The lake rides low enough to show a bruise of algae on the stones. I sit on the public bench we’ve used before and track the dam’s timing in my head—how they raise the level later for optics, how mornings show the truth. The wind tastes like metal and rain, ozone threading the back of my tongue. Cedar breathes from the condo row behind me, closets pretending to be forests.
Mara sits without a hello, a gray hoodie zipped to her neck. “Phones?” she asks, chin tipping toward my pockets.
“Air-gapped and dead,” I say, lifting my small brick. “My live one’s in the car, off and nested in foil.” I’m not proud of the burrito, but today I want her to see the lengths.
“Good,” she says. “Then here are the rules.” She keeps her hands in the hoodie. Her eyes are bright the way a feral cat’s eyes look right before it decides whether you’re food or furniture. “Meds first. Not press, not principles, not your marriage story. My meds. If this blows up and the checks pause, I don’t spiral.”
I nod and hold the word first in my mouth like a coin I can spend later. “Then that’s our frame,” I say. “Any plan we make gets scored on a single metric: do the prescriptions refill.”
“And,” she adds, “I don’t become someone’s baby. I don’t want a replacement family. I want not to be used.”
“I hear that,” I say. I redirect my gaze to the black seam where water stained stone. The rook-shaped doorknobs in my house flash through my head, all strategy dressed as taste. “If we do this together, I’m a witness on your rules, not a manager.”
“Try it,” she says. “Say it clean.”
“I don’t get to trade your life for my leverage,” I say. “I don’t get to spend your name.”
Her shoulders drop half an inch. She slides a bite of air back into her lungs. “Okay. Then we need a script for when they knock.”
I pull a pencil from my spiral. “Two sentences, nothing extra,” I say. “If contacted.” We both look at the lake like it might read the draft back to us with captions, the way donors love their live-captioned toasts.
I write the first line and speak it as I go, my voice flat for memorization: “I decline to answer questions without counsel present; please put any requests in writing and direct them to my attorney.” I let the pencil hover. “Second?”
“I will not discuss medical care; attempts to do so will be documented,” Mara says, no hesitation. “Add something about wellness visits not being welcome.”
I add: “Unscheduled ‘wellness’ or ‘welfare’ visits are not consented to; please leave now.” I show her the page. We say the script twice, trading lines, not looking at each other as we place the words into our mouths to live there.
A gull heckles the rocks. The water throws a small shiver. I underline without counsel because the retired paralegal from yesterday put the phrase in my blood with a warning: they love a confession.
“Now you,” Mara says. “What’s your two-liner if they come for you.”
“My health is private; all inquiries must go through counsel,” I recite. “No statements without written requests and scheduled times.”
“Add: No device access.” She pins me with her eyes. “You know why.”
I swallow a flare of heat that looks like a bracelet charging blue behind a drawer. “I add it,” I say. The pencil digs a tiny divot into the paper like a footprint.
She rubs her hands inside the hoodie pocket and speaks to the bench. “I will testify if there’s a safety net. That means escrow that can’t go dark because somebody’s image needs to go bright. Not promises. Paper. Signatures that aren’t his.”
“Anonymous donors unrelated to Rook,” I say. “Meds and rent guaranteed for a year, with a ninety-day tail if we have to move fast.” I keep my voice steady, clinical, so she’ll hear an instrument panel, not a pitch. “I’ll show you the bank structure; you choose the admin and the pharmacy.”
She flicks her gaze to mine. I see the teenager who learned to read invoices before love letters. “You’re not my savior,” she says.
“I’m not,” I say. “I’m your witness and your worker bee. And I don’t get to write you into a family you didn’t ask for.”
She nods once, slow, like she’s granting a provisional login.
A jogger passes with a stroller, and the HOA vest on a man near the path makes my back go rigid. He’s not photographing anyone today, just tapping his tablet in pious circles. Lakeview Heights loves a “child-neutral amenity” post; it loves rules more. My stomach tightens. I fix my gaze on the dam’s control house, neat as a chess piece on the far shore.
“I brought something,” I say, and I slide a small flat envelope from my coat. Inside is a prepaid legal consult card—two hours on retainer with a clinic-friendly attorney Tamsin trusts. I keep it face-down on my palm. “No ID needed to redeem. You can use it to vet me, to vet our structure, or to tell me to stop.”
“Who paid?” she asks.
“I did,” I say. “Not through him. No foundation fingerprints. I printed the redemption code on paper because QR codes are snitches.” I offer it now, my hand steady, the envelope unbranded.
She doesn’t take it right away. “Say the use-case,” she says.
“You call this lawyer,” I say, “and you ask: if I help Lena build a file, what do I risk? What protections can I file now to freeze retaliation for seventy-two hours if they knock? How do I keep my meds first, and my name last?”
She studies me like a locksmith studies a tumbling cylinder. Then she takes the envelope. Her thumb traces the paper’s edge as if it might cut her. “Okay,” she says, and the word is not surrender; it’s a pebble placed with intention.
I let breath climb into my chest. My hands want to move; I let them busy themselves with the spiral. “I need one piece of paper from you,” I say. “Just one for now. Something that proves flow.” I don’t say rent receipt. She knows.
“You’ll get one,” she says. “Not the worst, not the newest. One.” Her tone says: this is a loaner, not a gift.
I nod and put the spiral down, both palms open on the bench slat where she can see I’m not about to grab. “We’ll also write a joint statement,” I say. “Not for today. For maybe-never. Two paragraphs we can post if the smear comes.” I see the donor salons in my head—how toasts get live-captioned while bodies are redacted. “We set conditions under which it goes live: if they lie about you, if they leak my health, if they frame us as irresponsible.”
“I don’t want to perform trauma,” she says. The hoodie hood stays down, but her chin tucks like she’s bracing for flash.
