The lake wears its drought like a ringed bruise. From the kitchen I can see the pale strata where water should be; the dam schedule pings my phone with numbers that feel like diagnosis. Cedar hangs in the hallway, ozone threads the air from a storm that stalled upriver, and my kettle clicks off like a metronome I forgot I set.
“Ready?” Tamsin texts.
I type back, “Do it,” and watch the burner account push the blind item live: When ‘stewardship’ means policing wombs: a donor ecosystem audits bodies off the books. No names. Only verbs and architecture: committee, riders, questionnaires, “mission purity.”
I don’t breathe until the comment count hits triple digits.
“People love a secret they can solve,” Tamsin says when I call. I hear clinking glass behind her, a bar or her kitchen, I can’t tell. “You’re dark on this, right?”
“I’m a ghost,” I say, and take the mug off the counter because my hands want a job. “What’s our metric for combustible?”
“Speed plus split,” she says. “If they argue fast and along clean boundary lines, we found a wire.”
The first wire glows within minutes. A mid-tier podcast whose host loves morality gossip turns the blind into a cold open. The chyron reads: Who’s auditing whose womb? I watch the clip on mute while captions crawl. The host says, “I’m hearing a philanthropic committee asks about dependents like they’re line items,” and a tiny rook icon flashes on a sponsor graphic behind her, nothing to do with our story, everything to do with mine.
“They picked it up,” I tell Tamsin, tracking my pulse with two fingers against my wrist. “Podcast velocity. Hashtags starting: #ChoiceIsn’tBrand, #ReceiptsNotRhetoric, #MyBodyOffBudget.”
“Good,” she says. “The more generic, the safer for now.”
Hashtags flare like magnesium. Activists retweet the blind with a tidy list: Consent. Privacy. Documentation. A tech reporter adds, Metadata talks. A climate influencer scolds, Children are carbon—do the math, and the replies shred him in competing moralities.
I open my analytics dashboard and build columns like the tabs in my marriage audit: Amplifiers, Language, Reach, Risk. Under Amplifiers, I list handles with a note about their usual terrain: prison reform, fertility rights, nonprofit accountability, HOA satire. Under Language, I paste their pull quotes: “audit triggers,” “brand-safe families,” “mission purity”—phrases I’ve seen in minutes and riders and dinners delivered in live-captioned toasts at donor salons curated like museum exhibits.
“I’m tracking phrases,” I tell Tamsin. “I want to know who repeats what. I want to know who sticks to verbs.”
“Keep the nouns off the board,” she says. “Nouns are discovery. Verbs are culture.”
“Copy,” I say, and I do. I type. My tea goes cold and I keep it because cold tea is proof time passed and I didn’t flinch.
A DM slides into my burner: Finally, someone says it. Another: Reckless rumor. Do better. Then an email to my public address—nothing overt, just a lakefront friend forwarding the blind with a note: Is this about you-know-who? I leave her on read and set a filter that says Later in a folder that will never open.
“Foundation PR will hold an hour, maybe two,” Tamsin says. “Then the statement.”
“They’ll use ‘misinformation,’” I say. “They’re addicted to the word.”
“They’ll use ‘unfounded claims,’” she counters, voice amused. “They forget I exist.”
The podcast posts a follow-up with a call-in segment. A woman mentions privacy policies and surveillance wearables. Another asks why donors need to curate how other people live. A man calls to praise “the courage of restraint”; the host nods too vigorously. Hashtags flare again: #StewardNotOwner, #HandsOffHealth, #AuditThis.
“We’re getting both rage and praise,” I report, rolling my chair an inch so my knees stop bouncing. “Praise repeats the purity talk. Rage demands receipts. I can almost see the Venn diagram.”
“Can you sketch it before the next segment?” Tamsin asks with a grin I can hear.
“I can draw it on the window,” I say, and I do. I fog a corner of glass with my breath and use my fingertip to trace two circles: Brand Moralists and Body Autonomy. In the overlap, I write Documentation.
My phone pings: a Foundation push notification. We’re aware of online misinformation. Our mission celebrates responsible choices. We do not police anyone’s private life. The statement is so bland I taste flour. The rook logo sits above it, small and tidy, a chess piece on every doorknob and cufflink and door to the boardroom where minutes were redlined until the verbs lost all weight.
“Statement’s up,” I tell Tamsin. “They used misinformation and responsible choices. They say they do not police anyone.”
“Screenshots?” she asks.
“Captured,” I say, and drop it into a folder labeled Spin. “Comments are fighting over responsible.”
“Of course they are,” she says. “Such a polite bludgeon.”
I refresh my dashboard and filter by who amplified the Foundation’s line. A venture philanthropist quotes responsible and adds “we protect mission purity from rumor.” A union organizer replies with a thread about audits of bodies, not budgets. A midwestern mayor says “choice is collective,” and the replies oscillate between gratitude and fury. I chart it: Ally: high. Risk: medium. Phrase: audits of bodies.
“How nervous are you now?” Tamsin asks.
“Seven,” I say. “But it’s a useful seven.” I straighten the coaster under my mug like that can organize the internet.
Another DM arrives from a donor-adjacent acquaintance who once complimented my bracelet while telling me children are “luxuries we shouldn’t advertise.” Is this about the Foundation? Call me. I log the message and do not call. The HOA listserv pings with a post titled Viral Rumors and Neighborhood Values. The first paragraph praises “child-neutral amenities”; the second asks us to avoid “public displays that inflame.” Public displays of what, no one says; the subtext polices strollers without naming them.
“Document the listserv,” Tamsin says when I read her the headline. “Tone will matter later.”
“I’m screen-capturing the time, the smell of cedar, the exact pixel shape of their sanctimony,” I say. “I’m a court stenographer for a world that pretends it’s a museum.”
