Evelyn chooses a day when the sky matches the Sound.
“We should get some air,” she says after lunch, placing her hand lightly on the back of my chair. “Cliff air is very good for perspective. Don’t you think so, Hannah?”
Her nails rest against the curve of my shoulder, not digging in, not quite. I set my fork down, suddenly aware of how tight my jaw feels from smiling through a meal where Daniel barely met my eyes.
“Sure,” I answer. “Fresh air sounds great.”
Robert retreats to his study with a murmured excuse about calls to the hospital. Daniel vanishes down a hallway with his phone pressed to his ear, that efficient Mercer tone already in place. No one asks where I want to go. Evelyn has already decided.
“Perfect,” she says. “Bring your warmer coat. The wind can be cruel this time of year.”
Her voice wraps cruelty in linen napkins and polished silver, then feeds it to me like a courtesy.
I grab my coat from the peg in the mudroom, the one labeled with a small brass plate engraved “Guest.” Even the hooks in this house come with a hierarchy. A basket of boots lines the wall; mine sit on the far end, separated slightly from the glossy pairs with the Mercer crest embossed near the heel.
Outside, the air slaps my cheeks with cold. Salt blows up from the water below, threaded with the distant tang of woodsmoke from town and that faint sterile note that always drifts from Harbor Glen Memorial Hospital’s hill like invisible fog. The sky hangs low and heavy, a lid over the narrow peninsula.
Evelyn walks ahead of me at first, boots crisp on the gravel path. The Mercer estate spreads behind us, all glass and shingles and money pretending to be modest. Beyond the driveway gates, a back road cuts away toward the town’s edge, the one locals use to skip the manicured center. From here I can see a sliver of Main Street in the distance: holiday lights still strung between lampposts, a banner about the upcoming “Light the Harbor” boat parade snapping in the wind.
“You haven’t seen Lydia’s tree yet,” Evelyn says over her shoulder. “That won’t do.”
My chest tightens. This is the topic that made her eyes turn to ice when I mentioned it at breakfast on my first morning here. Today her tone sounds almost gentle, but the word “won’t” carries rules inside it.
“I’d like to see it,” I say. My breath leaves small bursts of steam. “Daniel told me about it. A little.”
“Daniel never quite knows what to do with memory,” she replies. “He fixates on pieces. Dates, phrases, the story he needs in the moment.”
I file that away. Projection in a designer coat.
The path narrows as we near the cliffs. Grass turns from manicured lawn to scrub, stiff under a dusting of old frost. The wind rises, pressing my coat against my legs, prying at my scarf. The Sound churns below us, gray streaked with white where waves collide with rock.
Evelyn slows until I’m beside her, then links her arm through mine. Anyone watching from the house would see a mother and daughter-in-law strolling, sharing confidences. From inside my skin, her weight feels like a guided leash.
“It’s important you understand this place,” she says. “Harbor Glen is not just pretty houses. People think the mansions sit above everything—above the town, above the law, above consequence. In reality, we’re all tethered to the same shoreline.”
“Some anchors are heavier than others,” I say before I can stop myself.
Her lips quirk. “You do have a social worker’s way with metaphors.”
We walk in silence for a few yards. The path curves slightly inward, then opens again toward an outcropping that juts over the water. As we round a clump of low evergreens, I see it.
The memorial tree stands on a patch of ground near the edge, roots spread wide as if bracing against the wind. It isn’t large—more spindly ornament than towering oak—but its branches twist gracefully, bare now except for a few weather-faded ribbons tied near the lower limbs. A discreet stone marker nestles at its base, half-swallowed by grass.
The Mercer crest appears in miniature at the top of the plaque, that abstract wave etched in metal above Lydia’s name and dates. Even grief wears the brand.
Evelyn releases my arm and steps closer, her boots sinking slightly into the soft earth. She reaches out and smooths a ribbon between her fingers, thumb moving over its frayed edge. When she speaks again, her voice shifts. The edges soften, but the cadence sharpens, every word placed with care.
“Lydia loved this spot,” she says. “From the time she could walk, she ran ahead of us on this path. Robert used to call her his little lighthouse—always pulling toward the water, always shining back at us.”
The line sounds polished. I can hear it engraved on donor programs, repeated at board meetings.
“We brought her here the week before the accident,” she continues. “The day the storm came in, the sky looked just like this at breakfast. Calm. Ordinary. No one expected anything grand or terrible.”
My stomach flickers. Daniel once told me, in a rare unguarded moment, that the morning of the accident had looked “wrong all day. Too bright, like a postcard that hurt your eyes.” He described a sudden shift later, clouds barreling in during the late afternoon just before sunset.
Evelyn glances at me to be sure I’m listening.
“We went out on the boat after lunch,” she says. “A simple outing. Robert at the helm, Daniel beside him, Lydia in her little life jacket, shouting about the waves.” Her hand tightens on the ribbon. “We checked the forecast, of course. We are not reckless people.”
Daniel told me they left early in the morning to “make the most of the calm water” and that he had stayed behind with a stomach bug, sulking because he hated missing any time with his sister. The words replay in my mind with sharp clarity now.
“No warning about a storm?” I ask, keeping my tone mild.
Evelyn’s eyes flick to mine, blue and clear and measuring. “The forecast mentioned a chance of showers. Nothing more. A freak squall rolled in two hours later, right when we were turning back toward the harbor. The tide turned faster than the charts predicted. By the time the Coast Guard could reach us, the waves had done their work.”
She says “done their work” the way a surgeon might describe a completed operation.