“Then we write it like a lab note,” I say. “No adjectives. Just facts and conditions. We own the timing. We can shred it if we never need it.”
She thinks. A minute passes. The lake presses a soft slap against stone like a tired child clapping alone. “You read it to me,” she says. “Before it lives anywhere.”
“Always,” I say.
I sketch a skeleton: opening line asserting autonomy; one sentence about coercive clauses in philanthropy; a line about the right to medical privacy; a final line that points to counsel for requests. I keep it bone lean, no superior verbs. She listens and tilts the draft until it stops reflecting me and starts reflecting her.
“Cut ‘coercive,’” she says. “Say ‘contract terms used against care.’ People grok utility bills before they grok ethics.”
I strike coercive and write used against care. “Better,” I say.
“Add: ‘No interviews about my childhood,’” she says.
“Added,” I say. “And: ‘Meds funded by escrow not controlled by any party under investigation.’”
“Good,” she says. We are building a bridge without promising to cross it.
A text pings on my dead brick anyway—phantom muscle memory. I ignore the ghost.
“Tell me something true about why you’re doing this,” Mara says suddenly. She doesn’t look at me when she says it; she watches the control house and the neatness of it.
My throat tightens around the word I’ve been dodging on purpose. “Because I want a child,” I say, the words bare as wet glass. “And the way he built his life makes that wanting a weapon, not a wish. I want to stop being a variable he optimizes by hurting other people.”
Mara’s jaw works. “That’s two truths,” she says.
“Then keep one,” I say. “Return the other.” I gesture to the envelope in her hoodie. “You can always walk.”
“I won’t be your tragedy,” she says.
“You won’t,” I say. “If anyone tries to edit you into one, I’ll cut the footage.”
She snorts; it’s almost a laugh. “Okay, editor,” she says. “One paper.”
She reaches into her tote and pulls a flat file folder with a cartoon apple sticker on the tab. Inside: a rent receipt printed on cheap thermal paper. She slides it so only half peeks out, like a deer testing a clearing.
I don’t touch yet. The watermark is faint but there—rook silhouette embossed in the corner, a brand melted into help. The memo line reads continuation of care—do not 1099. My skin prickles. I lift the edge with two fingers and slide it onto my spiral. I photograph it with my point-and-shoot, not the phone, because I want the camera’s time stamp and its clean EXIF to live far from our usual circuits. I take a second shot with the air-gapped phone for redundancy.
“You don’t get to keep the original,” she says.
“I won’t,” I say. I slip the receipt back between the apple sticker and the manila smile. “I’ll print two copies on plain paper and give you one; I’ll initial the back of both with the hash. Originals stay with you.”
She watches my hands do exactly that—office rituals on a park bench. I sign across the photocopy seam like a notary taught by a mother who clocked double shifts and triple doubts.
“If they come to my door with the welfare act,” she says, “I say the script and I text you a single word: freeze.”
“I file within the hour,” I say. “Protective filing buys us seventy-two. You go to the pharmacy. You refill everything early.”
“And if he sends a friendly,” she says—her voice wraps quotes around friendly—“you don’t chase clout.”
“I chase paper,” I say. I point at the rook watermark. “I chase this.”
She nods and looks down the shoreline where the HOA noticeboard stands like a tiny billboard scolding the horizon. A laminated sheet praises “amenities for all” in cheerful icons: kayak, yoga, leaf. No stroller icon. My jaw tightens. The wind brings the scent of wet limestone and old leaves.
“You hungry?” I ask, because we’ve done the hard talk and we’re still here.
“No,” she says. “But I want a soda.”
We cross to the vending shed where the keypad beeps like a microwave in a hospital lounge. I feed quarters because cards are little biographies. The can pops cold, fizz bitten with chemical joy. She presses the metal to her cheek for a beat, then sips.
“If this goes bad,” she says, “we burn the statement and we vanish.”
“If it goes bad,” I say, “we retreat to proof and oxygen. Paper buys air.”
“You really talk in receipts,” she says.
“It’s how I was raised,” I say. “Write it down and you won’t be eaten.” I don’t say by whom.
She tucks the prepaid envelope deep inside the hoodie like a heat pack. “Okay, Lena,” she says, soft for the first time. “I will testify if the safety net is real and I choose the terms. Until then, I’m a person, not a parable.”
“I bind myself to that,” I say. I hold out my hand, not for a shake, but as a surface to place words on. “Say it once more—your script.”
We speak in turns, crisp as the dam’s white noise. She grins at the end, small and sharp. “I hate that I trust you,” she says.
“I hate that you have to,” I say.
We walk back to the bench. I slide the photocopy into my spiral, then seal a second copy in a plain envelope marked household so it looks like a boring bill if anyone rifles my bag. The rook watermark ghosts through the paper, a chess piece in fog.
“I’ll call the attorney and book time,” she says, tapping the envelope in her pocket. “No names until I say so.”
“No names,” I confirm. “Not even in my head.”
We part where the path forks—her toward the bus stop, me toward the parking lot where cedar-lined SUVs nap like docile animals. The wind shifts. Somewhere, a car alarm chirps, and I think of the bracelet lying content on its charger, quiet as a gagged witness.
My phone, still wrapped in foil, vibrates faintly in the glove box when I open the car. I peel back the crinkle, only enough to read what leaked through the lock screen: Unknown: Quick welfare check? Friendly face. No name. No emojis. Just the tone of a clipboard smiling.
I don’t answer. I breathe the ozone tang baked into the car’s vents and slide the foil back, then press my forehead to the steering wheel’s cold leather. The lake waits outside like a held breath.
I ask the question I don’t want to hear echoed on Mara’s line: If I hold the door shut now, will “friendly” find another door—hers—and will my promise arrive with the safety net before the knock does?