I pick the park bench that faces the harbor curve, the one with splinters I recognize by touch. Dusk slides over Graypoint like a lid. Gulls complain above the lamplight, gray wings cutting gray air, and the shoal at Widow’s Teeth scrubs itself into white. The wind brings kelp and distant diesel and that forever scent of printer toner baked into my satchel. I keep the folder in my lap, one palm pressed on it, and I count bell rings rolling across from Sea Ledger—one, maybe two—indistinguishable tones for donations or deaths.
Footsteps tick behind me. “You came alone?” Tamsin asks.
“Yes,” I say, and I stand so she can see my empty pockets, my empty hands.
She stays a step out of arm’s reach. She wears a thrifted parka the color of tide mud and a beanie with a moth bite in the ribbing. Her eyes are Lark’s and not Lark’s—salt-dark, watchful, stubborn. She looks at the water first, then at the folder, then at me.
“Say it,” she says.
“Two things,” I answer. “First: are you safe today? Second: do you want to be legally real to these people, even if that reality stays sealed?”
“I’m real to me,” she says, and a gull rips a laugh across the sky like punctuation. “But I know what you mean.”
I point to the bench and we sit with a plank of wood between us like a neutral party. My fingers tingle, the nervous circulation I get before court. “The rumor is getting teeth,” I say. “Vivienne filed to gag me. If the judge grants everything she wants, the truth gets buried under the language of ‘protection.’ If the judge grants nothing, the town tries to turn you into a souvenir. Either way you become an argument unless you choose your terms.”
“I don’t want to be a trophy,” she says.
“Then don’t,” I say. “I brought an option that lets you be a person first and a proof second.”
I open the folder. Paper breathes when it meets air. The top sheet bears a heading I drafted twice and tore once: Proposed Sealed Affidavit of T.F., for In Camera Review Only. I slide it toward her with a clipped pen. “This is a sample, not a trap. Read out loud if you want. Change anything.”
“Out loud makes you hear the lies,” she says. She rubs her thumb over a corner until the fiber pills. She begins.
“I, T.F., declare under penalty of perjury that the following is true and correct to the best of my knowledge and belief.” She glances up. “So far, so court.”
“So court,” I say.
She continues, voice steady despite the wind: “I am a minor within the meaning of the protective statutes referenced by Respondent. I do not seek public recognition, only accurate recording. I consent to provide limited facts necessary to prevent harm to me and to others.”
She stops again. “I don’t like that ‘harm to others’ part. Sounds like I’m responsible for adults.”
“We can narrow it,” I say, and I strike the words with the pen and write: to prevent ongoing institutional harm. I cap the pen and return it. “That points the lens where it belongs.”
“Good,” she says. She reads on. “On [redacted date], I met with M.E. and provided a cheek swab for DNA testing under a chain-of-custody that did not include police, press, or donors. I received no money or promises of money. I received one promise: my choice will be honored.” She takes a breath and looks at me. “Will it be?”
“Yes,” I say, and I let the wind push my hair into my mouth because I need a small inconvenience to keep my voice tight. “You can walk away. You can ask for a guardian ad litem. You can say, ‘Not yet.’ I’ll carry the fight without you and live with whatever it costs me.”
She stares at Widow’s Teeth until the white grinds itself thin. “If I say yes, it’s because I want the ledger right. Not because I want a party.”
“No parties,” I say. “No interviews. No yacht-club auctions with sextants and ‘mentorships’ posing as humanity. Just a clerk’s stamp in a quiet room.”
She huffs, and the breath carries a laugh she didn’t authorize. “You talk like a person who alphabetizes her grief.”
“I do,” I say. “It’s how I keep from drowning in other people’s.”
She flips to the next paragraph with mittened fingers, clumsy and precise at once. “I understand that my affidavit may be reviewed by the court in camera. I request that my initials be used in place of my name in all public filings and that any identifying details (addresses, schools, medical record numbers) be redacted.”
“Good,” she says. “Say ‘will be redacted,’ not ‘request.’”
“That’s your agency,” I say. I cross out request and write: will be. She nods and I watch the nod land in my chest like a soft weight I want to deserve.
She keeps reading. “I affirm that I do not wish to be included in any press materials now or later. I do not consent to photographs, recordings, or anonymous descriptions that function as identification.”
“That’s your no,” I say.
“That’s my no,” she echoes, and she smiles without showing teeth. The gulls tilt and scribble sound over our heads. Down the path, a dog shakes rain out of its coat with the determination of a small god; the spray smells briefly of wet wool and river.
She finds the clause I struggled with. “I am willing to have the court acknowledge me as the biological descendant of L. Ellison solely for the purposes of trust administration and protective orders, contingent on independent oversight, and only in sealed filings.” She taps the page. “I want a sunset.”
“Explain,” I say, though I know.
“I want it to end,” she says. “Not just ‘we’ll protect you until people get bored.’ Put in a review date. Put in that I can withdraw this and become a normal liar again if I want.”
“Not a liar,” I say reflexively.
“Everyone lies,” she says. “I want to pick mine.”
I write: This consent may be withdrawn by T.F. upon written notice; the court will review protective measures every six months. I add: No public disclosure absent T.F.’s express consent.
“Better,” she says, and she keeps reading, chewing a thumbnail, then stopping when she tastes ink because the printer toner on the page smudged where my hand had rested. She wipes her tongue in disgust. “It tastes like my guidance counselor’s office.”
“Lemon oil and forms?” I ask.