“What time was that?” I ask. I tuck my hands into my pockets to hide their shake. “When the storm hit?”
“Oh.” She exhales, a small controlled sigh. “Three thirty? Four? I remember watching the church clock from the boat as the clouds swallowed it. The world went very dark for late afternoon.”
Daniel swore the call came in just after noon. I remember because he told me he was in a college dining hall two hours away, staring at a plate of fries when his phone rang and his entire life cracked open. He said the sky outside had still been bright when he stumbled out, voice raw, trying to book the fastest train home.
My skin prickles beneath my coat.
“You weren’t on the boat?” I say. “Daniel told me he was away at school when it happened.”
Evelyn’s jaw stills. For a heartbeat, the wind is the only sound between us.
“Grief distorts memory,” she says finally. “He was home that weekend. We insisted he join us; it was a rare window when his campus schedule allowed a visit. He forgets because he cannot bear to remember.”
Her version flips Daniel’s reality inside out in a single sentence.
The wind picks up, tugging hard at my hair, rushing past my ears in a hollow roar. Below, a wave hits rock with a heavy smack. Spray shoots upward, carrying wet salt that stings my lips. The air tastes raw and metallic.
Evelyn drops the ribbon and smooths her gloved hand down the length of the tree trunk, almost like a caress.
“Afterwards, I decided we could not let Lydia’s life be defined by a random act of weather,” she says. “We planted this tree, we built the pediatric wing at the hospital, we created the Light the Harbor fund for at-risk children. When people pass that donor wall and see our name, when they watch the boats each year, they remember our daughter in joy, not in horror.”
Love and harm in the same hands, I think. The Mercer Foundation pays for incubators and therapy programs and quiet paperwork that changes birth certificates no one will ever question.
“That’s… beautiful,” I say aloud. My voice sounds thin even to me.
“It is necessary.” Her gaze cuts back to mine, sharp enough to peel away polite phrases. “We do not let tragedy have the last word in this family.”
Or the true one, I think but do not say.
I step closer to the edge, pulled by the view despite the drop. The ground slopes gently down, then ends abruptly. The Sound sprawls beneath us, restless and wide. From here I can see the town docks, tiny from this height, and the faint glimmer of the memorial plaque near the pier that tells Harbor Glen’s version of Lydia’s story. A few fishing boats dot the water, dwarfed by larger pleasure craft resting at their moorings, waiting for summer’s social census.
“Careful,” Evelyn says.
I take another half step, wanting to feel the scale of it, to imagine a small boat out there and a girl in a life jacket looking back toward this spot. The wind rushes around my ankles, tugging at the hem of my coat.
Evelyn’s hand clamps around my forearm.
Her grip is strong for someone with such slender wrists. The pressure shoots up into my shoulder, stopping me mid-step. Her nails press through the fabric, not quite piercing, but focused.
“The cliffs erode in more places than you think,” she says quietly. “Visitors underestimate that. One minute they are admiring the view, the next the ground is simply… gone.”
No “it seemed,” no “as if.” Just gone.
Heat rushes into my face, chased quickly by a thin wash of cold. For a disorienting second, I imagine the newspaper version: Tragic Fall at Mercer Estate. Daughter-in-law of Hospital Benefactors Slips from Cliff Path. People would shake their heads in the coffee shop, then look up at the donor wall and remark on how cursed these generous families can be.
“I didn’t realize I was that close,” I say. My voice comes out smaller than I intend.
“Of course you didn’t,” she replies. Her breath brushes my temple. Up close I catch the faint, expensive scent of her perfume—something floral undercut with smoke—and beneath that, the sterile ghost of hospital disinfectant that always clings to her clothes, even when she’s nowhere near the wing that bears her name. “Newcomers never do. The cliffs are treacherous for the unprepared.”
The sentence lands heavily, carrying more than topography.
She keeps her hand on my arm for a beat longer than necessary, then eases me back a safe distance before letting go. When she steps away, phantom fingerprints buzz under my skin.
“I would hate to lose another daughter here,” she adds. “That would be… untenable.”
The word choice cuts. Not tragic, not unbearable. Untenable. A problem for the structure.
“You haven’t lost me,” I say, though the ground beneath my boots feels less certain than it did ten minutes ago. “I’m right here.”
“For now,” she says lightly. “Let’s keep it that way.”
She turns back toward the house, clearly expecting me to follow. The path behind her looks narrower from this angle, hemmed in by scrub and sky. The Mercer estate rises in the distance, its glass catching dull light, windows facing out over Harbor Glen like watchful eyes.
I take one last look at Lydia’s tree. The ribbons shiver in the wind, their faded colors twitching against the gray backdrop. Somewhere below, waves grind rock into smaller pieces, rearranging the shoreline grain by grain.
Daniel’s version of the day, Evelyn’s version, the town’s plaque, the donors’ brochures—each one shaves off edges that don’t fit and lets the rest harden into official history.
I step away from the edge and fall into stride behind Evelyn, my boots tracing the same pathway her family has walked for years. My heart pounds a slow, heavy rhythm against my ribs.
If they can round off the truth of Lydia’s death until it fits their preferred shape, what stops them from carving a new tragedy when the story requires it?
The wind catches her hair and tosses it back toward me like a banner, glossy and controlled even in the gusts. She doesn’t look back, sure I will follow.
For now, I do.
But as the house draws closer and the cliff drops away behind us, one thought roots itself inside me, stubborn as the memorial tree clinging to the bluff.
If this family can turn an accident into a performance, they can do the reverse too.
And I need to know which kind they have in store for me.