I only look away from the oven for thirty seconds.
Thirty seconds, tops, to straighten the thrift-store tablecloth and move the chipped plate so the worst of the crack points toward my wall, not toward my guests. When I yank the oven door open again, a small brown halo scars the top of the potato casserole like a solar eclipse made of cheddar.
“No, no, no,” I mutter, waving a potholder at the faint curl of smoke. Butter and scorched crumbs hit the air, muscling past the earlier comfort of garlic and rosemary. I flap harder, which just pushes more heat into my face.
“You’re going to set off the alarm,” my mother calls from the living room. “Then everyone in this building will know we’re having a crisis with starch.”
“It’s under control,” I say, even though my jaw tightens.
I wrestle the glass dish out of the oven and onto the ancient stovetop, which ticks and pops in protest. The casserole is not ruined. The cheese is just… well, aggressively caramelized. I grab a fork and scrape at the worst of the black edge. Crispy bits skitter onto the stovetop and sizzle when they hit an old grease mark.
For a second, the smell jolts me sideways, back to the Mercer estate’s professional kitchen: staff in white jackets, the quiet efficiency, the unspoken rule that nothing scorched ever crossed the threshold of Evelyn’s dining room. I picture her pinched disapproval at this pan and feel a familiar spike of anxiety—then something in me snaps.
I start laughing.
It comes out louder than I expect, bouncing off the narrow walls of my apartment. My mother peeks around the corner from the futon where she’s arranging throw pillows, eyebrows up.
“You okay?” she asks.
I hold up the casserole with both mitts, like a slightly overcooked trophy.
“Behold,” I say, “my first holiday main dish that would get me fired from the Mercer kitchen in under a minute.”
Mom presses her lips together, trying not to smile, and fails.
“Good thing you don’t work there,” she says. “Good thing we like our cheese with a little character.”
“’Character’ is one word,” I say. “’Smoke inhalation’ is another.”
She comes into the kitchen and leans in, sniffing.
“Hannah, that looks fine,” she says. “You’re allowed to feed people food that didn’t come out of a catering truck.”
I know she’s right, but my shoulder blades remain knotted. Through the thin window above the sink, the Harbor Glen air carries the faintest mix of salt and woodsmoke up from the streets near the water. Somewhere below, cars line the peninsula roads, people moving toward the docks for the annual “Light the Harbor” parade, the town’s social census disguised as holiday cheer. I can’t see the cliffside mansions from here—my building faces the hill with the hospital—but I know they’re there, perched above the law and the rest of us.
I flick my eyes toward the digital clock on the microwave. Fifteen minutes until I told everyone to come. My stomach tightens with the urge to perfect something, anything, even as I know perfection is exactly the trap I almost didn’t escape.
My phone buzzes on the counter.
Riley: outside, debating whether your buzzer is the one with duct tape or the one with the faded smiley face
I grin and text back: smiley face. duct tape belongs to the guy who vapes in the stairwell
“Riley’s here,” I tell my mother.
“Good,” she says. “Maybe she can talk you down off the casserole ledge.”
I open the front door before the buzzer can wail and startle my already-jittery nerves. Cold air slides into the hallway, carrying city sounds—car doors thudding, a distant shout, the muted hum of the hospital’s generators up the hill. Riley trudges up the stairs with a foil-covered baking sheet balanced on one palm.
“Smells like you tried,” she says by way of greeting, stepping past me into the apartment. Her cheeks are pink from the wind; the collar of her coat is dusted with stray snowflakes that haven’t decided whether to melt yet.
“Rude,” I say. “And yes, I tried. This is a try-hard household now.”
She lifts the foil and reveals perfectly browned roasted Brussels sprouts, speckled with what looks like bacon and lemon zest.
“Relax,” she says. “I brought backup.”
“You’re showing off,” I say. “Just because you read that one cookbook.”
“Three,” she corrects. “And some of us process trauma through cruciferous vegetables.”
Behind her, my mother appears in the doorway, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
“Riley,” she says, a little shy, a little formal. “Happy… whatever we’re calling this.”
“Happy Not-Dying-On-A-Balcony Day,” Riley offers, shrugging out of her coat.
Mom snorts.
“I was going to say ‘holiday dinner,’” she says, “but that works too.”
They share a quick, conspiratorial smile that tugs at the corner of my chest. Last year they were names in different file folders. Now they’re in my kitchen, breathing the same mix of burnt cheese and lemon-slick sprouts.