“Rage and laminator heat,” she says, surprising me into a laugh that gets stolen by the wind.
I place the portable notary stamp beside the folder. The metal is cold, and its weight feels like a tiny bell with a job. I keep my other hand open on my knee. “You can sign today or tomorrow or never.”
“What happens if I don’t?” she asks.
“I drive to court in the morning and argue for dignity with science and ledgers,” I say. “I still win some things. I lose the one that matters.”
“Which is?”
“Your choice standing in the record,” I say, and I look at the water because directness is a risk and I’m trying to model it. “Not a rumor, not my affidavit about you, but yours about yourself.”
She considers that. A fisherman in an old oilskin jacket trudges past us on the path, off-season guard duty credentials likely in his back pocket: keys to an empty estate, a list of vendors who still deliver to ghosts. He nods the way men nod at benches—permission to share the weather. We are part of the landscape to him, two shapes waiting for the harbor to decide.
“Read the last bit,” I say.
She does. “I swear the foregoing is true, understanding that false statements may be punished and that truth told under duress is not consent. I sign because I choose to speak, not because I am compelled by family, money, or threats.”
She lowers the page. “You put that duress line in.”
“I wanted the record to know the difference,” I say.
She takes the pen. “I want my own difference on there too.”
“Tell me.”
“Say I want truth without parade,” she says. “Say I don’t join their photos. Say if anyone tries to put me on a stage, I get to throw up on their shoes.”
I grin. I write: Affiant requires that no public ceremony, announcement, or event use this affidavit to promote any person or institution; any attempt voids consent. I don’t include the shoes. The court lacks humor.
She nods. “Fine.” She looks at the harbor again, and then at my face, and then at the page. “You will keep my mom out of this, right?”
The word mom cracks and heals something in one syllable. “Yes,” I say. “Her truth is hers. I’m not dragging her into a courtroom so the board can practice empathy.”
“Good,” she says. “She’s better at hating rich people than paperwork, but she would still try for me, and I don’t want her burned for sport.”
We both go quiet. The bell carries again from Sea Ledger, a hollow, undecided tone. I remember ringing it once on camera at a silent auction where antique sextants winked beside venture-capital “mentorships,” and I feel the old shame prickle my scalp. Mercy and justice speak the same language in this town; the sentence is what changes.
She places the page on the bench, flattens it with her palm, and signs her name in block letters I recognize from her texts: Tamsin Fiske. The pen scratches; the scratch is a sound I could live inside. She pauses, then writes T.F. in the lower right corner and dots the period like a small declaration.
“Initials there too,” I say, pointing to the line where the redactions live. She initials. “And here, acknowledging the six-month review,” I say. She initials. “And here, refusing press.”
“Especially there,” she says, and the ink sits wet and glossy for a beat before the wind dries it.
I pick up the notary stamp. My hands don’t shake. The metal clicks, a soft bite through paper. I sign my name below the seal and write today’s date, the dusk of it. The affidavit smells briefly of lemon oil where the stamp pad bled. I slide the completed page into a clear sleeve that whispers as it takes her words into plastic.
“Where does it go?” she asks.
“Into a locked envelope,” I say, showing her the lined Tyvek and the chain-of-custody form clipped to it. “Tomorrow to chambers, not the clerk’s counter. In camera, not on PACER. I’ll mark it for the judge only and cite the cases that mean something in this county.”
“You love your cases,” she says.
“I love the way they make rooms behave,” I say. “I don’t trust the people in them.”
She pulls her beanie tighter. “What about the woman who wants to gag you?”
“She’ll say she’s saving you,” I answer. “She’ll ask the court to turn down the volume until we forget there’s a song.”
“I don’t like that metaphor,” Tamsin says.
“Neither do I,” I say. “Metaphors are how people make crimes sound busy.”
She stands. “I’ll text from a different number next time,” she says. “The lighthouse account got weird.”
“Block them,” I say. “They think fire is care.”
She starts to go, then turns back and looks me dead in the eye. “If you break what I wrote, I will burn you down,” she says. There is no drama in it, only flint.
“Good,” I say. “Hold the match.”
She tilts her head, weighing me, then nods once. “Low tide tomorrow,” she says, “you ring a bell in your head if you need me. I won’t come. That’s the point.”
“That’s the point,” I say, and the words salt my mouth.
She leaves by the path toward the bus stop that smells like old gum and damp schedules. I watch until the dusk eats her parka. Widow’s Teeth gnaws the horizon to chalk. Sea Ledger’s windows show no light; the bell has nothing left to say.
My phone vibrates in the folder, a rude insect under paper. I slide it free and read the court’s notice: Emergency hearing at 9:00 a.m. on Motion to Seal and for Gag Order. I read it twice, then press the Tyvek envelope’s adhesive shut with my thumb until it holds. The notary stamp sits beside me like a small, honest weight.
“Protect the child, preserve the record,” I whisper to the harbor, to the gulls, to the bench with its familiar splinters.
The wind brings back the smell of kelp and a distant smear of fryer oil from Harborlight. I tuck the affidavit inside my jacket where heat can keep it safe and rise. The judge will ask what protection means when it costs someone else their truth. I will answer, but I don’t know yet whether the room will believe me.
I take one last look at the shoal where Lark didn’t die the way people decided she did. I touch the envelope through fabric and ask the question I have to ask before any door opens tomorrow: when mercy and justice use the same words in that courtroom, which sentence will Tamsin have to live?