I meet Riley at the only playground in Harbor Glen that doesn’t have the Mercer crest on a donor plaque.
The park hugs the lower edge of the peninsula, wedged between the docks and a narrow strip of scrub trees. The swings overlook the harbor, metal chains squeaking under the weight of bundled-up kids. Salt air moves through the bare branches, carrying the bite of the Sound, a ribbon of woodsmoke from houses up the hill, and that faint tang of hospital disinfectant that never quite leaves this town.
I sit on a cold wooden bench with a paper cup of coffee nestled between my palms. The heat seeps through the thin cardboard, not nearly enough. The bench faces the swings straight on. Riley drops down beside me with her own cup, the bench jolting under her weight, and we both flinch like someone fired a starter pistol.
“Relax,” she mutters. “No reporters in the bushes. I checked.”
“You did a sweep?”
“Habit.” She takes a sip, then makes a face. “This coffee’s terrible. I kind of love it.”
A little boy on the nearest swing shrieks with laughter as he arcs high; his boots scrape the gray sky on the upswing, then drag furrows through the wood chips on the way back. His mother stands a few feet away, glancing at her phone between pushes. Metal clinks, gulls cry overhead, and the harbor laps at the shore with a sound that has nothing to do with any of us.
We sit in silence for a full minute, both watching the swings.
“I used to think swings were a rich-kid thing,” Riley says finally.
“Really?” I ask. “You didn’t have them at school?”
“Sometimes,” she answers. “But they were busted half the time. Rusted chains, cracked seats. We had those warning notices zip-tied to them so the foster parents could point and say, ‘See? Liability,’ when we asked.”
She kicks at a patch of frozen grass with the toe of her boot, jaw working. I wrap my fingers tighter around the cup, cardboard softening under the pressure.
“We had swings at my elementary school,” I say. “They were always a little sticky from juice boxes, but never broken. I used to race this kid named Angela for the one on the end, because it squeaked the least.”
“Luxury,” Riley murmurs.
The word stings more than it should. I swallow and take a sip of coffee. It tastes burned and a little metallic, but at least it anchors my tongue in the present.
“Thanks for coming,” I say.
“You make it sound like you invited me to a gala,” she says. “We both needed air.”
“Lawyers don’t count as air?”
“My lawyer doesn’t,” she replies. “Yours is better dressed.”
I laugh, short and surprised. The sound fogs in front of my face.
“Harbor Glen winter collection,” I say. “Wool, leather, righteous indignation.”
“Don’t forget the scarf,” she adds. “Argues billable hours on its own.”
The joke hangs there, a thin layer over everything we’re not saying. A gust of wind slices through my coat and brushes the back of my neck with cold fingers. A siren wails briefly up on the hill, probably an ambulance turning into the hospital’s circular drive. The sound dies quickly, swallowed by distance and wealth.
“When I was a kid,” I say slowly, eyes on the swings, “I used to make up stories about the families in those houses.” I jerk my chin toward the row of cliffside mansions perched higher on the peninsula. “I’d imagine some of them would drive down, see me on the swings, and decide to adopt me on the spot.”
Riley’s head snaps toward me.
“You did?” she asks.
“I know how it sounds,” I say. “My mom loved me. But she worked nights, and the bills collected on the kitchen table like they were breeding. I’d stand in the yard and look at the big houses across town and think, maybe there’s a world where I get to be…easy.”
I don’t say, maybe that’s why Evelyn looked like an answer instead of a warning.
Riley looks back at the swings. Her thumb traces the seam of her cup, worrying a dent into it.
“I used to watch the Light the Harbor parade from a group home lawn,” she says. “All the fancy boats lit up like floating Christmas trees. Staff would point out which yacht belonged to which family, whisper about who made the donation list. I tried to figure out where I fit in that census. Turns out, I wasn’t even on the clipboard.”
Kids shriek again behind us as someone jumps off mid-swing and lands with a thud. I taste salt on the wind, dry and bitter.
“When they read your article on the parade this year,” she adds softly, “some of the staff I know sent it around. They said, ‘Look, somebody finally called it what it is.’”
“A moving donor wall?” I ask.
“A floating caste chart,” she says.
That gets a real laugh out of me, one that curls in my chest and burns a little on the way out.
“You know,” I say, “I don’t think I ever pictured the kids who weren’t on the boats.”
“No one does.” She shrugs. “That’s the point.”
We sit with that. A gull lands too close, eyeing my coffee lid for crumbs. I shift my foot, and it hops back, offended.
“I went to the estate yesterday,” I say. “To pack. It’s…less full than it used to be.”
“I saw the drone photos,” Riley replies. “Neighbors love an aerial shot of other people’s downfall.”
