The clock is too loud for a small room. Each tick lands like a light tap on my sternum, counting the seconds between a girl’s privacy and the world’s appetite. The chambers smell of furniture polish and ink; a drift of kelp ghosts in every time the door seals. I stand with my coat folded over my arm, the encrypted drive in its hard case resting on the walnut table beside a manila envelope smudged with last night’s printer toner. The judge looks at me the way Graypoint looks at storms—measuring.
“Ms. Ellison,” she says. “In camera, as requested. You understand that privacy here is for process, not for pretense.”
“I do.” My voice lands steady in the wood-paneled hush. “I’m not seeking to avoid scrutiny. I’m trying to prevent harm while we expose it.”
She angles her glasses. “You want both revelation and secrecy.”
“I want mercy and justice to stop quarreling long enough to protect a child.”
The second hand ticks. A framed photograph of the harbor hangs behind her shoulder; the crescent line of Graypoint curves toward the bright teeth of shoals. Widow’s Teeth, in a judge’s chambers—someone chose the image for beauty, not hazard. I feel the grit of sleeplessness at the corner of my eyes and keep my hands still.
“Show me what you risk,” she says.
I place the manila envelope on the blotter. “Sworn deposition recorded last night,” I say. “Witness signature, alias and birth name both. Redacted transcript. Time stamps matched to the notary’s log. Chain-of-custody begins here and never leaves my sight until yours.”
“And the drive?”
“Redundant exhibits,” I say. “Mirrored to secure offsite locations. This copy is for in-chambers review only.”
“Who else knows you’re here?”
I don’t look at the phone in my pocket. “No one who would put a camera outside your door.”
She studies me. “That is not the answer I asked for.”
“A colleague knows I requested chambers,” I say. “He does not know the hour. No press. No board members. Not my mother.”
“Not your mother,” she repeats, dry. “And yet the foundation you both orbit breathes money the way this town breathes salt.”
I nod once. “Old-line families hire fishermen to guard empty estates after the season,” I say, hearing the metal of my certainty. “But those engines don’t keep predators from buying a locksmith.”
The judge lifts the envelope and unfolds the clasp deliberately, like she’s untying a knot that could bite. The paper rasp is intimate, the way certain truths are. She slides out the transcript, takes the first page, and reads without speaking. I listen to the clock because I have to listen to something.
“You describe a bracelet swap.” Her finger taps the line. “You link it to a donor and to a board member of a major charity.”
“Yes.”
“You implicate your mother’s knowledge.”
“I include what the witness swore,” I say. “The witness is not my mother.”
“I can read, Ms. Ellison.” Her tone isn’t cruel; it’s corrective, a ruler laid next to a line. “What I cannot read, because you have blacked it out, are the addresses of safe houses. You are withholding locations.”
“I am,” I say. “Sealed, in camera—I still will not disclose addresses that would let someone find a teen from a docket. The court can compel service by alternate means. The court can appoint a guardian ad litem who can know enough without maps.”
“You are asking me to bless a secret I do not share.”
“I’m asking you to bless a method.”
She sets the transcript down, flips three pages forward, and stops where the notary stamp bruises the paper. She presses a fingertip into the raised circle, then looks at my face like she can feel whether I flinched when the stamp came down.
“Why now?” she asks. “You have known pieces for weeks.”
“Because power moved last night,” I say. “The board suspended a member, and my apartment door splintered. Neat rooms, missing evidence, a note pinned with a silver oyster fork that said ‘Unclaimed stays safe.’ The ransack was precise. They wanted leverage, not jewelry.”
“You called the police?”
“They took a perfunctory report and admired the molding,” I say. “I mirrored backups, and I came here before daylight taught the story to lie.”
The judge lets out a breath that clicks in her throat, more tired than sympathetic. “My clerk will confirm the police report,” she says, then glances past me, toward the closed door, toward a world that lives by whispers pretending to be bylaws. “Do you know what you are asking me to do to this town?”
I keep my hands at my sides. “I am asking you to use the court’s remedies to carve a channel so the truth can move without drowning a child,” I say. “Limited anonymity under Rule 26C, pseudonyms for the record where appropriate, redactions that name acts and duties but not the witness’s current name or the minor’s. A guardian ad litem for Tamsin with power to see unredacted materials and stand between her and every glossy magazine that thinks charity looks better with a scandal.”
“And the deposer?” she asks.
“Security through obscurity,” I say. “Alias for public filings, birth name under seal, in-camera deposition for anything not already in the transcript. The board can proceed. The state can investigate. The foundation’s programs don’t have to bleed because a board member did.”
“You want me to save the programs by isolating the person,” she says. “You want me to cut the cancer without amputating the limb.”
“Yes.”
The judge looks back at the harbor photograph. “Do you walk Widow’s Teeth?” she asks, unexpected.
“Low tide,” I say. “I know the ledges. I know what water does when it finds a narrow place.”
“It doubles,” she says, “then flings you against what you thought you’d already mapped.” She taps the transcript again, harder. “I don’t like ex parte pressure.”
“There is no motion on the calendar,” I say. “There is only a child who will lose anonymity if we wait for the docket to cough up a hearing two weeks from now.”
“You are a paralegal, not counsel,” she says, sharpening. “Your filings carry a firm’s caption but not a lawyer’s voice. Why are you in my chambers with this instead of a partner who can absorb the blast?”
I meet her eyes. “Because I built the chain, and I will not let someone else drop it.”
“That is not a legal answer.”
“It’s a human one,” I say, heat pressing up under my tongue. “The legal answer is that I have authority under the engagement letter and written delegation from counsel to present sealed exhibits for in-camera review and request protective orders under the court’s inherent powers. The human answer is that I promised a girl yesterday that the law could be a door, not a trap.”
