The next morning starts with the taste of metal on my tongue, a hangover without alcohol.
I wake to a pale stripe of winter light cutting across the guest room ceiling and the steady thud of waves working at the rocks below. My laptop is still under the bed where I shoved it last night, a hidden animal breathing faintly through its charging cord. For a few seconds I lie perfectly still, listening for footsteps in the hallway, for the particular click of Evelyn’s heels.
The house gives me nothing but the low murmur of staff in the distance and the faint clatter of pans from the kitchen. Somewhere outside, a car door slams, the sound carried up the cliff. Harbor Glen goes about its day. The world keeps accepting the Mercers’ story.
My phone, face-down on the nightstand, buzzes.
The vibration rattles against the wood, sharp in the quiet. I roll over and squint at the screen. Blocked flashes where a number should be.
For a second my thumb hovers above the green icon. I think of hospital IT logs and sealed records, of the question I fell asleep with: Who else is digging? Then the phone buzzes again, insistent, and instinct overrides strategy.
I swipe to accept and lift it to my ear.
“Hello?”
There’s a hiss of static, then a breath. I hear background noise—indistinct keyboard tapping, something that might be a coffee machine, or my imagination stitching details onto a stranger’s life.
“Um—” A woman’s voice. Higher than Evelyn’s, younger, roughened at the edges like she’s been talking too much or not enough. “Hi. Is this… Mrs. Mercer?”
The title lands in my chest with a dull weight. “This is Hannah,” I say. “Hannah Cole-Mercer.”
Silence blooms on the line. I stare at the curtains, the light outlining faint dust motes drifting, then swing my legs over the side of the bed, toes hitting the cold hardwood.
“Who’s calling?” I ask.
The woman exhales, a fragile scrape near the microphone. “I—sorry.” Her voice drops, muffled, maybe turned away from the phone. I catch a blurred word that sounds like “wrong,” then another I can’t make out. My heart climbs higher in my throat.
“If you’re looking for Mrs. Evelyn Mercer,” I say, “I can take a message.”
The quiet sharpens. When she speaks again, her tone has flattened, drained of the unsure warmth from a moment ago.
“No. That’s okay.” A tiny pause. “Sorry. Wrong number.”
The call disconnects before I can answer.
I lower the phone and stare at the call log. Just Blocked and a timestamp and a thin, accusing red bar that reads “1 minute, 02 seconds.”
“Sure,” I murmur to the empty room. “Just a wrong number.”
I set the phone down more gently than it deserves and head for the bathroom. The tiles bite cold into my bare feet. I turn on the faucet and splash my face, the water icy enough to sting. In the mirror, my reflection gazes back with dark crescents under her eyes and a faint red line along her arm where Evelyn’s fingers held too tightly yesterday.
“Mrs. Mercer,” I say to the mirror, testing the sound. It tastes strange, like someone else’s medication.
Downstairs, the smell of coffee and toasted bread drifts up through the vents, cut with the sharper tang of the woodsmoke from the kitchen fireplace. Under it all, faint and stubborn, that clean chemical note from the hospital on the hill, riding the wind into every corner of this peninsula.
I dry my face, dress, and head down.
In the kitchen, Claire moves between the stove and the island with her usual quiet efficiency. A pot of oatmeal steams, a plate of berries shines under the recessed lights. The Mercer crest grins up at me from the corner of a linen napkin, its stylized wave stitched in navy thread.
“Good morning, Mrs. Cole-Mercer,” Claire says.
“Morning,” I answer. I clear my throat. “Hey, Claire, do you know if the house phone ever forwards calls to our cells?”
Her hand, halfway to the sugar bowl, freezes for one heartbeat too long. Then she resumes the motion, spoon tipping.
“I’m not sure, ma’am,” she says. “Mr. Robert’s office has a separate system. Mrs. Mercer’s, too. Guest rooms usually ring straight through.”
I nod and reach for a mug, letting her off the hook. The ceramic is warm. I pour coffee, inhale the bitter steam, and feel my shoulders unclench a fraction.
“Expecting a call?” she asks, neutral.
“I got one,” I say. “Blocked number. Wrong person.”
“Ah.” Her mouth presses into a polite shape that could be anything. “Telemarketers find creative ways these days.”
“Right,” I say. “Telemarketers.”
She retreats to the stove, and the conversation dissolves. I sip my coffee, the taste sharp and grounding, and stare out the wide kitchen window toward the Sound. Boats dot the water, small and distant; in another week they’ll be wrapped in lights for Light the Harbor, each yacht a floating résumé.
Somewhere in town a woman is dialing blocked numbers and asking for Mrs. Mercer.
Maybe she just wants to donate to the gala. Maybe she wants something else.