A knock taps against the doorframe before I can savor the moment. Daniel’s voice follows, hesitating.
“Is this the part where I enter with great humility?” he calls.
“Only if you took your boots off,” I say.
He steps in, holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a grocery-store pie in the other. Snow dots his dark hair, melting fast in the warmth. He looks smaller without the Mercer armor—no tailored suit, no watch that costs more than my rent. Just a navy sweater and jeans, a stress line still faint around his mouth.
“Hi,” he says to my mother, to Riley, to me, eyes flicking between us like he’s checking for cracks.
“Hi,” I echo.
For a second, we stand there, the four of us, tangled in history and casseroles and a thousand things unsaid. Then my mother claps her hands.
“Everyone put something on the table before we freeze in the doorway,” she orders. “Hannah, stop hovering over that pan or I’m taking away your oven privileges.”
By the time my two friends arrive—Claire from the old social work office and Malik from my current community clinic—the place smells less like crisis and more like a crowded diner on a snow day. Garlic, roasted vegetables, store-bought rolls warming on the middle rack, sugar from the pie Daniel brought. Someone’s brought mulled cider that steams gently on the back burner, covering the faint note of tangy hospital disinfectant that always drifts down from the hill on damp nights.
My living room is still a living room, not a dining hall. We’ve shoved the tiny table near the window overlooking the street, wedged a folding card table next to it, and thrown a second-hand sheet over both to disguise the seam. The chairs don’t match: one wobbly wooden one from a yard sale, one plastic desk chair, two metal folding chairs, my mother’s preferred spot on the futon with a tray. My cheap string lights sag above us, held up by desperation and clear tape.
“This is very un-Mercer,” Malik says, setting down a bowl of cranberry sauce that still has the ridges from the can. “I approve.”
“Thank you,” I say. “Our donor wall is the fridge.”
On the fridge, guilt magnets from the estate—Mercer Foundation logos, abstract wave crest and all—hold up a child’s drawing one of my clients gave me, a crumpled budget list in my handwriting, and a photo Claire printed of Riley and me standing on the harbor docks with wind slapping our faces. The crest shares space it used to dominate.
We squeeze around the tables, knees bumping. My mother nests into the futon corner, plate balanced on her lap. Riley and Claire wind up in the middle, elbow to elbow, instantly swapping sarcastic comments about Harbor Glen’s annual “Light the Harbor” coverage playing with the TV muted in the background. The camera pans over yachts lined nose to nose along the narrow peninsula, each deck sparkling, every angle carefully composed.
“There’s the social census,” Claire mutters. “Let’s see whose name still gets read out.”
“Bet you five bucks they avoid the Mercers and pretend it’s about ‘community’ this year,” Riley says.
“Bet you ten they still say the hospital’s full name,” I add. “Old habits.”
Daniel glances at the screen and then back to his plate.
“I won’t be offended if we leave it on,” he says. “It’s good for me to know what’s being said.”
My mother arches an eyebrow.
“We can also turn it off and let you have one evening without a chyron,” she says.
He half smiles.
“Tempting,” he says. “But I’d like to know if they start talking about subpoenas in between boat shots.”
We compromise: TV on mute, subtitles no one reads all the way through.
The food circulates, hands reaching, spoons clanking. I pass the casserole, ready with a self-deprecating joke, but Riley beats me to it.
“This is great,” she says through a mouthful, eyebrows up in a visible effort not to exaggerate. “High-quality char. Very artisanal.”
“Thank you,” I say, rolling my eyes. “The burnt layer is to honor all the meals Evelyn would’ve sent back.”
“Then I’ll take seconds,” my mother says, scooping more onto her plate. “Out of spite.”
Warmth pools behind my ribs. The urge to apologize for every rough edge—every scorch mark, every mismatched fork—flickers, then fades under something steadier. No one here expects perfection. No one here is keeping score with donor plaques.
Midway through the meal, conversation thins into the comfortable clink of utensils. Outside, the glow from the harbor thickens as the first boats drift along the Sound, their lights smearing against the dark water. From my window, the parade looks small, more like floating ornaments than instruments of social ranking.
“Tell me a story about Hannah as a kid,” Riley says suddenly, leaning toward my mother. “Preferably something with maximum embarrassment.”
“No,” I say at once.
“Absolutely,” my mother replies at the same time.
The table laughs. I hide my face behind my cider mug.
“There was the time she tried to run a neighborhood toy drive out of our apartment,” Mom says, already in it. “She made these flyers on notebook paper and stuck them on every door in the building without asking permission.”