She laughs softly. “You’re doing great,” she says. “Keep the receipts clean.”
Clean becomes my mantra. I copy the podcast transcript, strip out names, bold only verbs: audits, restricts, protects, polices, denies, celebrates. I stack the verbs in two columns and feel a design itch to kerning my scales. I slide the Foundation statement under the verbs and highlight celebrates and responsible in opposite colors, then take a photo for my file because words migrate when they’re scared.
Micro-hook grips my throat: Do I become a villain if I celebrate exposure more than privacy? I let the question sit on my tongue. The answer tonight is no because I’m not dropping names; I’m mapping verbs to systems. Autonomy requires privacy; proof demands exposure. I can hold both in my hands, even if they burn.
“We need a test,” I say. “A tiny, clean receipt. No faces. No names. Just a timestamped artifact with scrubbed metadata and an obvious chain.”
“Which one?” Tamsin asks. “Not the big one.”
“Not the big one,” I echo. “The bracelet header chain. The one showing the fertil—” I stop myself, then push through. “The window email to Julian’s admin. We can redact addresses, keep mailserver stamps.”
“That’ll trigger the tech reporters,” she says. “Good. Draft a neutral explainer for it.”
I write: A consumer wearable sent a reproductive data alert to a third party without explicit consent. I attach a blurred header image, leave the hash values visible, and post it under the same burner with a caption: Receipts travel farther than rumors. It’s a breadcrumb, not a meal.
The podcast host retweets the breadcrumb with a raised-eyebrow emoji. A privacy lawyer quote-tweets with “CC’ing admins on bodies would be funny if it weren’t policy.” A foundation-adjacent board member replies, “Wearables empower choices.” My replies split like lightning. #ReceiptsNotRhetoric spikes to the top of the civic trending sidebar.
“There it is,” Tamsin says in my ear. “Combustible.”
“I can feel the heat on my face,” I say, and I can; the window acts like a dark mirror and my cheeks hold a flush I didn’t earn with running.
I start tracking which allies amplify which phrases. I drag handles into buckets: Legal, Tech, Faith, Donor Dissidents, Moms, Aunts, No-Children-By-Choice. I note who says “audits of bodies” instead of “women’s bodies,” who avoids gender entirely, who talks consent louder than choice. I color-code the verbs they boost. The pattern appears like fish in clear water: Public will amplify receipts if presented cleanly. Not rage. Not sermon. Not manifesto. Just a well-lit document with its metadata showing.
“They’re teaching me what they trust,” I say to the room. “It’s not me. It’s the paper.”
“Good,” Tamsin says. “You’re the narrator, not the proof.”
I stand and crack the window to let in a slice of river wind. The smell is metallic and wet, and the lake chops like a body turning over in sleep. On the muted TV, a donor highlight reel plays. Live-captioned toasts scroll beneath smiling faces: The world thanks restraint. The rook logo perches on the lower third like a patient predator. I point the remote, hesitate, and leave it on. I want to measure how many times restraint appears before midnight.
A new email lands in my burner: We welcome dialogue; DM us. It’s from a philanthropy columnist fishing for a scoop. I pass it to Tamsin.
“No interviews,” she replies. “Not yet. Let them interrogate the verbs.”
I watch the graph for #AuditThis spike and settle. I watch #HandsOffHealth rise steadily without drama; nurses repost it with short stories that taste like bleach and coffee. A climate fund staffer writes, “Planetary stewardship can’t be reproductive coercion.” I file the sentence in Clean Phrases and underline can’t twice.
“How do you feel now?” Tamsin asks.
“Less nervous,” I say. “More useful. Strategically excited.”
“Bottle that,” she says. “We’ll need it when they smear.”
“They’ll smear me,” I say. “They’ll say I exploit vulnerable people to punish a brand.”
“They’ll try,” she says. “Your receipts are clean.”
The HOA listserv pings again: Reminder: Avoid unnecessary commotion on the lake path during sensitive times. Sensitive times. I imagine a sign taped to the air: Please do not give birth or grief within view of premium glass. I save the post with its timestamp and the typos that reveal haste.
I pour my cold tea down the sink and make new. The cedar smell rises when I pass the closet where the onesie sleeps in a drawer that isn’t a nursery because I won’t let them count it yet. I bring the mug back to the desk and lay my palm on the keyboard like an oath.
“What’s next?” I ask.
“We wait for their overreach,” Tamsin says. “They can’t help themselves.”
The overreach arrives in a small way first: a Foundation board spouse posts a story about “rumor-mongers who want babies as bargaining chips,” then deletes it within six minutes. Six minutes is forever online. I catch it, save it, and add it to Spin—Unforced Errors.
The podcast schedules a panel for tomorrow: a privacy lawyer, a nonprofit critic, a faith leader who hates abortions and loves surveillance. The caption asks, Are some bodies public interest? I feel the floor tilt and steady myself with breath.
I refresh the dashboard, and a new line arcs up from a corner I didn’t expect: a mid-level donor I once stood next to under museum lighting reposts the blind with the phrase “Receipts only.” She tags no one and everyone. I draw a tiny rook next to her handle in my notes and circle it. Control disguised as strategy, yes—but sometimes strategy defects.
“We have a path,” I whisper to the lake, the rook, the recorder. “Clean docs, clean captions, no faces until the trap is set.”
The window reflects my mouth, set and unfamiliar. This is the part where character becomes tactic. The part where I let paper speak while I prepare the sting that will require me to say my name with a microphone six inches away.
The donor reel loops again. The world thanks restraint, the caption repeats, perfect museum cadence. The rook logo blinks once in the lower corner like an eye deciding where to look.
I ask the question that keeps my cursor from jumping to Post: Which move lands first— their smear with my name attached, or our first exhibit with the metadata that can’t be charmed?