“I went up to the third floor,” I say. “To Lydia’s room.”
Riley freezes. Her gaze stays locked on the swings, but every line in her body tightens.
“You did?” she asks. “Were the windows still nailed shut?”
“Not nailed,” I say. “Just…watched. But the door was open this time.” I hesitate. “There was a closet. Boxes. Toys that didn’t fit Lydia’s age. A growth chart with your name half-erased.”
I feel her breath catch more than I hear it.
“Yeah,” she says. “That tracks.”
“I took the chart,” I confess. “I can put it back, if you want. Or give it to you. Or to your lawyer. I just—”
“No,” she cuts in. “Keep it. You found it. Consider it a co-signed memory.”
Her mouth twists on that last word.
“Riley,” I say.
“Don’t,” she warns.
I ignore her.
“You have every right to that room,” I say. “To that house. To the trust. To the stupid donor walls and yacht parades, if you even want them. I walked through yesterday and thought, half of this should have been yours in the first place.”
“You can’t carve a house in half,” she says. “Not in a way that fixes anything.”
The wind picks up, snapping a loose plastic bag against the chain-link fence around the basketball court. I take another sip of coffee, then rest the cup on the bench between us.
“I need to say something,” she adds.
My stomach tightens. “Okay.”
She licks her lips. The skin is chapped, little flakes of red at the corners.
“I hate that you got that life,” she says quietly. “Not the cliffs and the donor walls. The part before. The mom who kept you. The swings that worked. The normal level of secrets for a messed-up American childhood.”
I stare at the kids on the swings so I won’t stare at her.
“I hate that you got a house, even a crappy one, with your name on the mailbox,” she continues. “That you had photo frames that weren’t part of some case file. That when the Mercers went shopping for a narrative, they didn’t pick you. They picked me.”
The words scrape raw across the space between us. A little girl nearby coughs, then shouts for another push.
“I know you had your own shit,” she says quickly. “I know your childhood wasn’t easy. I know Evelyn hurt you. But part of my brain still lines us up next to each other and says, she got picked twice. Once by her mom. Once by this family that built their empire on kids like me.”
She finally looks at me. Her eyes are wet but not spilling.
“I’m angry about that,” she says. “At the world. At them. At whatever paperwork let it happen. And on bad days, it slides toward you.”
I let the words land. They hurt. Of course they hurt. But they feel clean in a way I’m not used to, pain without manipulation.
“Thank you for saying it out loud,” I answer.
“You’re not…mad?” she asks.
“I am,” I admit. “At the same targets you listed. And at myself, a little, for the number of years I spent trying to be exactly what they wanted, instead of noticing who they stepped on to make room for me.”
She huffs a humorless breath.
“You didn’t know,” she says.
“I didn’t ask,” I reply. “Not soon enough.”
The boy on the swing takes a flying leap, lands, and falls into a pile of leaves. He pops up laughing, wood chips stuck to his hat. His mother calls out something about dinner, voice sharp, then soft.
“I can’t give you back those years,” I say. “Or the swings you didn’t get, or the birthdays in houses that smelled like actual baking instead of industrial cleaner. I can’t even give you a pure relationship with the Mercers. They’re tied to everything now.”
“Peak endorsement,” she mutters.
“I can tell you this, though,” I continue. “You don’t owe me anything. Not a bond, not a label, not a holiday table someday. You don’t have to be my sister because a trust document says ‘second daughter,’ or because we survived the same woman in different ways.”
She studies my face. I hold her gaze.
“You’re really okay with that?” she asks. “With me saying, ‘Thanks for burning your life down with me, have a good one?’”
“No,” I say, and we both crack a little smile. “I’d hate that. But my hating it doesn’t make you responsible for me. The only version of this I want is the one we both choose.”
Riley leans back, the wood creaking under her shoulders. She tips her head back to look at the flat, pale sky.
“Choice is new,” she says. “My childhood was just…surviving the next placement. Then aging out. Then chasing ghosts through court records. Family is usually something that happens to other people while I fill out forms.”
My chest tightens in a different way.
“We can start small,” I offer. “Like today. Sitting on a bench that smells like wet wood and bad coffee, complaining about Harbor Glen’s yacht hierarchy.”
“And the hospital funk,” she adds. “You smell that?”
I inhale. Salt, woodsmoke, that thin antiseptic thread from the Mercer hospital on the hill. Power and harm and healing braided together in a scent I’ll probably never untangle.
“Yeah,” I say. “Always.”
“So what, then?” she asks. “We’re…friends? Co-plaintiffs? Trauma buddies?”
“I was thinking ‘flawed humans who occasionally get lunch,’” I say. “And if, one day, the word ‘sister’ feels like it fits, we can try it on. And if it never does, we can still show up for each other.”
