The front doors yawn open and the night hits me hard—cold salt air, wet stone, the buzz of generators and camera rigs humming under the louder swarm of human voices.
The circular driveway below is packed in layers: police cruisers with spinning lights, two local news vans, a couple of bigger-city satellite trucks that must have bombed out the back roads to get here. Harbor Glen’s manicured front approach is clogged with tripods and bright rectangles of LED panels, all aimed up at the Mercer crest above the door.
“Mr. Mercer!”
“Daniel!”
“Over here!”
The shouts collide into one hungry sound.
He takes another step onto the top stair, shoulders squared, face pale under the harsh wash of light. The bow tie hangs loose at his neck, his tux marked with dust from when he dragged me away from the broken railing. Microphones surge toward him on extended arms, black foam covers brushing his lapel.
An officer moves to hold the crowd at the base of the steps.
“Back up,” he calls. “Give him room.”
They shuffle a half-step, more symbolic than useful.
I hover just inside the doorway with Riley at my side, the emergency blanket still crackling around me. The smell of exhaust mixes with woodsmoke from somewhere down the hill and that faint hint of hospital disinfectant that always seems to ride the air in Harbor Glen, like the Mercer wing breathes over the town at night.
“Daniel, did your mother try to hurt your wife?” a woman in a red station jacket yells. “What do you say to the allegations in the article?”
“Are those documents real?” someone else shouts. “Is the DNA report authentic?”
“Is Riley Shaw your sister?” another voice punches through. “Do you acknowledge her as your father’s child?”
I feel Riley tense beside me. Her hand curls around her phone so tightly her knuckles blanch.
“You don’t have to watch,” I murmur.
“Yes, I do,” she says. “The whole town is watching. I’m not sitting this one out in the foyer.”
I follow Daniel’s profile, the muscle ticking at his jaw, the way his hands flex once and then still. For decades he’s had scripts for nights like this—fundraising messages, talking points, the phrases Evelyn drilled into him about partnerships and legacy. None of them cover how to answer questions about whether the woman who built this house has tried to push people out of it.
One of the reporters leans forward, voice sharp.
“Mr. Mercer, do you stand by your mother tonight? Yes or no?”
The yes has always been reflex.
I watch him fight it.
His eyes flick toward the doorway, toward me. For a second the rest of the scene blurs; it’s just him and me and the two dozen conversations that led to this moment—hotel bars, motel rooms, whispered fights in the dark about what he owed his parents and what he owed the truth.
Behind me, Riley shifts so she’s in his line of sight too.
His gaze lands on her, then on me again. I don’t move. I let him read whatever he can in my face: the bandage on my cheek, the bruises on my arm from his mother’s grip, the fear that hasn’t left my body since the first time something in this house tried to send me over a drop.
I swallow and give the smallest nod I can manage.
Not telling him what to say. Just saying: I’m here. I will live with whatever you choose.
He turns back toward the microphones.
“My first priority tonight is that everyone is safe,” he says. “My wife. My mother. Our guests.”
His voice carries over the hum of generators, over the low rush of the Sound below.
“We’re fine,” a reporter calls. “We want to know if your family is cooperating with law enforcement. You’ve seen the article. Is the trust valid? Are those adoption files real?”
“Do you deny that your foundation benefited from illegal adoptions?” another pushes. “Dead babies who didn’t die, Mr. Mercer. That’s the phrase online right now.”
The words slice through the cold air.
Daniel flinches.
“Mr. Mercer?” Red Jacket presses. “Can you tell us whether these allegations are baseless, as your mother suggested earlier, or whether you believe there’s something to investigate?”
He looks down at his hands. For one long beat, I watch him hold his own silence like a physical object.
Then he lifts his head.
“I have read the article,” he says. “And I have seen many of the documents it contains. Trust papers. Internal logs. DNA reports.”
Camera shutters chatter like teeth.
“And?” someone demands.
He breathes in through his nose.
“And I believe they raise serious questions about the hospital and the foundation my family leads,” he says. “Questions that cannot be answered by PR statements. Or by me.”
A murmur runs through the reporters. Down the drive, home owners watching from their gates turn to their phones, thumbs already moving. I picture donor chats lighting up, country club group texts pinging like microwave popcorn.
“So do you support the investigation?” the woman in red asks. “A full one? Independent, not just internal review?”
He hesitates. I feel my fingers dig into the blanket.