The rest of the morning idles by in holiday choreography. Evelyn has arranged a “casual day” for Daniel and me, which somehow still includes a schedule: a late brunch in the sunroom, a walk into the manicured part of town, a tour of an art gallery that happens to feature a Mercer-sponsored installation. I play my part, nodding at plaques, smiling in the bakery when the owner slips an extra cookie into our bag “for the Mercers.”
Everywhere we go, the crest watches from walls and menus and donation boxes, that abstract wave curling like a signature on the whole peninsula.
On the walk back, the air bites my cheeks, smelling of salt and distant chimney smoke. I glance toward the hill where the hospital sits—glass and concrete and disinfectant—and feel a pinch in my chest, a tug toward its records room like gravity.
“You’re quiet,” Daniel says, breaking into my thoughts. His gloved fingers brush mine, tentative. “You okay?”
“Just tired,” I say. “Still adjusting.”
“To my family?” He gives a rueful smile. “That takes a lifetime.”
I want to tell him about the blocked call, the woman who didn’t want to leave a message. Instead, I picture him walking straight to Evelyn with the story, eyes worried, wanting her interpretation.
“To the cliff wind,” I say. “My skin hasn’t thickened yet.”
He laughs, breath puffing white. “Give it time.”
Back at the house, guests from the neighboring estate have dropped by; the foyer fills with designer coats and air-kisses and talk of country club waitlists and which families will have the best view of Light the Harbor from their decks. Evelyn glides through them with a flute of champagne, her laughter low and warm, collecting compliments on the hospital’s latest wing.
I drift along the edges, smiling when looked at, nodding about donor walls, refilling cheese boards. My phone stays in my pocket like a small, buzzing secret, even though it’s completely still.
By midafternoon, the visitors thin out. The house exhales. Claire and the staff clear glasses and plates. A faint smell of lemon cleaner joins the usual polish, wrapping itself around the banister’s smooth wood.
“Hannah?” Evelyn’s voice floats in from the foyer. “Darling, I’ll be in the office for a bit if anyone asks. Some Foundation nonsense.”
“Sure,” I call back, stacking dessert plates. “Do you need anything?”
“Just privacy, for once,” she says lightly. “No one understands that the holidays don’t pause governance.”
The door to the office clicks shut.
I finish helping Claire, wiping a stray smear of brie from the marble counter. My fingers prune slightly from the damp cloth. When the kitchen settles into its quiet rhythm again, I pour myself a glass of water and wander toward the back hallway, telling myself I’m just walking off the sugar.
The estate’s private corridor feels different from the glossy front rooms—narrower, darker, lined with family photos instead of commissioned art. Old newspaper clippings under glass announce hospital milestones and photo spreads from past Light the Harbor parades. In one frame, a younger Evelyn smiles from the deck of a yacht, wind tugging at her hair, Lydia tucked against her hip.
I pause there longer than I mean to, tracing the outline of Lydia’s blurred face with my gaze, counting children. Always one on paper.
A sharp sound snaps me back—a voice, clipped and higher than usual, filtering through the closed office door.
Evelyn.
I set my water glass on a side table and step closer, toes sinking into the runner. The scent here is softer, fabric and dust and a lingering hint of Evelyn’s perfume from her comings and goings.
“…already discussed this,” she says. Her words are clear through the wood, every syllable honed. “There is nothing for you in those files.”
My pulse jumps. I angle my head nearer to the door, careful not to touch it.
A fainter voice answers, too low to decipher, just a hum with edges. Female, I think. My stomach tightens.
“Old cases were closed for a reason,” Evelyn says. No velvet now, just ice. “Families moved on. Digging them up accomplishes nothing but harm.”
I hold my breath until my lungs burn.
The muffled voice responds, slightly louder. I catch fragments—“public interest,” “records,” “pattern”—before Evelyn slices through.
“No,” she says. “What you are doing is harassment. Harassing my staff. Harassing my board. Harassing my family. I will not tolerate it.”
A glass clicks against wood on her side of the door, the sound sharp, controlled. I picture her at the desk, spine straight, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose between sentences.
“You listen to me,” she continues. “If you had any genuine concern for these… women you keep invoking, you would respect their privacy. You would respect their choices.”
The word women lands oddly. Something in me leans toward girls instead.
The other voice pushes back. I can’t make out the words, but I hear the cadence of argument, the flattening of someone who has repeated a point too many times.
“You are not a savior,” Evelyn snaps. “You are an opportunist with a grudge and just enough technical skill to be dangerous.”
My hand curls against the wall, nails biting into my palm. She’s talking to someone who has technical skill and a grudge about old cases.
The silence on the line now stretches long enough that I imagine the caller scrolling through notes, through evidence. Or swallowing doubt.