She rolls the cup between her palms, thinking.
“I don’t know what sister means,” she says finally. “I know what caseworker means. What foster means. What ‘problem child’ in a file means. Sister is this Hallmark thing, and this…Mercer thing. Lydia’s name on a tree. My name blacked out of a chart.”
“Then we get to define it,” I say. “On a smaller scale. No donor walls. No plaques. No trust documents.”
“No cliffs,” she adds.
“Definitely no cliffs,” I say.
The wind gusts hard enough to push the swings sideways. One kid yelps. His father jogs over, steadying the chains with gloved hands. Somewhere behind us, a dog barks twice, then quiets.
“Okay,” Riley says. “Here’s my working definition.”
I lean in, listening.
“Sister is someone who knows enough of your worst details that they could hurt you,” she says, “and doesn’t use them as leverage. Someone who calls you out when you’re being an idiot. And someone who will show up at court even if you text at three in the morning in all caps.”
“That’s a high bar,” I say.
“I don’t do low bars anymore,” she answers.
“Then I’ll start there,” I say. “I can’t promise perfection. But I can promise I’ll never weaponize what I know about you. And if I screw up, you get to tell me, not Evelyn.”
That earns a real smile, small and crooked.
“You’re already better than her,” she says. “Low bar, but still.”
I bump my shoulder gently against hers.
“Your turn,” she says. “What’s sister for you?”
I chew on the inside of my cheek.
“Someone who doesn’t need you to be grateful,” I say slowly. “Who will eat greasy takeout with you on bad days and sit on uncomfortable benches while your lawyer drafts terrifying emails. Someone who will tell you when the story you’re telling about yourself is too small.”
Riley watches me, expression serious.
“You think mine is too small?” she asks.
“I think you’ve spent a long time seeing yourself as a case file with legs,” I answer. “You’re more than what the Mercers stole.”
She swallows, throat bobbing.
“You’re more than what they gave you,” she says.
The words land between us, heavy and exact.
A group of teenagers cuts through the park on their way to the docks, their laughter loud, their breath steaming in the cold. One of them wears a sweatshirt with the Mercer crest on the front, the abstract wave pattern warped over her chest. She doesn’t even glance our way.
“Want to hear something ridiculous?” I ask.
“Always,” Riley says.
“I keep thinking about the next Light the Harbor parade,” I say. “How the town is going to handle deciding who gets on which boat now that the Mercers aren’t the unchallenged royal family.”
“You planning to show up on a dinghy with a bullhorn?” she asks.
“Tempting,” I say. “But I was picturing something quieter. Standing on the shore with you, maybe. Not on any boat. Watching the whole spectacle go by and knowing that whatever those donor lists say, they don’t get to define us.”
She snorts.
“You really are a social worker,” she says. “All that symbolism.”
“You love it,” I say.
She says nothing for a second, then nudges my knee with hers.
“I might,” she answers.
We let the silence stretch, not taut this time but wide, like the harbor. Kids shout. The gulls wheel overhead. The town smells like salt and burning wood and the sterile promise of healing that hid so much harm.
“So,” Riley says at last. “Next week. Want to try this again? Maybe somewhere with edible coffee.”
Warmth uncurls behind my ribs.
“Yeah,” I say. “Text me the place. I’ll bring your growth chart if you want it.”
“Keep it for now,” she replies. “Until I figure out where to hang it that isn’t haunted. We can…audit my history together.”
The word “we” hangs in the cold air, fragile and enormous.
I stand, stretching stiff legs. She rises too. For a moment we just look at each other, unsure of the choreography. Then she opens one arm, half a hug, an invitation I can refuse without consequence.
I step into it.
We’re both awkward, bodies not quite fitting yet, but I feel her grip tighten for a second before she lets go. My coat smells like cheap coffee and car heater dust; hers smells faintly of laundry detergent and the motel room we half turned into a war room.
“Okay,” she says, stepping back. “Don’t get sappy. Your lawyer will sense it and raise your billable rate.”
“Your faith in my lawyer is touching,” I say.
We start walking toward the parking lot, boots crunching over frozen ground. The harbor lies to our left, the hospital to our right, the cliffside mansions up ahead on the spine of the peninsula. Somewhere beyond them, Daniel is packing up his own version of starting over.
“Ready for the next wave?” Riley asks, echoing that night in the motel without smiling.
I look at her, at the ships, at the town that tried to write both of us into footnotes.
“Not even close,” I say. “But I’m not planning to face it alone.”
The answer seems to satisfy both of us enough to keep moving, step by step, toward a future neither of us is letting the Mercers name for us.