“Daniel,” Riley mutters next to me, so quiet I barely catch it. “Don’t give her another easy out.”
He lifts his chin.
“Yes,” he says. “I support a full, independent investigation into the Mercer Foundation and Harbor Glen Memorial’s adoption practices. Wherever that leads. Whoever that implicates.”
The words land heavy on the stone, on the marble columns, on the Harbor Glen hierarchy that has always counted on Mercer sons to fall in line.
I hear one of the officers swear under his breath.
“To be clear,” a reporter near the edge says, recovering first, “you’re saying you’re willing to see your own family members investigated for criminal wrongdoing?”
Daniel’s jaw tightens.
“I’m saying that if laws were broken, if records were falsified, then no amount of philanthropy makes that acceptable,” he replies. “The hospital saves lives. I know that. But saving some lives does not give anyone the right to erase others. We don’t get to balance the books like that.”
A sudden rush of noise answers him: more questions, shouted follow-ups, the frantic rustle of camera crews trying to reposition. Somewhere down the hill, a boat in the Light the Harbor parade blows a horn, a sad, distant sound under the chaos.
“What about Ms. Shaw?” a young guy near the front shouts. “Do you acknowledge her as your sister?”
Daniel’s shoulders rise and fall.
He glances back at us again—at me, at Riley—and this time he doesn’t look away right away. The wind catches the edges of the emergency blanket around my shoulders. Riley’s hair whips across her face; she shoves it back, eyes fixed on him, the same stubborn set to her mouth I saw when she first slid a file across a café table and asked whether I wanted in or out.
I see the moment he decides.
He turns back to the microphones.
“Yes,” he says. “Riley Shaw is my sister.”
The driveway splits in two reactions at once. Guests still leaving the gala gasp, a sharp intake of breath across velvet and wool. The reporters go electrically still for half a heartbeat and then talk over each other.
“By blood?” one yells. “You’re confirming the DNA?”
“Has your father acknowledged her?”
“Does this mean she’s the beneficiary of the second daughter trust?”
“What does your mother say about that?”
Riley’s hand finds the doorframe behind us. Her fingers press into the wood, steadying herself. Her eyes shine—not with tears, exactly, but with the shock of hearing something named out loud that has lived in draft form for so long.
“The DNA results are clear,” Daniel says. “Riley shares biology with my father. That was confirmed weeks ago. Whether the law recognizes that yet is another question, and not one I get to answer. But I acknowledge her as my sister. That’s not going to change.”
The last sentence lands with a weight that feels bigger than the steps we’re standing on.
A memory flashes through my head: Daniel at the piano last Christmas, laughing while Lydia’s favorite carol played from an old recording, hands moving over the keys by muscle memory. He built his whole identity around being a certain kind of son—a bridge, not a wedge.
Out here, under these lights, I watch the bridge catch fire.
Movement at my peripheral vision pulls my attention back to the doorway behind us.
Evelyn stands just inside the frame, coat cinched tight, lipstick restored, hair smoothed. For the past hour she has worn the carefully curated mask she uses on grieving families and skeptical donors. Now, as Daniel’s words sink in, I see the first fissure slice across it.
Her fingers clamp around the doorframe, knuckles bloodless against the dark wood. Her eyes widen, the pupils swallowing some of the polished blue, and for the first time since I’ve known her, her mouth doesn’t seem to know which shape to take.
“Mrs. Mercer!” someone calls. “Can we get your reaction?”
“Did your son know about the adoption scheme?”
“How do you respond to his support for an investigation?”
She steps forward a fraction, the porch light throwing hard shadows along the planes of her face. For one raw second, her gaze slams into Daniel’s. It’s not the frosty displeasure I’ve weathered a hundred times over misplaced forks and awkward questions; it’s something deeper, something like betrayal and bewilderment tangled into one.
He holds her gaze and doesn’t back down.
“My mother has done enormous good for this town,” he says, turning back to the crowd before she can speak. “She pushed for the neonatal wing, the mental health clinic, the Light the Harbor fund that keeps this place afloat in tourist season.”
A few heads nod reflexively; people here owe their lives, their jobs, their prestige to that list.
He swallows.
“But good programs don’t excuse criminal acts,” he continues. “If, and I repeat if, it turns out that children were taken illegally, that records were falsified, that deaths were staged on paper to make room for other lives—then whoever ordered that, whoever signed off on it, should answer for it. Even if that’s someone I love.”
The reporters fall strangely quiet at that last line.