“You will leave our family alone,” Evelyn says at last, each word distinct, the mask fully off. “You will leave Harbor Glen Memorial alone. If you continue this campaign, my lawyers will respond in kind, and I assure you they are far better resourced than you.”
My heart slams against my ribs. Campaign.
Inside the office, the chair creaks. I hear the rustle of fabric, the dull thunk of a drawer sliding open.
“Oh, don’t you dare,” she adds, voice dropping to a razor whisper that still carries. “Do not threaten me with ‘going to the press.’ You have nothing anyone outside our little peninsula would care about. A few unhappy former patients with selective memories. A few adoption cases that did not result in Hallmark movies. We have saved thousands of lives. That is the story that stands.”
My throat tightens. The air in the hallway hooks into my lungs, heavy with lemon cleaner and decades of silence.
Evelyn laughs once, humorless. “Yes. I know exactly who you’re talking about. She’s troubled. She has been for years. I will not dignify her fixation by saying her name. And I certainly won’t let her manufacture a scandal out of old paperwork.”
The other woman says something then, fast, words tumbling; I catch “paperwork” and “babies” and “disappeared” in a rush before the volume drops again.
I press closer, breath shallow.
“Enough,” Evelyn says. “This conversation is over. If you contact me, my staff, or my family again, you will hear from our attorneys.”
A beep announces the call ending. A second later, the office goes quiet.
I jerk back from the door, heart thrashing, and grab my glass from the table. Water sloshes, cold against my knuckles. I pivot away from the office, trying to look like I belong in this hallway, like I’m not listening for every shift of movement behind that door.
The knob turns.
Evelyn steps out, phone still in her hand, mouth a tight line. For one frame of time she doesn’t see me; I watch her shoulders sag a fraction, the effort of holding the world in place bending her spine.
Then she spots me.
Her posture straightens so fast it looks painful. The cool, curated expression snaps back into place, transforming her face the way stage lighting transforms a set.
“Oh,” she says. “Hannah. I didn’t realize you were back here.”
I lift the glass. “Just grabbing water,” I say. “Didn’t want to disturb your… governance.”
A tiny flicker crosses her eyes, there and gone. “Tedious Foundation matters,” she says. “Spam calls from people with too much time and not enough sense. I hope they didn’t interrupt your day.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “Everything okay?”
She studies me a beat too long, weighing what version of reality to hand me.
“People like to latch onto tragedies,” she says, choosing a gentle tone. “They project their own unresolved… issues… onto families like ours. It’s the price of visibility. We learn to ignore them.”
“Who was it?” I ask. “On the phone.”
“No one important,” she says. “A woman with a blog and a chip on her shoulder. Old cases at the hospital she thinks she understands better than the physicians who handled them at the time. She claims to be concerned about ‘patterns.’”
She rolls her eyes, but the knuckles around her phone stay white.
“Patterns can matter,” I say quietly.
“Not when they’re drawn with a crayon over people’s grief.” Her gaze sharpens. “Have you been reading things online, Hannah? Old message boards, conspiracy forums? I would hate for you to be distressed by strangers who know nothing about us.”
My grip tightens on the glass. “Just the hospital’s site. A few news articles. The parade coverage,” I say, carefully bland. “Nothing… wild.”
“Good,” she says. “The internet is rarely kind to women in power. Or to their families.” She reaches out and taps my wrist lightly, a gesture that feels like a leash disguised as affection. “If you ever have questions about the hospital or our… history, come to me. Not to anonymous cowards who enjoy poking at wounds.”
“I will,” I lie.
Her smile returns, bright and shallow. “Excellent. Now—why don’t you freshen up before dinner? Robert wants to discuss plans for the Light the Harbor viewing party. Our first year with you as part of the family; we should make a splash.”
“A splash,” I repeat. My mind supplies a boat, a wave, a child overboard, a second girl whose name never made it onto the plaque.
Evelyn’s eyes flick to my face, searching for something. Whatever she sees must satisfy her, because she steps past me, the scent of her perfume chasing her down the hall.
When she disappears around the corner, I exhale, long and shaky. My reflection wavers in the dark glass of a framed newspaper, the headline praising the Mercers for “Transforming Care for the Most Vulnerable.”
I lift my phone with damp fingers and scroll to my recent calls. The blocked number stares back at me, mute, unreachable.
Somewhere out there, a woman with a blog and a chip on her shoulder—or a case file and a conscience—is pushing at the Mercers’ story hard enough to make Evelyn show her teeth.
Evelyn thinks she’s no one important.
I know better than most what someone like that can do when she refuses to look away from ugly patterns. That used to be my job.
I tuck the phone into my pocket, close enough to feel its weight with every step, and head upstairs.
For the first time since I arrived at this cliffside house, I am not sure whether I’m more afraid that this woman will be silenced—
or that she will find me before I’m ready to decide whose side I’m actually on.