“Community organizing,” I mutter. “Early career development.”
“I came home from the night shift,” she continues, “and there were four garbage bags of stuffed animals in the hallway, three angry notes from neighbors, and one toddler screaming because his favorite dinosaur got ‘donated’ by mistake.”
“I fixed it,” I say. “I got him a better dinosaur.”
“You tried,” she says. “And you were heartbroken that anyone was mad at you for trying.”
Riley’s eyes rest on my face, then slide back to my mother.
“Did she always do that thing?” she asks.
“What thing?” I say.
“The thing where she takes on everybody’s problems like she owes them a solution,” Riley says. “Including people who technically outrank her in terror potential.”
“Yes,” Mom says instantly. “From the time she could talk. She used to mediate playground disputes like there was a judge waiting for her report.”
I stab a Brussels sprout.
“You know, some people at this table have embarrassing childhood stories too,” I say to Riley.
She tilts her head, considering.
“Most of mine don’t have witnesses,” she says. “That’s the fun of group homes: you move before anyone can blackmail you later.”
The joke is light, but something uneasy stirs underneath. I swallow.
“No stories at all?” my mother asks gently. “Nothing you laugh about now?”
Riley hesitates, tapping her fork against her plate.
“There was this one foster house,” she says. “They had a rule that you could put whatever you wanted on your bedroom walls as long as it didn’t cover the smoke detector. The girl who shared my room—Janie—she liked boy bands. I liked case numbers. I taped up printouts of missing kids from the grocery store bulletin board.”
Claire’s eyebrows lift.
“That tracks,” she murmurs.
Riley smiles crookedly.
“Janie’s mom would come in to say goodnight,” she goes on, “and she’d stand in the doorway, looking at all the faces on my half of the room. One night she said, ‘You really think someone’s going to come walking through the door because you pinned their picture next to your bed?’”
“What did you say?” my mother asks.
“I said no,” Riley answers. “But then I started sleeping with the light on, just in case.”
A quiet settles over our end of the table. I see my mother’s throat work once, twice, like she’s swallowing glass.
“That must have been…” she begins, then stops, clearly searching for words that aren’t pity or platitude.
Instead of finishing the sentence, she reaches across the table and touches Riley’s wrist.
“Thank you for putting one of those pins in me,” she says. “I know I wasn’t the missing person on your wall, but you still went looking.”
Riley’s shoulders hitch. She doesn’t move away.
“You’re welcome,” she says, voice rough. “I’m glad you’re here to be annoyed by burnt cheese instead of wondering what happened to your kid.”
My eyes sting. I blink hard and take a sip of cider to hide it, the cinnamon heat catching in my nose.
“I’m glad too,” I say.
The TV flashes a close-up of a yacht decked in lights, Mercer crest nowhere in sight, the announcer’s caption naming new sponsors. The town’s hierarchy is still coded in who owns what boat, but for once I don’t feel pressed against the glass, begging for entry. My party is here, knees touching under a table that doesn’t care who sits where.
After plates are mostly empty and the pie has been dented down to crumbs, Daniel clears his throat.
“Can I…?” He lifts his glass halfway, eyes flicking to me. “Is it okay if I do a toast?”
Old reflex tenses every muscle in my body. I remember the last time he did this in front of a crowd, at a Mercer party, promising new beginnings while ignoring the rot under our feet. The room watches me now, waiting.
I set my fork down and nod.
“Short one,” I say. “No PowerPoint.”
A ripple of laughter softens the air. Daniel smiles, self-conscious, and stands anyway, scraping his chair against the floor. The overhead light catches the tiny scar near his temple I’ve traced a hundred times with my fingers in darker rooms.
“A year ago,” he begins, “I stood on a very fancy stage and told everyone in Harbor Glen that the coming year would be about healing and legacy.”
He glances at the TV screen, where the parade rolls on in silent color.
“I didn’t know what those words meant,” he says. “Not really. Not under my mother’s definition, and not under my own. I thought healing meant smoothing things over. I thought legacy meant preserving the story we already had.”
My fingers curl around my glass. He meets my eyes directly.
“I was wrong,” he says. “About a lot of things. Some of those mistakes got people hurt. Some of them stood between people at this table and the truth about their lives.”
The only sound in the room is the distant hiss of traffic on the wet street below. Even the TV subtitles have stalled on a frozen frame.