Behind me, I hear a faint sound from Evelyn—air pulling in a little too sharply through her nose, the start of a word swallowed back. Her hand lifts, like she might reach for him, then stops mid-air. For once, she doesn’t step in front of the cameras to grab the narrative back by the throat.
“Mr. Mercer,” a reporter asks carefully, “are you accusing your mother directly?”
“I’m saying I won’t stand in the way of finding out what really happened,” Daniel answers. “I won’t help cover anything up. Not anymore.”
Not anymore.
Those two words hang there, a quiet confession that ripples outward: to the staff at the top of the driveway watching with wide eyes; to the donors glued to their phones, seeing their golden boy on a shaky live stream; to every nurse in the Mercer wing who has signed a confidentiality clause and wondered what exactly they weren’t supposed to talk about.
An officer edges up the steps toward him.
“That’s enough for now,” the man says. “Mr. Mercer needs to get downtown for a full statement like everyone else.”
“Daniel!” another reporter shouts over the officer. “Are you staying at the estate tonight? Or are you leaving with your wife and Ms. Shaw?”
That question spears straight through the media noise and wedges itself in my ribs.
Daniel glances back at me yet again. I stand there on the threshold, one foot inside the Mercer house, one foot out, the blanket pooling around my heels. Riley stands to my other side, jacket zipped to her throat, jaw clenched.
He looks between us and the house behind me.
Evelyn shifts, just enough that the fabric of her coat whispers. Her hand lifts again, palm tipped toward him, a silent summons full of decades of practice—board rooms and family photos and holiday cards where everyone knew which side they stood on.
For a breath, he’s twelve again in my mind, stuck between a mother who can organize an entire town like a fundraising drive and a ghost of a sister who never got to grow up.
Then he exhales.
“Tonight,” he calls down to the reporters, voice steady, “I’m not staying here.”
The driveway erupts.
“Are you moving out?”
“Is this a permanent break with your family?”
“Where will you go?”
“Are you afraid for your safety?”
The officer ushers him back toward the door to cut the questions off. When he reaches the threshold, he stops in front of me.
Up close, I see the tremor in his hand, the thin sheen of sweat at his hairline in the winter air.
“You don’t owe me anything for what you just said,” I tell him quietly, before he can spin apologies or explanations. “That was between you and the truth.”
“I owed it to Lydia,” he says. “And to her.” He tips his chin toward Riley. “And to you.”
Riley steps forward, face tight.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep out here for the cameras,” she says. “Once the lawyers start talking, it’ll get a lot harder.”
“I know,” he says.
He doesn’t reach for me. He doesn’t reach for her. His hands hang at his sides like he’s afraid touching either of us will collapse what he just built or pull him back into something he can’t sustain.
A detective at the door clears his throat.
“We need to move,” he says. “Cars are waiting.”
Daniel nods.
“I’m not going with her,” he says under his breath, so low only we can hear. “Not tonight.”
He flicks a glance over his shoulder.
Evelyn stands rigid in the doorway’s shadow just beyond us, watching every micro-expression, every shift, a strategist assessing new terrain that for the first time doesn’t belong entirely to her.
“Then where?” I ask.
“Wherever you’re going,” he says. “If you’ll let me ride along until we figure out the rest.”
The same reporters who spent years photographing us on these steps are still yelling questions down the drive, but those words fold the rest of the noise back for me. My chest tightens; pride and anger and grief tangle until I don’t know which is which.
Riley huffs out a rough breath.
“Motel coffee is terrible,” she says. “Just so you know.”
He lets out a quick, surprised laugh that sounds raw and young.
“I’ve had worse,” he replies.
The detective gestures again, more insistent this time.
We move together—me, Daniel, Riley—down the inner hallway toward the side exit the officers prefer, leaving the flashstorm of the front drive behind. Each step carries us further from the life that waited inside those doors and closer to whatever waits in police stations and courtrooms and motel rooms that smell like overcooked heat.
Behind us, through the wall, I hear the muffled echo of a reporter’s voice, broadcast from someone’s phone.
“In a stunning development tonight at the Mercer estate,” she says, “Daniel Mercer has publicly broken ranks with his mother, calling for a full investigation and acknowledging the existence of a previously hidden sister…”
The words follow us down the corridor, chasing our heels like the tide under the cliffs, and I walk toward the unmarked exit with no idea whether we’re heading into safety or the start of a very public war.