The judge watches me for a long four ticks. The clock’s second hand seems louder now, greedy for minutes. She turns a page and reads again, lower, faster. When she speaks, her voice moves quicker too, as if the tide changed under her bench.
“You brought corroboration,” she says. “Harbor camera logs, nurse notes, ledger entries. You have a recording that tends to prove the offshore lawyer’s role. You have a board vote minutes sheet that tracks with your affidavit from three chapters—three days ago.” She catches herself. “Three days. Forgive me. My calendar reads like fiction lately.”
“Graypoint writes itself like one,” I say before I can stop myself.
“Don’t quip,” she says, but her mouth twitches. She flips the last page, aligns the stack, and squares it with the blotter’s corner so precisely I could measure it with the sextant’s arc. “You’re asking me to trust you because you documented when no one was watching.”
“I’m asking you to trust the documents,” I say. “I’m just the hand that carried them. The brass bell rings the same tone for donation and death. What matters is who’s listening when it rings.”
She reaches for a pen shaped like a small anchor, the kind the yacht club would give out as gifts when they auction sextants next to venture-capital mentorships. The nib hangs over the signature line. The room’s silence tightens like a knot pulled clean. I smell lemon oil rise from the table with the warmth of the day’s first light prying at the windows.
“Ms. Ellison,” she says, pen still hovering, “if I grant these, you must promise me one thing.”
“Name it.”
“No leaks that originate from your righteous impatience,” she says. “If you choose to be a witness, you cannot also be the town crier.”
I let the admonition walk across my back like cold water. “I won’t publish,” I say. “We proceed by filings, not feeds.”
She nods once and signs. The pen scratches a sound like a match taking. She signs again on a second order, then a third. She reaches for a stamp and presses it, firm, the embossed seal biting the paper. I exhale before I know I was holding air for its weight.
“Limited anonymity granted,” she says, reading as she works. “Use of initials for the minor, pseudonym permitted for the adult witness in public docketing. Guardian ad litem appointed for the minor—my clerk will provide a shortlist unconnected to your foundation or its donors. In-camera status for the unredacted deposition and the underlying exhibits. Counsel to meet-and-confer on redactions for any motion practice within seventy-two hours. Violations will be sanctioned.”
Relief pours through me like oxygen after a long dive. The room widens. The clock’s tick softens to something my heart can live next to without changing tempo. I feel the locket against my skin and, beneath it, the micro-key rested like a hidden vowel.
“Thank you,” I say, barely louder than the pen cap clicking home.
“Don’t thank me,” she says. “Do what you said you would do. Keep the program’s blood supply separate from the donor’s infection. And don’t make me regret protecting your family.”
“Protecting family is why I’m here. Not to hide. To reveal carefully.”
“Care is not a synonym for delay,” she says, and slides the signed orders across the table. “File these under seal by noon. The guardian will contact you today.”
“I’ll have counsel submit the formal notice and the redaction index.”
“Good,” she says, then looks at the harbor photograph again, like it can remind her which boats are hers to pull in. “One more thing.”
I wait, papers under my palm, the embossed circles still warm.
“My clerk tells me an emergency motion to unseal may be inbound from counsel for your suspended board member,” she says, eyes returning to mine. “It appears someone tipped them that something happened last night. If I receive it before noon, I will set it for hearing this afternoon.”
The room shrinks, precise again. “Do they know which chamber you signed in?” I ask.
“They know which courthouse I preside in,” she says. “This is Graypoint, Ms. Ellison. Privacy is a courtesy we offer the diligent. It is not a guarantee against the hungry.”
My phone vibrates once, a small insect against wood. I don’t look at it. I look at the orders, at the shape of the judge’s name, at the ink drying into authority.
“Will the guardian’s name be public?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “Not until I say so.”
“And the child’s school?”
“Not in my court,” she says. “If anyone tries to make it so, send them back here with a penitent face.”
I nod. The clock sounds less like a hammer now and more like a metronome. Movement I can choreograph to. I gather the pages into the red-string folder, thread the tie, and slide the drive back into its case where foam remembers its shape.
“You’ll be escorted down the service elevator,” the judge says. “It’s less photogenic.”
I manage a thin smile. “I prefer ugly exits.”
“Then make one,” she says, and when I stand, she adds, softer, “You didn’t have to come alone.”
“I did,” I say. “So the law could meet one person and not a crowd.”
“Make sure it meets the right person next,” she says, nodding toward the orders. “A guardian with teeth, not a ribbon.”
“I will.”
I reach for my coat. Lemon oil blooms as I lift it—Sea Ledger, archivist, childhood, all of it buffed into a gloss that fooled me for years. I slip one sleeve, then the other, feel the weight settle. I open the case with the drive, check the seal, close it. The clock jumps to the top of the hour with a clean click, a small bell I choose to hear as donation, not death.
The judge’s phone lights on the desk. She glances down; the tiniest crease appears at the corner of her mouth.
“It’s starting,” she says.
“The motion?”
“The gossip that will try to become one,” she says. “Go file. Go fast.”
I tuck the orders under my arm and step toward the door. The wood is warm from a hundred hands that left with better or worse news. The room behind me holds to its hush. The harbor beyond the window flashes a slice of winter light on Widow’s Teeth, a glint like a warning turned useful.
My hand closes around the knob. The phone in my pocket purrs again, insistent, nameless. The judge doesn’t ask me to silence it. She doesn’t have to. The question rides out ahead of me into the corridor like a scout: can I get these protections to the clerk before the unsealing tries to strip them—before the hungry figure out which door I’ve just used?