like I had broken into Fort Knox when she found me near that folder,” I say. “She locked the drawer in front of me. She used the word ‘girls’ when she warned me about people snooping. Plural.”
“Because there were other girlfriends,” he says, jaw tightening. “Women who dated me, remember? Or did that part of the story evaporate now that it doesn’t fit the conspiracy?”
The word conspiracy lands between us, ugly and sharp.
“I’m not saying your mom is twirling a mustache and plotting kidnappings,” I say, even though a tiny part of me pictures her with a more tasteful version of that energy. “I’m saying there are inconsistencies. I’m asking my husband to help me make sense of them.”
“You’re asking me to call my mother a liar,” he shoots back. “At Christmas. In her house. About my dead sister.”
The mention of Lydia knocks the air from my lungs. I set my mug down on the coffee table with careful fingers, the ceramic clink loud in the stretch of silence.
“I’m not attacking Lydia,” I say, lowering my voice. “Or you. Or your mom’s grief. I know she has done good things. The foundation, the hospital, all of it—”
“Right.” He gestures toward the window, where the hospital’s glow fogs the glass. “That place up there? The pediatric wing you love? The ‘Mercer miracle’ babies people write thank-you notes about? That’s my family. That’s the reality. Not a redaction bar you glimpsed for thirty seconds.”
I lean forward, elbows on my knees, palms pressed together to stop their shaking. “Good deeds don’t cancel out everything else, Daniel. That’s not how this works. You, of all people, know systems can hurt people while helping others.”
“You’re lecturing me on systems now?”
“You asked me to consult for your nonprofit,” I remind him. “You wanted my brain for that part.”
“I wanted your empathy,” he snaps. “Not your paranoia about my family.”
The word hits like a slap. I sit back, spine pressing into the cushion. My mouth opens, then shuts.
He scrubs both hands over his face, then drags them through his hair until it stands on end. He looks less polished now, more like the grad student I met at that grimy fundraiser, the one who spilled wine on his tie and laughed.
“Look,” he says, tone shifting to something he probably thinks is reasonable. “Every town down there—” he jerks his chin toward the harbor lights “—has stories about the big families on the hill. People resent power. They invent secret heirs and cover-ups because it makes them feel better about not getting invited to the yacht parade.”
“You think I’m jealous of your boat assignment?” I ask, incredulous. “That’s what you think this is?”
“I think you walked into Harbor Glen and felt how weird this world is,” he says quietly. “Country clubs, waitlists, donor walls with our name at the top. You see my mother’s face on every plaque and your brain starts looking for the catch. And I get it, Han. I do. But turning my childhood into a conspiracy theory? That crosses a line.”
My eyes sting. I blink hard, focusing on the fire so I don’t lose it completely. “I’m trying to understand your childhood,” I say. “The child part in particular. The part that might be missing.”
“There is no missing child,” he says, voice low and firm. “There was me, and there was Lydia. That’s it. If my parents had another daughter, I would know.”
“Unless they made sure you didn’t,” I whisper.
The words hang in the air between us, too loud, too naked.
His face shutters, warmth gone. He stands up in one motion, the laptop sliding closed in his hand with a slap. The sudden shift of weight makes the sofa tilt; my mug rattles on the table, sending a thin ring of chocolate up the side.
“Unbelievable,” he says. “You really think I’m that blind.”
“I think grief can hide things,” I say, scrambling to pull the words back, soften them. “I think your mom is very good at deciding what everyone knows. Including you.”
“You don’t know her,” he says. “You met her five minutes ago and already you’ve decided she’s some kind of… puppet master.”
“She locked the drawer,” I remind him. “She warned me about ‘girls who spin stories.’”
“Because you were snooping in her office,” he says. “Do you have any idea how that looks from her side? She welcomed you in, and you repaid her by digging through confidential family finances.”
“She sent me there,” I say again, but my voice has lost its conviction. “For tape.”
“And the second you saw something you didn’t understand, you assumed the worst,” he says. “You didn’t ask her. You didn’t ask me in the moment. You sat on it and built this whole narrative, and now I’m supposed to pick between my wife and my mother in front of a fireplace like some messed-up holiday special?”
He laughs once, without humor, and shakes his head.
“I’m asking you not to make me feel crazy for noticing things,” I say. My hands are shaking now; I tuck them under my thighs. “I’m asking you to consider that both things could be true. That your family saved lives and also might have hurt someone. That there could be a second daughter whose story got edited out.”
“I’m done with this,” he says abruptly. “I’m not going to stand here and watch you turn my sister’s death into content for your next anxiety spiral.”
The words knock me back more than his volume. He has never talked about my anxiety like that before, never thrown it in my face as a character flaw.
“Daniel—”
“No.” He holds up a hand. “I love you. I married you. I want you to feel safe here. But I’m not going to let you talk about my family like they’re some Netflix cult. If this is what being here does to you, maybe we cut the trip short.”
Fear lurches through me, tangled with a spark of anger. “You’d rather leave than ask one hard question?”
“I’d rather leave than watch you tear into my mother on zero evidence,” he says. “I need space.”
He turns on his heel and strides toward the hallway, laptop tucked under his arm like a shield. His footsteps fade down the polished corridor, swallowed by the thick walls, leaving the crackle of the fire and the low hum of the heating system.
I stare at the doorway he disappears through until the archway blurs.
The mug in front of me grows a skin of cooling chocolate. I reach for it anyway, bring it to my lips, and taste sugar and ash. The Mercer crest presses into my palm again, hard and smooth, the wave lines cutting across my skin. The house groans softly as the wind hits the cliff, a deep, hollow sound that makes the windows tremble.
Down on the harbor, a late boat cuts a white line across the black water, a single light gliding toward the docks where everyone knows who rides which yacht. Up on the hill, the hospital glows on, disinfectant and woodsmoke and money thick in the air.
I sit alone in the expensive quiet, wrapped in a blanket that doesn’t belong to me, replaying his words on a loop.
No missing child. No second daughter.
The trust document in my memory throbs in answer, its black bar steady and undeniable.
If Daniel won’t look directly at it, I realize, I will have to. With or without him.