“I’m not making a speech to fix that,” Daniel says. “I’m just… marking this moment. Because we’re here, and we’re together, and no one had to pass a background check from Evelyn to get in the door.”
Riley snorts softly. My mother lets out something between a chuckle and a sigh.
Daniel lifts his glass higher.
“So,” he says, “to the family we choose and the truths we keep telling. Even when they’re ugly. Especially when they’re ugly.”
I feel the words land inside me, heavier than the cider.
Claire raises her glass. Malik follows, then my mother, then Riley, then me.
“To the family we choose,” I say.
“And the truths we keep telling,” Riley echoes.
We drink. The cider is warm and spicy on my tongue. For once, no one rushes to change the subject. We sit with the toast, letting it stretch between us like a newly hung bridge—wobbly, untested, but there.
Daniel sits down, exhaling. Under the table, his knee brushes mine. I don’t pull away. I don’t lean in, either. There’s time to decide what that contact means.
Later, after the dishes are stacked precariously in the sink and Claire and Malik have bundled themselves back into coats, promising to text when they get home, the apartment quiets. The TV shows the last of the boats slipping past the docks, the camera lingering on the hospital up on the hill, its Mercer crest sign still lit but sharing the shot with the foundation’s new transparency banner.
My mother rinses plates at the sink, humming tunelessly. Daniel helps by drying, bumping his hip into mine whenever space gets tight. Riley sits cross-legged on the floor, sorting through a stack of board games I picked up at a thrift store, reading the faded instructions with a frown.
“Who wants to lose at charades?” she calls.
“Not me,” Daniel says. “I did enough performative acting for my mother to last a lifetime.”
“Trivia?” she tries. “I promise not to dominate every category.”
“Lies,” I say.
Riley grins and sets the boxes aside.
“Fine,” she says. “We can do logistics instead. I need to talk to you two about office space.”
I wipe my hands on a dish towel.
“Office space?” I repeat.
“You know how I told you I wanted something separate from the foundation?” she says. “A place for people whose hospitals haven’t apologized yet? I’ve been looking at a cheap unit down near the docks. Overlooks the water, smells like fish and freedom.”
My heart gives a little jump. The door from yesterday’s press conference—the one in my mind with Riley’s name on it—swings wider in my imagination.
“You found a place,” I say.
“Maybe,” she answers. “I want you to come see it before I sign anything. I’m good with records and terrible with paint colors. And with deciding whether I’m out of my mind.”
“You’re absolutely out of your mind,” Daniel says. “In the best possible way.”
My mother dries her hands and turns, leaning against the counter.
“You’re really going to build something new,” she says to Riley. “Outside of all this.”
Riley lifts one shoulder.
“That’s the plan,” she says. “But it’s not just mine. It’s for anyone who got caught in the crosshairs of people with too much money and not enough conscience.”
Her eyes flick to me.
“I’d like you there,” she adds. “Not as a mascot. As whatever you want to be. Co-founder, board member, person who makes sure I remember to eat.”
Heat rises behind my ribs again, different from the anxiety heat, steadier and more complicated.
I think about what saying yes would mean—more stories of loss, more people sitting under fluorescent lights asking questions no one should have to ask. More chances to be hurt, to fail, to watch institutions try to swallow us again.
I also think about saying no, about shrinking my life down to this apartment and its safe, small rituals, letting Harbor Glen’s peninsula become a place I pass through, not a place I change.
The casserole dish gleams dullly on the counter, charred edges and all, a reminder that some things are still worth serving even when they carry scars.
“When do you want to go look?” I ask.
Riley’s smile comes slow and real.
“Tomorrow,” she says. “Before the town sobers up from the parade. Meet me by the docks?”
I nod.
“By the docks,” I repeat.
Outside, a horn sounds from the harbor, long and low. The last of the boats turns in the channel, their lights reflected in the black water like a path leading away from the cliffside mansions and toward something less curated, more real.
For the first time in a long time, I’m not bracing for the next accident, the next staged fall. I’m bracing for a different kind of edge: the one where you choose to step into work that might never be finished, with people who might hurt you and heal you in the same breath.
I look around my small, cluttered living room—at my mother wiping her hands, at Daniel stacking plates, at Riley kneeling among battered board games and bigger plans—and feel the old Mercer dining room recede, not erased, but no longer the measure of everything.
Maybe this is what a new legacy starts with: a burnt casserole, a cramped table, a toast about chosen family, and a promise to walk down to the harbor in the morning to see if we’re brave enough to open another door with our names on it.